What I Knew Part II: A Lot More Than You Think!

My previous blog post talked about the perception of people with Asperger's as gullible and how, if anything, I was more vigilant than most people need to be. The thing is, I knew and understood a lot more than many people (including my own parents, of course) gave me credit for, and I don't just mean in the realm of knowing when I was being manipulated.

Looking back, it seems that adults thought of me as so detached from reality, almost as if they saw me as a goldfish swimming aimlessly through a bowl and repeatedly hitting my head on the side. It seemed that they thought that I didn't know that I was hitting my head, let alone know that most goldfish don't do this. But I knew. I knew and understood much more than they realized. And despite what they thought, I was very aware that I was different.

By the time I was eleven, I had some vague idea that I was being looked at, that something was going on behind my back, that adults were talking about me. I was well aware that my parents thought there was something psychologically wrong with me. So around that time when I started seeing a psychologist, Dr. Klein (not his real name), I knew I had a lot to be suspicious of. My mother usually talked with Dr. Klein alone for five minutes before my session started. But one day she was in there for almost the entire hour that was supposed to be mine. After I realized that a long time had passed, I knew that something was going on, that they were talking about me. I did what any suspicious eleven-year-old would do: I sat outside the door and eavesdropped. 

I remember Mom saying in exasperation, "She doesn't tell me what she wants." I knew exactly what she was referring to. One day (maybe the same day; I don't remember) before school I was looking for my bra. I had just started "developing", so needing a bra was a new and embarrassing thing for me. Like any adolescent girl, I didn't want my father to hear me talking about it. I found my mother and whispered, "I need my bra." She couldn't hear me. "What?" she had asked in a very loud voice. "My bra," I whispered again.  She still didn't hear me. She kept talking more and more loudly. Not wanting Dad to overhear, in a normal voice I said something like, "My... you know." Mom didn't figure it out. So there she was that afternoon, telling Dr. Klein that for some reason something was preventing me from communicating a simple request. The fact that it hadn't occurred to Mom or Dr. Klein that I would eavesdrop and the fact that Mom couldn't figure out that I had been trying to tell her without Dad overhearing that I was looking for my bra speaks volumes: It shows just how little adults thought I knew and understood. 

Around the same time, I had started drawing violent Addams Family cartoons. I knew not to draw violent pictures in school. But Mom forbade me from drawing them at all because for some reason she was inordinately convinced that I was indeed drawing them in school. Of course I knew at age eleven that there were certain activities appropriate for different contexts! I may have had trouble with some of these, but not all of them as my parents thought.

When I was turning eighteen, I was friends with a girl, Jenna (not her real name), who was fooling around with Wicca. When Mom found out, she yelled at me to stay away from her. Recently I got back in touch with Jenna (as detailed in "Why Do You Keep Dredging These Things Up"?) and I mentioned the Wicca incident to my parents. Neither of my parents remember the incident or even who Jenna was. Mom said that she was likely scared that I would join a cult (I do remember this being the case; Dad and I had had a conversation shortly after the incident). I recall feeling insulted that Mom would think I would be stupid enough to do something like that. When I brought up the incident a few weeks ago, Mom mentioned that I was a "kid with problems" and that was why she had reacted the way she did. I was a month shy of my eighteenth birthday at the time. Of course I knew that cults were dangerous! The Heaven's Gate suicide had happened a little over a year before, and I remember thinking that it was horrible and that it was amazing how easily people could be indoctrinated. And my parents knew that I had had these thoughts because we'd talked about it at the time (the absurdity of thinking that trying out Wicca is a direct pathway to a cult is another tangent I won't get into here). 

I often missed social cues, but I was also better at reading between the lines than many people gave me credit for. In the summer of 1998, when I was seventeen and in the C. I. T. program at Camp Negev, my counselors told me on the first day that they were not letting me work with kids. When I asked why, they said that they wanted me to do "a special job". Suspicious that there was something else going on, I forced it out of them. "It" was that they were not comfortable letting me work with kids. Did they really think I wasn't going to know that there was something they weren't telling me? Did they really not think I would force it out of them? Throughout the day, I was quite upset and went to one of the head staff about it. When I asked her why I was being kept from the kids, she told me that people "had concerns". But I had had enough experience to know that someone telling me that they "had concerns" was a euphemism for something more serious. I had enough experience to know that it could mean, "You're weird", "We see you as a problem," "We don't want you here", or all of the above and more. Long before that, I knew when people were keeping something from me, or not telling me the entire story. "Forcing it out of them" is something I have long since had down to an art. Why wouldn't I, if experience taught me that a lot went on about me behind closed doors?

What I Knew Part I: Asperger's and Gullibility

Probably one of the most prevailing stereotypes is that people with Asperger's Syndrome are remarkably gullible. Many books for parents of kids with Asperger's implore them to make sure their kids know when someone is trying to manipulate them in any way. Parents are told that they will have to constantly give their kids a reality check, because their kids often don't know what is going on.

Growing up, my problem was the exact opposite. If anything, my bullshit radar was on high sensitivity. By the time I was eight or nine, I usually knew when people were trying to manipulate me, whether in the form of being sarcastic (and people with Asperger's are not supposed to be able to understand sarcasm??) or in the form of sounding overly sweet in some way. And actually, my own parents often accused me of being paranoid. There's an old expression: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you. My teachers and parents often felt that other kids were genuinely reaching out to me and I was just nastily blowing them off. Occasionally that was true (and why shouldn't I be extra vigilant if experience told me that most people wanted to humiliate me?), but an overwhelming majority of the time I knew exactly what was going on, that other kids were trying to set me up or were mocking me in some way. The fact that my teachers and parents rarely believed me made it more difficult.

For example, when I was in 7th grade (age 13), I was very uncomfortable changing for gym class in front of everyone else in the locker room, so I changed in a shower stall. One day, a classmate came over to me and asked in a mockingly sweet tone, "Excuse me, can I please come in there? I want to change and I don't want anybody to see my panties." Of course I saw that she was mocking the fact that I was uncomfortable changing in front of everyone else. A stereotypical person with Asperger's who takes everything literally might interpret this as someone genuinely wanting to come into the stall with the person already there and change so that the other girls don't see whatever cutesy patterns are on her underwear. And that's another thing-- the panties reference. I knew she was making fun of what one might see as the silliest, most childish reason for not wanting to change in front of others. I think we all remember being six years old and telling each other, "Ooh, I can see your underwear!" or "Nice underwear!" or "Ha ha, you have Care Bears underwear!" She was implying that my not wanting to change in front of others (which had nothing to do with underwear, a poor body image, or even modesty but rather just the simple fact that I was not used to it) was babyish. I understood as quickly as any neurotypical person, and I told the girl to go to hell.

That evening I told my parents about it and also mentioned that I had told the girl to go to hell. I told them that the girl was being sarcastic (I think facetious is a more appropriate term) when she asked to join me in the stall. Dad's response was, "It sounds like you were the one who was being sarcastic. You need to give other people a turn if they want to change in there." Dad somehow missed the implications of the girl's panties comment and the fact that she said that she wanted to come in there with me.

