One of the lousiest parts to all this is that I will still have to see DG once a month at the Aspie meetings. (My own stupid fault for getting involved with someone there.) This month’s meeting is next week, but I don’t think I can bear to see him right now. We also sit next to each other at the meetings, and it would be too hard to see him there, still feeling as I feel. I may just contact the main facilitator and tell her that I can’t make it to the meeting this month…
“Love Is a Losing Game” by Amy Winehouse
For you I was a flame
Love is a losing game
Five story fire as you came
Love is a losing game.
One I wish I never played
Oh, what a mess we made
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game.
Played out by the band
Love is a losing hand
More than I could stand
Love is a losing hand.
Self professed, profound
Till the chips were down
Know you’re a gambling man
Love is a losing hand.
Though I battle blind
Love is a fate resigned
Memories mar my mind
Love is a fate resigned.
Over futile odds
And laughed at by the gods
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game.
Dear Brain: Please stop making me have dreams about my father dying. This is the second one in the last month, and it made me wake up all upset and I really, really do not like it. Plus, there were tortilla chips with tiny shrimp in them, and I can’t STAND shrimp. I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but it is NOT at all appreciated.
No love,
Me.
I just got home a few minutes ago from the funeral of a friend who passed away suddenly a few days ago. I got word of her death on Sunday evening, when I was still in the midst of Monkees Convention frivolity. She was much too young to be gone, I reasoned—only in her 40s—and I thought I would awaken on Monday to find that the message in my Inbox was nothing more than a bad dream.
But there I was in the funeral parlor today, listening to the rabbi and attempting to clear the nonexistent phlegm from my throat as I recited the Kaddish in Hebrew, along with dozens of others who’d known this woman. I can’t make sense of how or why someone so vibrant and caring could have her life cut so short…all I know is that I believe her spirit will continue on in everyone whose life she touched.
To Ronni, wherever you are: You will be greatly missed and never forgotten…
Totally having an R.I.P. Robin Sachs Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon this weekend, watching all four Ethan Rayne episodes (“Halloween”; “The Dark Age”; “Band Candy”; and “A New Man”). So completely sad to hear of his passing, in so many ways. As if this day didn’t suck enough already…
I just found out that my mom’s cousin and her husband are separating. They’ve been married for almost as long as my parents have, and I’m completely in shock because I never had the slightest inkling that something was amiss or that they were having any problems. Mom’s cousin has a sister who has always been the “messed up” one of the two of them, and cousin-lady has always been the “together” one and (at least every time I’ve been around her and her husband), seemingly quite in love with him.
And on top of everything else, mom’s cousin is currently recovering from knee surgery and coping with a great deal of physical and mental anguish as a result of that, plus problems in her spine that the doctors found after the surgery.
I’m so upset and in disbelief I don’t even know what to do. My heart is broken for both of them and angry at husband-guy for putting her through this when she’s ALREADY dealing with so much crap. UGH.
Well, just found out that DG (Date Guy) won’t be coming with me to my friend’s New Year’s Eve party, because he’s going to Philly tomorrow to spend New Year’s with family. I tried to play it cool on the phone, but I really am disappointed and sad. It just would’ve been nice to have someone to go with to the party and kiss at midnight…but I guess that’s never going to happen. I didn’t get the Prom I was hoping for in high school and I’m not going to get the New Year’s Eve I keep hoping for, so easy solution: Stop hoping for things. Yeah…
I think I figured out why I’ve been feeling so down today/the last few days (as may be noticeable in my last few posts). Here it is, the eve of Christmas Eve, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt less Christmas-y in my life.
When I was a kid, I used to be so excited that I could barely sleep on Christmas Eve, and sometimes even the night before. Everything was bright and warm, and there were Christmas cookies and twinkling lights and the sound of my Grandma’s laugh as soon as we walked into her house. It didn’t matter if the rest of the year had been crummy or miserable, because Christmas somehow made me feel like things were going to work out, just for a little while.
But now, there’s no more magic. It’s like Christmas is behind a pane of glass, and I can see it, smell it, hear it…but I can’t touch it. And it can’t touch me.
The worst part tonight was when I was saying all of this to my mom, and she goes, “If you had someone to share the holiday with, it would feel different. Someday hopefully you will.”
I wanted to tell her about DG (Date Guy) SO badly right then, but I didn’t say anything, because I knew the questions and the concern that would follow. And then I went on Facebook and saw more people on my Friends list getting engaged, and that, along with the thought of all the couples who are sharing the holiday together in various ways, was like salt unknowingly rubbed into an invisible wound.
The only hope I have left is New Year’s Eve, as I did invite him to go to my friend’s party with me. But that’s up in the air as of right now, and so I don’t know what will happen. It’s strange: I want to be taking things slow with him, yet at the same time, something about this stupid holiday makes me yearn for something more…solid, I guess. Something more official. Which I know is stupid and labels mean nothing, but I’m just having trouble not knowing for sure what DG and I “are,” is all.
Well, anyway…tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and all of our cookies are baked here at my parents’ house. I have to bake a cake for my aunt’s for Christmas Day, and of course we’re cooking Christmas Eve dinner tomorrow night (The menu: Dandelion soup, papparedelle with caramelized onions, and roast beef of some sort). So I guess I will just throw myself into the cooking and try not think about all of this other stuff. As best as I can, anyway…
(This comes from the Executive Director of GRASP, the Asperger’s Syndrome organization on whose Board of Directors I serve. I feel that his statement is incredibly eloquent and well-put, which is why I am sharing it here.)
We here at GRASP (and I as the father of two school-age boys), cannot be more saddened and devastated by the news of the shootings in Newtown, CT. Our thoughts, wishes, prayers, and heaviest hearts go out to the victims and their families.
While it has not been confirmed, two major news outlets are now speculating that the shooter, Adam Lanza, had been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. Much remains to be seen to provide the full picture of who this man was, but AS may indeed have been a part of his makeup.
We urge everyone to remember what GRASP has stated since our beginning: That having Asperger’s or the autism spectrum in your life—as an individual, a parent…etc.—does not carry any bearing with whether or not you will become (for lack of a better term) “a good person” in this life. While the majority of statistics prove that we are infinitely more prone to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators of violence, we are not immune from becoming people capable of making terrible, horrible choices. No one is.
So we ask that everyone please steer away from getting too caught up in the spectrum angle. Let us focus instead on mourning; lamenting through grief that such a terrible and tragic event befell us all on this awful, awful day. Let us focus on the families impacted, and care for them, so that someday far off maybe we can explain—though never justify—what happened today. Perhaps then we will finally force those responsible for our care to pass legislations that could have helped prevent this tragedy, or revoke the legislations that may have assisted it.
With our greatest condolences to those impacted,
Peace,
Michael John Carley
Executive Director
GRASP
My uncle just messaged me on Facebook and said that the media is now printing stories saying that the Connecticut shooter was autistic and that that is to blame for why he did this. As if I didn’t have enough reasons to feel sick over this whole thing already…and as if this wasn’t a fear lingering in the back of my mind to begin with. It seems like a lot of the shooters in these massacres have been pinned as being on the spectrum in some way, regardless of whether it is actually true. All it does is add that much more of a stigma to autism and make it a thousand times harder for people on the spectrum to make any inroads in society. I don’t even know what to say or do…
