Unsure of my life

This is from an older blog of mine which I’ve rejuvenated onto my WordPress blog.

My attempt at poetry on my older blog:

 

The ghost of the past

The ghost of the present

Where could the ghost of the future be?

How could I find where my future leads me?

Should I read the patterns of the battleground around?

But how could I tell what I would have found?

Could it be the truth or a lie?

Half the time, I believe that the chances are if it were the truth, that ‘pigs might fly’, >.<;

Still, despite it all, I shall not give up until my last breath

For I feel if I do not make a stand, I would be left depressed

I have lived with depression for many a year 

The fact that if it may continue has been my fear

Would I be able to find a way out of this trap?

Or will I need to be guided by a map?

Where could this map be to guide me?

All I wish to do is find my way in life, to be free

Free from the lack of understanding

Though I sense from certain people, that all I’ll find is an attitude that is condescending, -_-

Is there such a thing as a perfect life?

Or are we all at of the edge of a knife?

This knife that could penetrate our will

That would only lead us downhill

Life can be cruel, in more ways than one

But can I find a way to have finally won?

Anomaly in the Sky

I am a photographer living in the UK, and I take photographs of nature and wildlife. While in my garden on 20th April 2015, I was busy taking photos of the birds and flowers, when I noticed flocks of birds flying in opposite directions. I didn’t think much of it at first, though I did find it odd at the sight of so many. I then suddenly noticed at the tip of a tree in the distance, past the bottom of the garden, there was a strange rainbow coloured glow of light. It didn’t continue skyward like a normal rainbow, and there was no rain, it was a bright sunny day, before chemtrails started to appear in the sky. I felt weird to see this strange light anomaly so soon after the birds started to fly away, and I wondered what it was. I started to take photographs of this anomaly around 6:00pm, and I continued for about 3 minutes, when all of a sudden, my camera’s memory card suddenly became full. I have a Sandisk 16gb Extreme Compact Flash CF Card, normally I should be able to take over a thousand photos, but it became full after just 93 photographs. It only happened after I was taking photos of this anomaly. When I opened my computer, and before I placed the photos into a folder, I noticed the space on the memory card was barely used up. There was so much free space that I could have taken so many more photographs. I couldn’t understand why that was, and when I moved the photos into the folder, my memory card was still telling me that it was full, even when I removed all of the photos. The memory card has now been completely damaged. I have no idea what this light anomaly is, why it caused the birds to fly away, and my camera’s memory card was affected the way it was.

As you can see, I’ve added a couple of photos of the light anomaly so that you can see for yourself. In the next photo below you can see the sun is on the left hand side to show you that the light anomaly is not the sun setting.

I posted these images on Facebook and I was told they considered it to be HAARP.

This is the Facebook chain of message:

Person 1: i bet HAARP…

Myself: From what I found out about HAARP, I think you’re probably right, Person 1. It would give reason to why my camera failed and the birds disappeared.

Person 2: this is thee alluminum spectrum..if there was alot of green spectrum,,would be the barium…many different cocktails they spray..this is clearly one of them… Global MARCH Against Chemtrails and Geoengeneering

Person 3: This is interesting what Is haarp?

Myself: If they were spraying these chemicals in the air via this HAARP, and indeed with chemtrails in general, what are we supposed to do to protect ourselves? I mean as a nature photographer, I need to be out in nature, outside, to take my photographs. How can I do that, if I’m so worried about breathing in toxins?

Person 3, when I did some research on HAARP, this is what I found: http://www.wanttoknow.info/…/haarp_weather_modification…. Hope this helps.

This is the second photo and on this one you can see the sun is on the left hand side to show you that the light anomaly is not the sun setting.

Wrenching Breakdown in a Neurotypical Friendship

This is a post from an older blog of mine which I’ve altered and rejuvenated onto my WordPress blog.

What I found most poignant is the weather at the start and end of this friendship. It was snowing, both times. It was like a chapter marking the beginning and the end. Ice crystals gently floating to earth, to signify an old friend. At the next sight of snow, as cold as ice, every hope I held onto with my old friend started to shatter around me.