There were many other times throughout my childhood when other kids would pretend to be nice to me just to fuck with me, as the expression goes, and I saw right through their act. If someone told me that they loved my out-of-control-Orphan-Annie-thick hair that I hated, I knew they were being sarcastic. If a boy came up to me and said, "Oh, baby, will you go out with me?" I knew he saw me as a loser and thought it was hilarious to ask me out and call me baby. I knew that if kids who'd bullied me all year long asked me if they could sign my yearbook (or vice-versa), they were just entertaining themselves and their group of friends. I refused to let them sign my yearbook, and I refused to sign theirs. Of course, my parents would hear about these incidents and think that the kids were being "nice" and that I was being "paranoid" and blowing them off in some way.

I recall that a number of times Mom commented that people tried so hard to be nice to me and that they were going to stop being nice to me if I kept being paranoid. She had absolutely no clue, and I knew exactly what was going on, exactly what I was looking at. But by 9th grade (age 15), I really began to second-guess myself and wonder if Mom was right. So for the rest of high school and in early adulthood, when I knew damn well that others were fucking with me, I often played along just in case they weren't fucking with me. Also, I often ended up playing along because I didn't know what else to do. It was a bit embarrassing to say, "Yeah, I know you're fucking with me." In 9th grade I missed a day of gym class. When I came in the next day, a girl said, "We missed you so much and we needed you on our team." I was always terrible at sports. But I knew getting visibly upset and saying, "Go to hell" or some other comeback wouldn't fix anything. So instead I said something like, "I'm not that good." I didn't know what else to say. Guess what? This playing along made me look, well, gullible to many people.

Mom often commented that I never took advice from people (this wasn't true, but that's another blog post altogether). So with her comments about my not being nice when people reached out to me in mind, I threw caution to the wind one evening when I got an odd phone call from someone. The girl on the other end of the line said her name was Margaret and that she was my best friend from 3rd grade (age 9). Every antenna in my head went up immediately. My best friend in 3rd grade was not named Margaret; in fact I had never known anybody named Margaret. But I thought about my mother's comments about not being nice when people reached out to me and decided to be nice. I asked the girl what she'd been doing for the past six years and what her phone number was. She told me she'd just moved into a new house that day and that she also was a supermodel. Once again, I knew this sounded ridiculous. But, again, my mother's advice was in my head.

"Margaret" said that she had a boyfriend who was trying to break up with her and she didn't know what to do. Then she said she was thinking of committing suicide. I still thought she was bullshitting me but... what if she wasn't? So I told her something like, "No, don't kill yourself. It's not worth it." At that point, my parents (who had been out all evening) had just come home and listened in on the final call, the one about suicide. After I got off the phone, my parents informed me that it was indeed a prank call. "How could you fall for something like that?" Mom demanded. Well, here's her answer. I was trying to take her advice.

In his memoir Atypical, fellow Aspie Jesse Saperstein relates a story of when some classmates played a cruel prank on him in high school. He received an email one day from a girl named Liz. She said that she had always thought he was a nice person but that she was too shy to approach him at school. When I read much of Jesse's (I'm on a first name basis with him; he's my age and I hung out with him one time last summer when he was visiting Boston for a book tour) memoir, I felt like I was reading my own story. But this is where Jesse and I part ways: Had somebody sent me an email like that, I would have wondered how they got my email address and would have been very suspicious of their motives. In fact, in high school someone who I didn't know actually did send me an instant message online. This person was real, and we chatted briefly, but I was very careful about what I said, lest it be used as ammunition against me.

Jesse wasn't suspicious, however, and he believed that Liz was his close friend. In fact, Jesse even went out on a date with her. But the problem was that Liz wasn't even real. The girl on the "date" was just a friend of the bullies who went to another school,  an actress playing the part of a fictional character. The prank went on for six months until Jesse found out the truth.

Although many kids with Asperger's-- including Jesse when he was younger-- easily fall for pranks, many also don't. As I've said, I was hypervigilant during my school years. But as I've also said, I sometimes played along because I didn't know what else to do. I now wonder if the stereotype of gullibility really is based on a pervasive characteristic and that I'm the exception to this, or if the people who write these books assume that some of the kids who play along, as I did, are actually gullible. It's worth asking. It could be that people are interpreting the thought processes of Aspies from very superficial behaviors.

After all, it was only recently that popular psychology overturned the myth about people with Asperger's lacking empathy.

"Why do You Keep Dredging this Stuff Up?"

I had a really hard time making friends when I was in high school. My only friends were the ones I went to Camp Negev with, except for my then-best friend, Melanie. But that was until I met Jenna. I met Jenna (not her real name) in the fall of 1997, age 17, at one of Melanie's parties. Jenna and I hit it off immediately. We quickly got into a discussion about the absurdity of enforced gender roles. I recall that she said, "If a guy came in here in a pretty dress my only reaction would be to ask him where he got it." We exchanged contact information. We called each other and chatted on the then-new AOL Instant Messenger all the time.

I couldn't see Jenna very much, however. She lived in Northeast Philadelphia and I lived about an hour away in the suburbs. I didn't have my driver's license (I didn't feel ready to drive yet) and neither did Jenna (I forget why she didn't). The friends she saw on a regular basis were the ones she went to school with and who could come to her house and pick her up. I only got to see her at parties or the occasional sleepover. It didn't help that her father was a control freak, just like Melanie's mother, albeit in a different way. Melanie's mother was a control freak in that she wouldn't let Melanie get combat boots because they were "too masculine" (my mother got me a pair for my 18th birthday!), told her she couldn't refer to a crazy person as a "nutcase" as it was "too sexual" (oddly enough, "nutball" was okay), and that she wouldn't let her date black people. Yes, you heard me correctly. Melanie's mother more or less groomed Melanie into becoming just like her. Today she is living with her husband, kids, and her parents in the small Northeast Philadelphia house that she grew up in. She also cut me off and didn't invite me to the wedding, and I'm sure her mother had a lot, if not everything, to do with that.

Jenna's father was different. He was an alcoholic who had a drug-addicted girlfriend. Jenna's parents were divorced, and she had to live with her father because he was paying the tuition for her private school. Jenna's father rarely let Jenna go anywhere or do anything. No, this was not a case of a concerned father trying to quash his daughter's teenage rebellion. This wasn't even a case of a father trying to guide his daughter. In fact, he didn't guide her at all, and Jenna wasn't rebelling any more than any other teenager. This was, I think, a case of a "do as I say, not as I do" mentality. Not that Jenna was drinking or doing drugs. She absolutely wasn't. Like me, she was completely anti-drugs, especially since she saw what alcoholism and drug abuse could do to people.

In early 1998, on one of the rare instances that Jenna was able to spend time with me, she spent the night at my house. We were up until 3:00 in the morning talking intensely about what I now know is called evolutionary psychology. That is, I had come to the conclusion that everything we do, directly or indirectly, is based upon the instinct to reproduce-- even if the person doesn't consciously want children. And as a teenager experiencing an existential crisis, I naively thought that this was a new, revolutionary theory. Someone should have gently guided me towards books like The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins and, of course On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. I frantically paced my room, wildly gesticulating, and saying things like, "This is obviously why there are enforced gender roles! This is why bullying happens! It's all based on the ultimate goal-- to reproduce!" I began to realize that this was why I was paying the price for being different and having a hard time making friends. How about The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris and (the not-yet published) The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker?

I then confided in Jenna one of the things that led me to thinking about this sort of thing-- the  previous summer on a group trip to Israel in which I had an obsessive crush on Chuck, one of my counselors. I was embarrassed about how I'd handled it. I muttered something about how the instinct to reproduce had overtaken me even though I hadn't tried to be anything more than friends with Chuck. If I remember correctly, this was the first time I'd ever told anybody that story. For months I had kept it under wraps as I came to the realization that I'd handled this crush badly by following Chuck everywhere. It was a huge confession for me: "I, Julie, am obsessive when I get crushes on people."  I told Jenna this embarrassing story because I knew I could. I knew she'd listen. I knew she'd understand. And she did. In many ways, Jenna understood me better than many people I knew, including my friends from camp. And even though Melanie was my "official" best friend, I knew deep down Jenna and I had a lot more in common. Both of us had intellectual sides, both of us questioned reality. And Jenna affirmed me in a way that many other people didn't.

I lost touch with Jenna about ten years ago. We didn't have a fallout; life just happened. I think she was still living with her asshole father in Philadelphia the last time I talked to her, either in 2004 or 2005, and wasn't able to leave the city, let alone to go to New York, where I was then living. We did occasionally talk online at the time, however. On and off over the years since she stopped coming onto AOL Instant Messenger I tried to find her. I eventually came to the conclusion that if she was on Facebook it was under a pseudonym. So I did some heavy searching (and believe me, it wasn't easy, but I have my ways) and tracked down her snail-mail address. She lives on the other side of the country (I'm not going to mention where, to further protect her privacy). I sent her a postcard with my contact information on it. I had no doubt that if she got the postcard she would contact me. I didn't think for a second that she would pull the same elitist stunt that Melanie did.

And I was right. Within minutes of getting the postcard, Jenna friend requested me on Facebook and texted me on my cell phone. It turned out she was using a different name, but not as a pseudonym. She actually is in the process of getting a legal name change, partially because she doesn't want her father to find her. Jenna told me that she's seeing a therapist about her father, and has been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It didn't surprise me in the slightest. What was also interesting is that Jenna had tried to find me a couple years ago on Facebook, but at the time I had my Facebook set so that nobody could look me up!

Reestablishing contact with Jenna brought back a few painful memories that involved my mother. This morning when my parents called me I mentioned that I had tracked down Jenna. Surprisingly, neither of them remembered who she was. I tried to remind them-- I'd met her through Melanie. That she was into bands like Pearl Jam. That she had wanted to play the guitar. Oh, and she had been interested in Wicca. And that's where the painful memory surfaced.

In the fall of 1998, after I'd known her for a year, Jenna was dabbling with Wicca. I had made the mistake of mentioning this to my mother, and while she was cooking breakfast. Mom slammed down the pan she was holding and said, "Well, then you'd better stay away from her!" Shocked and confused, I asked why. "Wicca is witchcraft!" Yes? And? Does anybody really believe in witches? I tried to deescalate the situation by joking, "Yeah, Jenna's going to cast a spell on me" and "Jenna's going to sell my soul to Satan." But that didn't work. Mom and I got into a huge fight. I remember trying harder than usual to stay calm but Mom kept cutting me off and telling me that I was wrong. Dad came in and diffused the situation. I think he was a little concerned, but I don't think he thought it was a huge deal like Mom did (and ultimately they didn't make me stay away from Jenna). Mom had also commented, "I hate to tell you, but Jenna lives on the fringe." And that really hurt. It really hurt because Mom had kept nagging me to find friends outside of camp, and when I did, she didn't approve of the one I had found, the one who really understood me. And I didn't think and still don't think Jenna lived "on the fringe". And actually, Dad had liked her. That meant a lot to me because Dad invariably saw right through the "friends" who ended up hurting and betraying me, long before they hurt and betrayed me. I recall that he had even commented that Melanie was a fair-weather friend (and it turns out he was right) but that Jenna was "genuine". I think Mom liked Jenna too, but for some reason she was wary of her from day one, and she often commented on it, not just during the Wicca episode. I also recall telling my parents about Jenna's father being a jerk and Mom kept thinking that Jenna's father was just trying to guide his daughter, quash teenage rebellion or something. She seemed skeptical when I told her about the kind of person her father was, including his alcoholism and his drug-addled girlfriend. It also hurt because when I had friends who didn't understand me and did hurt me, Mom often urged me to give them another chance.

I brought this up on the phone this morning. As I said, to my frustration, my parents don't remember Jenna, and Mom certainly doesn't remember the comments she made about her. But I mentioned the comments and Mom said, "You have to put yourself in my situation. You always seemed to be drawn to the bizarre and I was wary of everything." The word "bizarre" struck a chord with me, I guess because it sounds so loaded, so judgmental, so negative. Well, yeah, isn't it obvious that someone who's a little unusual would have more in common with someone else who's a little unusual? And Jenna was anything but bizarre. She had her head on straight, and she was very down to Earth. Dad said to me, "This was a long time ago. Why do you keep dredging these things up from so long ago and saying 'You did this to me' and 'You did that to me'?"

Why? Why do I bring these things up? Why indeed! Why is it that this past Christmas I brought up with my mother Melanie's little stunt where she cut me off and didn't invite me to the wedding and Sergio's little stunt where he ignored the package I sent him after telling me he looked forward to getting it? After all, both of these things happened in 2008, seven years ago. Why is it that I recently wrote a blog post about obsessive crushes that I had had almost two decades ago? And why did it take me about sixteen years to move past the way Mom continually screamed at me, at age 11, about the kinds of bizarre Addams Family cartoons I was drawing? And why did I bring up the way Mom talked about Jenna when I was a teenager?

Because I felt like I never got closure for these things. That's a large part of why I blog. It's the best way I can articulate and make people understand what it's like to be me. It's hard to get that across in a conversation. You have to write it out. You have to tell people and force them to read it. Mom didn't understand the obsessive crushes I went through because I didn't talk to her about them. "So much was kept from me", she said, after reading my latest blog post on the subject. I had kept these things from her because I knew they would freak her out. On the occasion when I did try to tell her, she just shut me down. It was a no-win situation. Now, here we are, almost two decades after this issue started, discussing the situation. It's long overdue. This is how I get closure. And I have to get closure. No matter how much time has passed since something emotionally painful has happened, I need to get closure in order to move past it. And I don't think this is nearly as uncommon as one would think-- sometimes people are in therapy trying to get closure on things that happened to them several decades ago. For me that closure involves confronting my parents with the way they inadvertently hurt me while thinking they were helping me. It involves informing them they were wrong about certain situations when I knew exactly what I was looking at. But sometimes I feel I can't even confront them about it as they just cut me off, saying, "We didn't know" or "We were trying to help" or "Kids don't come with instruction manuals." But the thing is, I really do need to talk about it. I wish they'd understand that.

And the other thing is that despite knowing logically that I was right about many of these things where my parents were wrong, I still find myself doubting my own perception, and a lot of it has to do with the intensity of the way Mom reacted to me over the years. When Dad was concerned about me, it was usually a discussion that ensued. With Mom, it was almost always a fight, with the implication being that I had no idea what I was talking about and she did because she was Older and Therefore Wiser and that I should just listen to her unquestioningly. Because of the intensity of the way Mom had reacted to me in the past, I found myself wondering what her reaction to my finding Jenna was going to be. And I found myself wondering if Mom had been right about Jenna while I had been wrong. Why, I wondered, did I still have the same perception of Jenna that I did seventeen-and-a-half years ago when we first met? Is this immaturity on my part? Naivety? My Asperger's blocking the correct view of reality?