Some time ago, I had a friend that I felt betrayed me, I don’t think it was intentional, but the pain it caused me was immense. This friend was an old friend I briefly used to talk to at the last year of primary school when I was 10 years old. There was a time when I went through a breakdown though and refused to see her when she came to my house, though it wasn’t a breakdown caused because of her, >.<;. I wanted to try to settle my regret for not seeing her all those years ago so, at my mother’s suggestion, I added her as a friend on Facebook a few years ago and started writing to her. All seemed to go well, that was until one of my bullies, who happened to be in the same class as her and I back at school, turned out to be a friend of hers. I found that out by a message my friend wrote on Facebook about herself, her brother, and my bully going out somewhere. Now, you may say that that was then and this is now, but what really hurt me is what he alongside a couple of other bullies caused me later on. He wasn’t the only bully, there were several involved, but the bullying incident that happened around that time really embarrassed me and caused me to withdraw into myself. It took me a long time to open up to my mum about it, but in the meantime, in secondary school I missed out on opening up to a female that may have liked me.

This hurt me greatly and the thought of my friend on Facebook being friends with a bully that struck me when I was down and embarrassed, caused me to have a mini-breakdown. Of course, I didn’t end our friendship there, oh no, I instead tried to explain my pain to her and the bullies that affected me. It was going well for a few months, and alongside my mum, we even went out to meet each other three times. It all ended after I was about to explain about the bully when all of a sudden she posted another message on Facebook. This time, my bully cooked my friend a meal, and she was praising him for it. This may not mean much on the surface, but to my analytical mind, I saw that it could have meant many things. I felt I had to tell her about my bully, I could wait no longer. Unfortunately, when I told her about him, I made many spelling mistakes and pinned the blame entirely on my bully when there were actually a few more involved, but nevertheless, considering my emotional state I hoped she could understand where I was coming from.

Instead of writing back to me, she wrote to my mum explaining that it was simply due to my autism as to why I took what my bully did to me seriously. I was hurt by that, as not only was she pinning the blame on my condition, she was also backtracking on her words to me. In the messages we exchanged with each other before, she told me that she didn’t judge me because of my disability, then why did she then? Was it because her friend was my bully? Well, whatever the case, when her birthday came around, I sent her an e-card, but when mine came, she never sent me one in return. By that I assume she doesn’t want to know. Again, I spent all those months getting to know her, explaining about my bullying, my autism, and for what? So that she can walk away? Sometimes I really don’t know why I bother, but I have to keep fighting, and that’s why I decided to continue and start writing this blog and created my forum.

Tidal Wave of Anxiety

Anxiety, ha ha, well, this is an intensive subject and spreads in many directions for me. Social is the direction I’ll be focusing in this blog post.

The tidal wave of anxiety, well, I remember feeling this on the three times I met my old friend from primary school with support from my mother, when I was writing to her on Facebook, before everything flipped up on it’s head and I lost her friendship, tragically.

I always feel this gigantic immeasurable level of anxiety build up inside of me. It’s so intense I find it too difficult to get to sleep the closer the deadline is to meeting. Then the day of meeting comes around, and I have just moved into hyper anxiety. I’m worrying constantly, “Oh God! What do I do?!? I hope everything goes alright! But, what if ……, or …… happens, what then?!? Ahhhhh, I can’t think straight!”. That’s just before meeting. When the time comes and I’m there, if it’s my first time seeing them, I freeze and can barely string two words together. It was lucky that my mother was there so that she could talk for me because otherwise I know I’d be sitting there simply responding to questions saying, “Yes”, “No”, “Maybe”. Not to mention, I’ve always felt this aura around the few females I’ve ever spoken to over the years. It feels like they are monuments and I’m a tiny little mouse barely able to string two words together.

You see, you can see me writing like this, but when I come into contact face-to-face, I’m a complete nervous wreck. It’s only when I get used to their presence that I start to feel a little braver to express myself, and it especially helps when I know that I’m being listened to and feel I’m understood. I cannot when I am communicating to someone completely uncaring, unfeeling and hypocritical, but of course that should go without saying. With people like that, I’d either burst out in tears like I did at school, go through instant meltdown. I go through meltdowns because of other people, their treatment of me, watching time slip by me as others are progressing in my peer group, feeling lonely, feeling depressed, or due to painful triggers that remind me of previous pain. Triggers can come from almost any source, from an advert or programme on TV, on movies, out in public or in a person’s words or writing, and they can take me right back to the source of that pain. This can be especially true when it involves emotional or educational. Emotional pain on the spectrum has proved to be absolutely devastating, and educational makes me angry that I still haven’t found the best way that I can cope with learning since my statement of special educational needs ended unfairly when I became 19 years old.

Anyway, after I would come back from meeting someone, that’s when that gigantic immeasurable level of anxiety building up is released, but it isn’t released and gone, oh no. It becomes a tidal wave. This tidal wave sweeps over my mind like an uncontrollable force of energy. From the moment the front door is opened and I’m passed that threshold to the feeling of finally being home, that’s when it instantly hits me. This immense wave immediately makes me feel weak at the knees. I can barely walk, and my thoughts and words are constantly saying, “Did I say the right thing? Was I understood? Did everything go well? What do I do now? What if they didn’t understand me? What am I going to do?”. I go over and over this for the whole day, and it lingers for days until the wave of anxiety returns to it’s usual level, worrying over every message I may or may not receive.

I’m in a constant influx of anxiety, but the moments where I meet someone in terms of socially, as rare as that is, and believe me, that’s never happened since that time, I’m hit by that wave of anxiety.

This is what I mean by the Tidal Wave of Anxiety, and it can be practically a nightmare to meet someone face-to-face, but I need to try. I just know the only way I can cope is by expressing myself to the other person for a long time first, getting to know them by writing to them, and the possibility of making short videos of each other to feel more comfortable, before the possibility of Skype, and then in the future, to perhaps meet in person. It takes time, but I’m willing to try. I just need to find someone I can trust and who understands me to get to that stage with.

My battleground puzzle mind

The writing below was the first post I made on an ASD forum, and it was my code message way of explaining my worries about a friend (someone I knew briefly from primary school) I was writing to on Facebook for about a year.

‘My mind and heart are on a constant battleground, neither has a greater majority over the other, they are in constant conflict. I am never able to settle on something, when something is resolved it reminds me immediately of something else. There are puzzle pieces in my mind; I am never settled until the puzzle has been worked out. I have no other choice but to complete the puzzle. I am held at gunpoint by my mind. I need to find the answer, if it is bad it is overwhelming, if it is good I can rest on that particular subject. If I am lied to and find out later, it feels much worse. My mind is like a computer and my heart is human. My head is telling me to face the answer whether I like it or not. My heart is telling me to avoid it, and don’t find out, but it is so pained by dismissing the truth. This is my battleground. This is what I have been faced with since primary school. It is not easy, but just the same it is uncontrollable. I am just the person sitting in the background, I am not able to intrude into the conflict inside of me, but oh, how I try, :(.

I feel I always need to pursue a problem, no matter how it may harm me. When I obtain puzzle pieces my mind automatically feels pain, I feel if I do not resolve an issue I will be stuck with the pain, but if it’s true I could be causing a greater pain. It is always a risk. It is horrible, I am in an ever growing cycle of depression.’

Traumatising experiences in education that left me with a breakdown and PTSD

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve last uploaded on my WordPress blog, but a lot of things keep getting in the way. Now that I have my forum, I wanted to be able to add some more content to my blog and explain more about my situation and indeed what lead me to create my forum.

Now if you’ve read my second post, you’d understand how badly I was bullied at school. Of course, that is all but a fraction of it, but I hope it gives you a taster as to how alienated I felt back then. I still feel alienated in terms of finding it difficult to connect with others. I’ve found it very difficult to use Twitter because I always felt it was difficult to express myself with very limited character allowances in tweets. I felt I couldn’t express myself properly in a short sentence. This is indeed why I decided to connect my Twitter account to WordPress, and of course from WordPress and Twitter to my forum as well.

I am affected quite badly by the experiences I went through during my school life and still am, it felt more like a prison. It traumatised me so much that I can never think of an educational facility with any more feeling than a hostile environment where the arrogant pick on the vulnerable. The school system from my perspective was atrocious with dealing with bullying. The schools found no real way of tackling the issue.