Same deal with the other situations: I still feel the same way about how I handled my crush on Omri as I did seventeen years ago, that I handled it well until towards the end of the summer. I still don't think there was anything wrong with my sending a package to Sergio seven years ago. And I still think there was nothing wrong with me, twenty-three years ago, at age 11, drawing bizarre Addams Family cartoons as long as I didn't draw them in school (which I didn't). It's the idea that my perception on these issues hasn't changed much. Does that mean that I was right? Or does that mean I'm just some immature little twerp with Asperger's who "doesn't get it"? This is why I bring these things up. I admit that I do sound a bit confrontational and aggressive when I address these issues, and also sometimes like I'm making a joke out of it, but that's partially because finally being able to do so is awkward and new for me. It's awkward and new for me to finally be able to talk about these weighty issues with my parents after avoiding these subjects for decades, feeling that they were taboo on so many levels. It's been a few years since my parents really started "to get it" but a few years versus a few decades? Yes, it's still new. So yes, Dad, this is why I "keep dredging this stuff up". It's not fun for me, but I need some closure, and dredging these things up is how I'll get closure.

As for Jenna, I will say this: She and Melanie both came from controlling backgrounds, albeit controlling in different ways. The difference is that Jenna got out and Melanie didn't. What that tells me is that Jenna has a firmer sense of self than Melanie. And a neurotypical person having such a strong sense of self is a rare commodity these days. She should be commended for it.

Jenna is calling me in about an hour so we can finally talk on the phone for the first time in years. I still remember that long, intense conversation we had seventeen years ago until 3:00 AM. I have a feeling we're going to have a conversation of similar length and intensity. That's what good friends do.

Words, Words, Words

My last two posts were about old wounds that had been reopened recently. Writing them was pretty cathartic, but now that that's out of my system I'm going to write something a little less intense and a little more fun. It doesn't even have anything to do with Asperger's Syndrome. It's about words and the rhythm of words.

I really enjoy the rhythm of words, especially in songs but also in prose writing and even on... signs. Let's first look at some lines from a few songs and talk about why they work, rhythmically:

"Magic Dance" by David Bowie from the 1986 film Labyrinth:

This works nicely because of the change in the number of syllables between each line.

I saw my baby, (5)

Crying hard as babe could cry (7)
What could I do (4)
My baby's love had gone (6)
And left my baby blue (6)
Nobody knew (4)
What kind of magic spell to use (8)

Relatively consistent, right? 5 to 7 to 4 to 6... but then the next line also has 6 syllables. Repetition. And back to 4. But then all the way up to 8. Somehow, the 8th syllable in "What kind of magic spell to use"changes a mostly consistent rhythm, especially in the way David Bowie sings it. I like it. It makes the song more dynamic. Imagine if instead the last line was "What kind of spell to use" or "What magic spell to use". Both lines convey the same meaning, but not with as much punch. And it has nothing to do with "magic" being an adjective but rather the fact that it has two syllables. Same deal with "kind of".

Another example of changing rhythm:

"Patch! Natch" from the 1985 film Santa Claus: The Movie.

Okay, okay. I know. It's stupid. It's a stupid movie (though I loved it when I was little) and the song is even stupider. The lyrics are cheesy as hell (and I think they were supposed to be). So... why do I sheepishly admit to having this song on my iPod? Well, look at the first few lines:

Patch! Natch! Patch! Natch!
Someone new has come to town. (Patch! Natch!)
A magic clown with eyes of brown. (Patch! Natch!)
Planned to be another Santa
And to share ol' Santa's crown,
He'll turn Christmas upside down (Patch! Natch!)
He's got a brand-new candy,
As dandy as can be.
It's puce and juicy, as you see
He plans to make it free.

What is it about this song? It's the change of rhythm with "He's got a brand new candy." Each line in this stanza has 7-8 syllables (one line has 6), but "He's got a brand new candy" sounds drastically different. Why? The song is playing a little trick on you. "He's got a brand new candy" has 7 syllables, but the words "brand new candy" have even longer syllables, tricking your brain into thinking there are fewer syllables. It grabs your attention. The actually words don't matter. The song could easily go like this and have the same effect (the line that I like is italicized):

Poop! Poop! Poop! Poop!
Poopoo poo poo poo poo poo. (Poop! Poop!)
Poo poopoo poo poo poo poo poo. (Poop! Poop!)
Poo poo poo poopoopoo Poopoo
Poo poo poo poo Poopoo poo
Poo poo Poopoo poopoo poo (Poop! Poop!)
Poo poo poo poooo poooo poopoo
Poo poopoo poo poo poo
Poo poo poo poopoo, poo poo poo
Poo poo poo poo poo poo

It's all in the rhythm!

It's not just songs that have rhythmic effects. Just string a couple words together:

"July fifteenth." Just say it aloud. "July fifteenth." Don't you love the way that rolls off your tongue? Each word has two syllables, and each syllable is long. Even "April fifteenth" doesn't have the same ring to it.

When I lived in New York City, there were two subway stops that I passed whose names always struck a rhythm for me. Near where I used to live there was a subway stop labeled "22nd Avenue-Bay Parkway." Say that aloud. The syllables progress from very short ("Twenty-second") to very long ("Bay Parkway"). And "Avenue" is a word with two medium syllables. Now say it aloud again "Twenty-Second Avenue- Bay Parkway". The other subway stop that has almost the same effect is "34th Street- Penn Station". Say that aloud, too. See what I mean?

From the song "The Hanging Tree" from the 2014 film Mockingjay, Part 1:

Pay particular attention to this line:

Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be

This is a nice use of repetition. The word "strange" (and its modified form, "stranger") is used twice in one sentence. Normally you want to avoid this sort of thing in prose writing, or even in music, but it works here. I think the reason it works so well here is simply because the second instance of "strange" is a modified form. It's repetitious, but in a stylized-- not careless-- way.


Another beautiful example of repetition, from the 1983 song "Hold Me Now" by the Thompson Twins:

(Starting from 2:41)

So I'll sing you a new song.
Please don't cry anymore.
I'll even ask your forgiveness
But I don't know just what I'm asking it for.

Look at the last two lines and the creative use of repetition:

I'll even ask your forgiveness
But I don't know just what I'm asking it for.

I love this. "Ask" is modified into "asking" and "forgiveness" is shortened into "for", a completely different word. The repetition of these sounds give the lines more impact and emphasize the desperation  and sorrow that the singer feels at having broken up with his girlfriend. Would the line have as much impact if it were written like this?:

I'll even ask your forgiveness
But I don't know just why I'm asking it.

Even with one instance of repetition ("ask"), the line has considerably less impact.

And by the way, forget about what your teacher said about never ending a sentence with a preposition. Does this line captivate you?:

I'll even ask your forgiveness
But I don't know just for what I'm asking it.

Nope.


I also like when a song occasionally does the unexpected.

For example, in "Castle on a Cloud" from the 1985 Broadway show, Les Miserables:

Pay attention to this line:

"There is a room that's full of toys.
There are a hundred boys and girls."

You expected "There are a hundred girls and boys", right? Probably, since "boys" and "toys" rhyme. Well, that would have been boring. "There are a hundred boys and girls" works so much better since you don't expect it!


There's another slight deviation from the expected in "The Merry Old Land of Oz" from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.

Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion are getting cleaned up in preparation to see the Wizard. When the citizens of Oz sing to the Scarecrow and the Tin Man, they end each verse with "That's how we [insert action here] in the Merry old land of Oz." But when they sing to the Cowardly Lion, he sings the end of the verse himself, with "That certain air of savoir faire in the merry old land of Oz." You just expected another "That's how we... in the Merry old land of Oz", didn't you? The song wants to make sure you're paying attention!

Then there's allusion. I'm going to use another example from the Thompson Twins' 1983 song "Hold Me Now":

You say I'm a dreamer
We're two of a kind

You know damn well what that's alluding to. Whether or not the songwriters intended it, the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear that line is:

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one

It is, of course, from John Lennon's song "Imagine". And what's interesting about this allusion is how something about the tone in the "You say I'm a dreamer; we're two of a kind" sounds a little more blunt. It's almost like that line is saying, "Yeah, I get it. I'm a dreamer. So are you." It's almost like the song is "self-aware" of what it's alluding to. And it works. Why? I couldn't tell you. It just does.

Finally, I want to end this blog post not with song lyrics or even subway signs but with a line from Steven Pinker. He wrote a book called The Sense of Style, about why different writing styles work and why writing rules are meant to be broken. I haven't read it yet but I have a feeling that the book likely addresses a lot of what I said here. So, at the risk of being divisive, let's look at a line from another Steven Pinker book (The Blank Slate) that nicely uses a rhythm of sorts:

“People who say that IQ is meaningless will quickly invoke it when the discussion turns to executing a murderer with an IQ of 64, removing lead paint that lowers a child’s IQ by five points, or the presidential qualifications of George W. Bush.”

Aside from the obvious jab at Dubya, the line does a few things:

1) It's a list. And it's a list of three. Somehow a list doesn't have as much impact unless it's a list of three things or more. Why? I don't know. We seem to be attracted to lists of three or more. Maybe it's the very basic counting system of "one, two, and many".

2) Change in parts of speech. The first two discussion points on the list begin with verbs ("executing", "removing"). The third one is a noun ("the presidential qualifications").

3. The term "IQ" is used in the first two discussion points but not in the third. Overall, what makes this work is the way the third discussion point is set apart from the first two. All three discussion points have 16 syllables (I didn't count "or"), and yet the third discussion point gives off the impression of having fewer. But it doesn't. The phrasing is enough to make the rhythm seem more different than it actually is.

Well, that's my little observation for today. I hope everybody enjoyed reading this. And if you write, have fun (jeez, it's supposed to be!).

Jealousy

This is a bit of a follow-up to my previous blog post, "Owning Your Emotions".

You have seen the intensity of my emotions when I become infatuated with someone. I should also note that I get ragingly jealous, but not in the way you think. Unlike most people, I don't get jealous when the object of my affections already has a girlfriend. To me, that makes no sense. Unless the person is polyamorous (or having a secret affair), only one person can be the significant other. It is not something that singles me out. It is something where only one person gets put on a pedestal, and it is a statement about the person, not me. If it were a statement about me, it would be a statement about everybody else who didn't get to be that person's girlfriend/boyfriend. What's frustrating is people don't believe me when I tell them this. They think I'm not being honest with myself. I think if anything my blog posts show just how honest I am with myself.

So how do I experience jealousy when I become infatuated with someone? It's simple. I'm jealous of everyone else who gets to be friends with that person. I, after all, have been singled out as someone not worthy of that person's friendship. And then I become ragingly jealous, to the point where it haunts me in dreams. For example, after Sergio, of my last blog post, stopped talking to me despite reaccepting my friend request a few months after the initial blowup, it was already firmly planted in my head (mostly due to my mother's comments) that I was too "immature" to have friends who were a few years older than me. 

Sergio is a phenomenally talented professional artist: he's a painter, a filmmaker, a musician, and an actor. He even appeared in an opera. There was a photo of him on Facebook performing in the opera, and he and a few friends were commenting on it. I thought to myself, "Opera is sophisticated. I'm not interested in opera. That makes me immature. My parents are, of course, interested in opera because that's what intelligent people have to be interested in." Never mind that around that time I had started reading books about evolutionary biology by Richard Dawkins and others. Oh, no. Not being into opera makes me "immature" and "uncultured". But yes, my mind latched onto that as a possibility of one reason why I did not have Sergio's permission to be his friend. And my mind did not let that go. It doesn't help that I have incredibly vivid dreams, complete with sharp images and convincing sensory input. 

One night I had a dream that I walked into a room and saw my mother effortlessly talking up a storm with Sergio. She was allowed to talk to him and be his friend. I stormed up to her, jabbed my index finger at her chest, and said, "Why the hell do you get to be friends with him?" This dream was a perfect symbol of my jealousy and my anger of what was expected of me. My mother-- who was co-captain of the cheerleading squad in high school; who has always had a very feminine hairstyle, has always worn big hoop earrings and makeup, not because she feels she has something to prove but because these are fashion decisions that reflect her personality; whom everyone loves within nanoseconds of meeting her; who loves hanging around with large groups of people-- was allowed to be friends with Sergio. After all, she was in great contrast to me, the high school track runner who always came in last; the tomboy who hates makeup, rarely wears earrings (and never big hoops), and who felt relieved when she got her first androgynous haircut at age 20; and who does not enjoy spending time in large social groups. No, my mother was the standard of normal and socially acceptable, and I would never meet that standard. And unless I could, I would not be allowed to be friends with people a few years older than me, or even have the privilege of talking to them on an equal basis. No, once neurotypical people reach adulthood, having friends of varying ages is not an issue. And they take this for granted. It seemed that I, on the other hand, was expected to say to myself, "Well, I have Asperger's, so I'm immature, so of course I am not allowed to have older friends. Why would they want anything to do with me? Hey, no problem."

Likewise, when I have had crushes on other people, I have felt a similar jealousy. In college, when my teacher, Doug, lied to keep me out of his class, I was jealous of everyone else who got to be in the class. Not being pushed out of a class is something that neurotypical people take for granted. Oh, and there was the time when I got him an Onion anthology to give to him on the last day of class the first semester that I had him. His response when I tried to give it to him? "I don't want it." However, the following year one of my classmates gave him a Christmas present and he thanked her profusely. She was "normal", so she was allowed to give it to him. I'm sure anybody else who wanted to give Doug an end-of-semester present would have been allowed to. After all, everybody else was allowed to be buddy-buddy with him. There was one particular girl who had this privilege (and no, she wasn't a "hot babe"-- she was severely overweight). She, like my mother, is "sweet", "charming" and "charismatic", things that I'm not. One day, because I was just in such a horrible state of mind over all this, I went up to her and said accusingly and with no small amount of sarcasm, "It must be so nice to be Doug's favorite."

Then at the camp in Michigan there was Joe who went to Gary, Indiana with a friend after promising to go to Chicago with me. I saw him hanging around groups of people but refusing to associate with me and acting like I was beneath him in front of all of his neurotypical friends (all the while assuring me, when we were alone, that he really liked talking to me). I was jealous of all those friends of his who, once again, took for granted things that I was expected to earn. 

I should also note that I don't feel jealousy only when I am infatuated with someone. I have felt jealousy for other reasons. Once, someone who I went to camp with got a book published. It was about "women's issues"-- marriage problems, childbirth, shame of infertility-- and it got rave reviews. I felt a pang of jealousy, that such issues that have been done to death in the past were in a book getting rave reviews. I denied to myself that I was jealous but my unconscious knew better. How? Well, one of my vivid dreams, of course. I had a dream that the author of the book was being interviewed and was getting a princess-Diana style greeting. You've seen the footage of the incessant camera flashes that went off when reporters took Princess Diana's picture. It looked like a strobe that would be dangerous to someone with epilepsy. In the dream that's what was happening to the author of this book. In the dream I also went to my mother about it, and she said dismissively, "Well, this is the kind of thing that women like to read." I want to be a writer, and I would never write something like this.

Ultimately, I bought and read the book to support the author. Ironically, the book was actually therapeutic-- it was about raging jealousy. I was up all night reading it. But the point still remains. I felt like who I was was "wrong" and I would never be who I was expected to be. 

This post has been very cathartic. The issue with Sergio came up last week with my mother (long story as to why) for the first time since it had happened seven years ago. To my surprise, Mom said she had thought about it several times over the years and that she thought Sergio's shunning me was horrible and insensitive. Then she asked me why I didn't mention it if it still bothered me. I said, "Because whenever I tried to bring it up with you, you just shut me down and told me to get over it." She apologized profusely. She also admitted that she was wrong. She told me she was ashamed of how she reacted and admitted that her reaction was humiliating to me and made things exponentially worse. She also admitted that Dad saw with greater clarity what was actually going on. Most importantly, she admitted this: 

"I was blind."

Owning Your Emotions

I briefly alluded to "owning" one's emotions in my last blog post, and now I am going to expand further on that idea. By "owning" one's emotions, I mean acknowledging that they exist, not trying to repress them, and even being able to embrace them. For many years I felt like I was not allowed to own my emotions, that I had to justify to myself any odd thought or feeling that I had or else it meant there was something wrong with me. Even though I am an adult and my parents and others are meeting me with much more understanding than they did when I was growing up, or even when I was in my twenties, I find myself reflexively going through justifications in my mind that I shouldn't have to go through. In a recent post, "Thoughtcrime", I talked about having reflexively justified to myself why I had tears in my eyes when I learned that Dr. Jack Kevorkian died. I ultimately decided that if anybody told me there was something wrong with that then they could jump in the lake. I had tears in my eyes because I was sad and disappointed about the loss of someone whom I'd never even met. Yes, and? So what? That's how I reacted. Accept it. I thought to myself, If there's something wrong with me, then there's something wrong with me. I am 30 years old and I am entitled to feel however I feel. If it means that the world thinks I'm fucked up, then fuck the world. But the fact that I reflexively went through that ritual at all just shows how much I have been conditioned over the years, mostly (but not completely) by my parents.

The scenarios in which I felt the most like I was not allowed to own my emotions were those involving the intense crushes I developed on a few guys over the years. I can trace this issue back to the summer of 1997 when I was on my group trip to Israel with Camp Negev (not its real name) and its sister camps across North America. I had developed a huge crush on one of the counselors, Chuck (not his real name). At the time, he was only the second guy I had ever had a crush on. The first was a counselor named Jonas (also a pseudonym) from my summer camp. I was incredibly lucky that he had not only been accepting and understanding of this but also became my close friend and mentor and remained so for several years. When I met Chuck, I assumed that if I spent enough time with him the same thing would happen. So I followed him everywhere, even walking the perimeter of wherever we were staying in hopes that I would "accidentally/on purpose" run into him. Chuck tried to be nice to me-- and he was nice except for the occasional frustrated snap, after which he usually apologized-- but we sure as hell didn't become friends. The fact that I had spent so much time focusing on him instead of meeting other kids and enjoying learning about Israel eventually became a source of embarrassment to me. After I had time to reflect on that summer, I thought to myself, "Okay, obviously I don't know how to handle these types of situations. The next time I see that I am developing a crush on somebody, I will talk myself out of it."

That next time came the following summer, 1998, when I returned to Camp Negev for the C. I. T. program. As luck would have it, my crush was, once again, on yet another counselor, an Israeli named Omri (again, a fake name). We were somewhat buddy-buddy in the beginning. It began when the camp wouldn't let me work with kids because they were afraid that I might hurt them, physically and emotionally. The fact that anybody thought I was capable of doing something like that was shocking. I was hurt and had nobody to talk to. In a move that would make today's youth leaders and psychologists cringe, the executive staff essentially told me, "You made your bed. Now sleep in it." Not in those words, of course, but I wasn't given any kind of emotional support. People told me that it was my problem, one that I had brought upon myself, and that I had to solve it myself. At least, until Omri reached out to me.

My relationship with Omri began as my talking about the mistakes I had made in conducting myself in the past and knowing that I would have to grow up a bit in order to work with kids. But after a week or so we just talked about regular stuff. We laughed together and offered one another advice. Yes, I gave him advice about a couple things. It seemed like we were becoming friends. I asked him if he would eat with my family on Visitors' Day. He said, "Well, if one of my kids asks me they need to come first, but if not, I would be happy to." We had several interesting discussions in the first couple weeks, all of which ended with a big bear hug "goodnight". Omri impressed me as an intelligent, thoughtful, interesting guy-- all common denominators in my crushes, which never developed from an initial physical lust as with most people (it's called "demisexuality"-- Google it). Because I knew that this crush was inappropriate due to the age difference (I was 17 and he was 23), I realized that I had to rein myself in, just as I had promised. I set very strict boundaries for myself. I was not allowed to go out of my way to sit with Omri at meals. I was not to approach him to hang out until at night after his kids were put to bed. I was to accept that his obligation was, first and foremost, to his campers. I was proud of myself for having set these limits, and I was sure everything was going to be okay and that I could handle this situation and that Omri and I could be friends.

But it was not enough. After a couple weeks, Omri figured out that I had feelings for him and avoided me. On Visitors' Day, he had to eat with his kids and I accepted that. But in the evenings when I would come to him and ask, "Are we hanging out tonight?" he would often say he was "tired" or "busy". I promised myself that if he said those things that I would just turn around and leave, as was the mature thing to do. So that's just what I did. The mistake I made was looking back as I headed away and seeing him warmly embracing some campers and other counselors. Very few people appreciate the sheer willpower it took for me to just leave. Many have been perplexed as to why I couldn't just "let it go" or "accept it" or "give up". Do I really have to qualify that with an answer?

I will say this: even though I followed the strict rules I had set for myself, I realized that they did not work in keeping my emotions in check. I am embarrassed to admit that in the last week or so of camp I resorted to pulling the same stupid stunts I had on my Israel trip: taking late-night walks to "accidentally/on purpose" run into him-- sometimes as late as 2:30 AM-- just so I could see him and, if nothing else, claim one of his bear hugs. And in retrospect I'm sure both he and Chuck knew that I hadn't "accidentally" run into them. I couldn't help but feel great sorrow that my late night conversations with Omri that I had enjoyed during the first couple weeks were over. My racing heart and accompanying adrenaline rushes told me that I was not feeling okay about this, that this was a big deal to me. But I knew I couldn't blow up about it. I couldn't cry about it. I had to find other ways to tame my hijacked mind, especially if I wanted to work with kids second session. One night I sat alone in an office until I calmed down. Another time I took out my diary and wrote about how frustrated I was about how things were going. But my feelings still came and there was nothing I could do about them. They were there, whether or not I wanted them to be.

In the end, Omri wanted nothing to do with me. Back then I had not known about Asperger's Syndrome and just months earlier had misdiagnosed myself with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I recall on the last night of camp crying to one of my friends and saying, "Everybody else is allowed to have feelings for someone, but not me. Why? Because I am obsessive-compulsive. I have to calculate everything I do." While everyone else who liked hanging out with Omri could take it for granted that they had the right to hang out for him, for me it was a privilege that had been revoked. I was not allowed to be his friend. I did not have his permission.

After I went home the next day I drove around with Dad and told him everything. I made him promise not to tell Mom. Why? Because I knew that she would tell me that if only I were more feminine in dress and behavior I wouldn't have scared Omri off. And that is ultimately the sort of thing that did happen when I finally came out to her about having crushes-- more on that later.

In 1999 I worked at a crappy summer camp and met someone who finally reciprocated my feelings. It was with him that I got my first kiss (and a little bit more). He was from Germany, however, so our semi-relationship didn't last (we still are in touch on Facebook, however). Then in the summers of 2000 and 2001 I also had crushes on people at a different camp, this time in Michigan, that I worked at. Both of them ended negatively. Long story short, Joe (fake name), an English guy two years younger than me, was not only friendly with me in the beginning but actually my friend. Then when he figured out I had a crush on him, he canceled his plans to go to Chicago with me at the end of the summer, AFTER I had bought the Amtrak tickets (I was lucky I was able to get a refund)! Instead, he went with someone else-- to GARY INDIANA. He told me I was "fucked up" and told other people I was stalking him. As in the situation with Omri, I found myself hurting and nothing I could say or do would stop the pain.

During my years in art school, I had a crush on Doug (yes, a pseudonym), one of my teachers. I am now embarrassed about this because, as discussed in the linked blog post, he was caught in an underage sex sting on the Internet. In any case, the story is familiar. We began on friendly terms and I eventually developed a crush on him. Just like Joe, Doug eventually said nasty things to me, but much worse. He said that I would never amount to anything. He also lied to keep me out of one of his classes. He told me the class was full, but I knew better. Once again, when I tried to repress my feelings-- telling myself that I was imagining things, or that he must have had a good reason, or that it's none of my business-- my pounding heart told me that the pain would not go away.

Doug was the last crush I had had for a long time. Then, in October 2007, I reunited on Facebook with Sergio (yes, fake name), a Mexican counselor eight years older than me who had been at Camp Negev in 1995. At camp, we had been buddies. When we reunited online, we hit it off immediately. We emailed each other several times a week. We once talked on Skype for two hours. He suggested that we make a film together. We talked about meeting the next time he came to New York City, where I was then living. Once he even emailed me at work to ask if I could talk on Skype (obviously I couldn't). As time passed, I began to feel warmly towards him. I couldn't tell you exactly when it turned into a crush. I can't quantify it, so please don't ask me to do so. But I decided to send him a package for Chanukah. It was a gesture of friendship, nothing more. He told me that he looked forward to receiving it. Sergio left for a vacation in Spain, and when he came back I asked him if he'd gotten the package. He said he hadn't.

Our frequent emails suddenly stopped dead. This was before Facebook added a chat function, so I couldn't IM him and ask what was going on. However, I knew when Sergio was online because Facebook used to have a page that would show you who was online. He was constantly commenting on people's posts but he wasn't answering my emails. I kept emailing him over the course of January, 2008, to ask him if he'd received my package. No answer. None. Zero. I was angry and hurt. And no amount of talking myself down could convince me that everything was okay, not when my heart was racing like I was running a marathon. I couldn't repress this emotion at all. I couldn't deny the pain that I was in. I even asked one of my cousins, "Why does this bother me?" He said, "Because you worked hard to do something for another person and he doesn't seem to care." Well, yeah, no shit. And I realized that this was a valid emotion that I should be able to own. But for years I'd made excuses for other people, told myself I was overreacting, and told myself that I had overstepped my bounds (ie, it's MY fault).

Both of  my parents (but my mother in particular) conditioned me that way. At first glance it appears that I told myself, without any prodding, to squash my feelings of hurt in terms of Omri, Joe, Doug, and the others. But I also learned this elsewhere. Whenever friends at school shunned me, Mom would blame the fallout on me and also tell me, "Relationships change." If I was upset because Jonas wouldn't write back when I sent him an email when I needed to talk (always about something I wasn't comfortable telling my parents), Mom told me that I needed to understand that he was in college and that he had a girlfriend and... take your pick. Any excuse. I shouldn't be upset about these things. Ever. Oh, and because Jonas lived hundreds of miles away, I shouldn't be focusing on him. At all. I would think that all of these things would be completely irrelevant to whether or not somebody should want to talk to you. So in the case of Omri, I took that advice when I walked away and sat in the camp office and squished my feelings. Same when Joe suddenly decided to go to boring Gary, Indiana instead of to Chicago with me. I said to myself, "Well, I guess he has his reasons and I have to respect that." And actually, when Mom found out about Joe a year later, that's exactly what she said, that I should have respected his decision.

As for Doug, Mom told me that I was misinterpreting constructive criticism as nasty comments. When I knew he had lied to keep me out of the class, Mom told me that I was imagining things. When it was clear that Doug had been lying, Mom told me that I had obviously pushed him to the edge and instead of telling me point blank he didn't want me in the class he lied because he didn't want to hurt my feelings. No. I'm not stupid. He didn't give a damn about hurting my feelings. He lied to avoid the inevitable confrontation (and he did eventually let me in the class, after I called his bullshit and essentially twisted his arm). Mom also told me that I should have respected his decision to keep me out of the class. But sorry, when somebody is paying $30,000 a year to go to college, you do not lock them out of a class just because you don't like them. You bite the bullet and deal with it like an adult.

And in terms of Sergio? When weeks passed without a response about the package despite clear activity on Facebook-- and despite three weeks of gently prodding Sergio for an answer to what was a simple yes-or-no question-- I stepped out of work one day and called Dad in hysterical tears. I told him that I had a crush on Sergio and that I was embarrassed about it. Dad told me that I had nothing to be embarrassed about, that Sergio was probably just busy and that he would get back to me, that he probably just hadn't gotten the package yet. I confessed to Dad that I had done something stupid: The night before, I had reached my limit. I had felt like Sergio was fucking with me. I had sent Sergio a barrage of emails in the period of about an hour demanding why he wouldn't respond, why he was ignoring me. Then I sent him a video message via Facebook asking the same thing, and in that video I broke down crying. I then unfriended him, saying things like, "I can take a hint. You don't want to talk to me. I guess I fucked up again. The mature thing to do is unfriend you." When I woke up the next day, thinking to myself, "What the hell did I do?" I apologized and tried to refriend him. But it was too late. He ultimately blocked me and we haven't spoken since.

When I couldn't hold it in anymore and I told my mother a few days later about what had happened, she started screaming at me that I had smothered Sergio, that I couldn't differentiate between a casual acquaintance and a friend (months later I showed a therapist the emails from Sergio. She assured me that it was very clear that he had been my friend). She told me that my sending him the package was overfamiliar and inappropriate... oh wait, I should tell you what was in it. You'll never believe the stuff I sent him: A clay dog that I had made, a drawing, a DVD of camp videos, and... gasp... a T-shirt. Yes, a T-shirt. I really sent him a T-shirt. No, really, I did. And you know what it said? It said, "Brooklyn 718." No, really, it said that. I swear.

Yes, both of my parents and others told me that sending a damned T-shirt was too personal. You'd think that I had sent Sergio a jock strap by the way they reacted. Mom told me that I should have just thought, "Well, I guess it made him uncomfortable when he didn't acknowledge the package." So in other words, I guess I should have said, "Oh, fiddlesticks. I guess I fucked up. Next time I'll walk on even more eggshells and make sure I don't fuck up."

Mom also played the "relationships change" card (Relationships change in three months? Really?). In a pathetic attempt to tell me a "good lie", Mom even said that maybe Sergio cared about me so much that he was also trying to protect me from getting emotionally hurt in the long run by backing out when he did. I guess Mom forgot that this very transparent lie wouldn't work on a 27-year-old. That bad "good lie" (which perhaps she was telling herself as well as me) reminds me of this scene from a Simpsons episode:

Lisa: So there I am, being nice to Alex, and she takes all of my friends and ditches me!

Marge: I'm sure they didn't ditch you, honey. Maybe they went off to plan a surprise party for you.

That scene resonates with me in so many ways. I can't begin to tell you how many times Mom has said things remarkably similar to that.

My dad and my brother even commented on my weight (I was overweight at the time) and my tomboyish appearance, saying that Sergio wouldn't have reacted as he did had I looked-- and acted-- more feminine. My brother especially thought my appearance might have been what drove away Sergio. Never mind that he wasn't seeing how I looked each day in real time, just a few photos.

One woman played the Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus card, saying that I have to accept that men need more time to process things. Oh yeah, doesn't matter how the woman is feeling. She has to just suck it up and wait for the man to be ready to talk. It's always about women being nurturers and men just doing what they do. To this day I hate that book almost entirely because of that conversation. Another case where I couldn't just own my feelings. Everybody and their grandmother was coming up with some simplistic, stupid answer that I was just supposed to say, "Oh, okay" to.

The expression I kept hearing from everyone around me was, "Let it go." Let it go? Funny, when I was a kid and I would be perplexed about why girls would go ballistic if their crush didn't like them back, Mom would say, "Well you have to understand that this is a special feeling." But of course when I get the arrow in the butt it means I'm crazy and I just have to "let it go." Oh, hey, after all, I'm just obsessive, right? And obsessive feelings aren't real, are they?

One night the song "I am a Rock" by Simon and Garfunkel played relentlessly in my head. The lyrics took on an entirely new meaning for me. I ended up going to therapy, and it took me 1 1/2 years to get over Sergio.  The first shrink I went to was ridiculous. I told him about how Sergio and I had talked about meeting in New York the next time he came and that I had looked forward to riding the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island with him-- we both love roller coasters. And what did he say? He said, "Don't you have other friends you can do that with?"

There was a time when I would have tried to make myself look on the bright side, that yes I do have friends who would ride the Cyclone with me. In fact, one night in 1998 when Omri and I didn't get to hang out, I thought to myself, "Well I had a really interesting discussion tonight with this other person. That's positive." But I look back and see that then I was repressing my feelings. And when my shrink asked me if I had other friends I could ride roller coasters with, I told him exactly what I thought: "I want to ride the roller coaster with Sergio." I was finally owning my feelings. I wanted to ride the goddamned Cyclone with Sergio, and I wasn't going to pretend I felt differently. Needless to say, I found a new shrink.

One thing that Mom said when this nonsense with Sergio happened was, "Why do you always fall for guys who are out of your reach?" My answer is this: It's an unfortunate coincidence (except for the one guy who I was briefly in a semi-relationship with), but she seemed to think I was doing it on purpose. She even asked me if I had ever had a crush on my best friend, Eric (not his real name). I supposed she was desperate that I have feelings for someone who lived nearby. No, I don't have a crush on Eric. I never have. It would be like having a crush on a first-degree relative. And jeez, I would think that Mom (and anybody else) would know that you can't control who you fall for.

Sergio eventually unblocked me and accepted my subsequent friend request. But he still didn't answer my emails. And when summer came and he posted a profile picture of himself standing on the train platform of what was clearly Newark Airport Station on New Jersey Transit, I was crushed. He had come to New York and hadn't bothered to contact me. I was supposed to squish those feelings. And a few months later Sergio unfriended me again. When I tried to refriend him, he blocked me again. Mercifully, I haven't had any crushes in seven years, since Sergio.

Was I stupid in terms of the way I panicked and sent Sergio the barrage of emails and that video in which I broke down crying? Yes. But he also drove me to it.  And what also drove me to it was the years of accumulated bad experiences in which I couldn't own my emotions, in which every thought I had had to be repressed to keep not just me sane, but also my parents. But it didn't keep me sane. It only delayed the inevitable. I cried a lot growing up and both of my parents often chalked up my frustrated tears to overreacting and immaturity. But the repression didn't work and it sure as hell didn't make me sane. My racing heart kept telling me what I knew logically, that something was wrong and that I was hurting. Sometimes we have to cry, and sometimes we have to cry hysterically. Sometimes we have to scream and shout explitives. Sometimes we have to punch a pillow or break an expensive vase. We have to own our feelings, even if other people don't understand them. And as for the rest of you, you have to let us own these feelings. You have to accept that we have them even if they make you uncomfortable. Even if you don't know what to say, don't just tell the person to let it go. Or, if you think they should let it go, give them advice as to how instead of hoping the three magic words will make a difference.

And for crying out loud, what is so difficult about saying the following?: "You know what, I confess that I don't understand how this is making you feel, but I imagine it must be frustrating and painful." That helps a lot more than you would think.

Finally, I want to end this post with a metaphor. As I mentioned earlier, people held me to different standards in terms of how they felt I should handle crushes. The metaphor is this: Sometimes people get very hungry, and there is a giant bacon cheeseburger nearby. Most people take it for granted that they can eat the bacon cheeseburger, or at least get a whiff of it. As for me? I was expected to be on a perpetual religious fast.

Revenge Fantasies: A Clarification

Regarding my last post, "Revenge Fantasies" I realize that there are probably a number of people who will interpret it literally instead of as a cathartic piece of writing. They will wonder if I am capable of this kind of cruelty and if I would actually act out the scenario in the blog post if it ever came up. I'm happy to tell you that fantasies are just that-- fantasies. And I wouldn't act on revenge fantasies, nor would I recommend doing so.

What would I actually have done had I found someone who'd screwed me over stranded in the snow with a dead car battery? Of course I wouldn't have let them freeze in the snow. I would have helped them jumpstart their car. But after doing so I also would not let them just leave right away. I would insist on having a discussion about what happened the last time we had interacted so that I could get closure. If the person were my ex-best friend Melanie, for example, I would insist on answers as to why she didn't invite me to the wedding and why she cut me off, ignoring all my emails and phone calls. I am also a forgiving person so if she apologized and meant it sincerely and wanted to be friends again, I would forgive her and accept her Friend Request, so to speak. 

Despite the popular misconception, revenge fantasies are not a symptom of an unhealthy mind but rather the mind's way of working through deep hurt. They are a way of owning your feelings (there will be an upcoming blog post on such owning soon). If anything, actually, people who have these fantasies are less likely to do something to hurt someone else. Don't believe me? Check out this article about it.