Throughout school I always had an analytical mind as I was strolling on my own around the playground, or school grounds. I would question everything that was around me, and sinking deeper into depression as I kept realising how hopeless I felt trying to find common ground with others in school. I couldn’t connect with others as I didn’t know what to talk to them about. In primary school, all I witnessed was other children running backwards and forwards. I felt it was pointless, I couldn’t see the point. Why not just sit and talk about what is happening at school at the moment, like how badly the bullies are bullying us. In secondary school, I was already hurt quite badly by emotional bullying from the last year of primary school. It hurt me so badly that any feeling of openness I may have felt like expressing before became totally guarded. I withdrew into myself. I felt extremely cautious of everything around me. In both primary school and secondary school, I never felt confident enough to speak to anyone. Nearly every experience I had in terms of talking to someone was due to elements out of my control.

All of the following events that took place are totally out of my control and happen to me because of other people coming up to me and talking, and the responses I gave are as a reaction to what I felt at the time. I was introduced to my first ‘friend’ in primary school and that ended in failure, mainly because his parents couldn’t understand my difficulties with eating certain foods to my sensory issues (SPD). In secondary school, I ended up talking to my second friend only because there were no seats available when I had to take a seat. I was never the instigator of conversation, other people came to me and began a dialogue. I felt too anxious to go up to anyone and make conversation. What lead to my emotional pain was a bully asking me who I had a crush on, of which I let my guard down and spoke up at a time when I shouldn’t have. This came back in my face and that’s when my world sank from alienation to total and utter despair. I was called a ‘creep’ by my crush, which in turn did just that, crush me. Well and truly. After that point it felt like I was hit by a sledgehammer. I was dead inside, a walking corpse. Photographs of myself clearly indicate how any expressiveness that I had shown before, like peace signs and thumbs up completely vanished, and all that was left was a forced blank smile. In secondary school, a moment occurred in the year of my breakdown which was completely out of the blue and completely unexpected, especially because I felt so alienated. Three girls came up to me, who weren’t even in the same class as me, and one of them told me of their friend’s crush on me. Talk about the boot being on the other foot. I was totally shocked and taken aback by her words. I didn’t know what to say, on the one hand I was thinking, “Wow, this has never happened to me before. This is amazing!”, however; the stronger analytical side of me was saying, “Hang on a minute, the last time crushes were involved, you were called a ‘creep’. Do you really think it’s advisable to take them on their words? She could be teasing you, how do you know?”. I dismissed them politely, thanking them, and moved on. Given some time, I simply thought it was just a dream, a figment of my imagination, after all, that type of thing had never happened to me before. I didn’t know how to process that information properly, it was completely alien to me, welcoming, but strange. I didn’t know what to believe, true or false, I had no idea. I could only process the pain that I experienced before out of bullying. I seriously regretted the response I gave for what happened next. I came into contact with the girl that had this crush on me twice more some time after school, and after I was diagnosed with OCD and ASD (autism) when I was 14 years old, I never returned to school when I was 13 ¾ years old following my breakdown in year 8. I will have to explain this in detail in blog post later on. Anyway, going back to this girl, I saw her one time she worked as a bank clerk in a building society. She processed the money incorrectly when I went there with my mother to add money to my account. It hit me, I suddenly thought, “Did she make a mistake because she was shocked to see me? In that case, she really did have a crush on me, didn’t she?!? You stupid idiot!”. Ever since that time I’ve been constantly reciting that very line to myself every time my mind processes emotional feelings, ‘You stupid idiot’. I saw her again at the local arts centre, sitting around a group of people. She was waving and smiling at me from a long distance, like she noticed me deliberately. I had my back to her, I didn’t even now she noticed me. When my aunt and mother told me, I smiled and waved back. I bet she wanted me to come up to her and talk, but there was no way I could, not with all those people sitting with her. It made me far too anxious. Both times my anxiety was too intense as there were so many people around, both at the building society and the arts centre. I couldn’t go up and talk to her on either occasion and even if I could, what would I have said, “Did you come up to me with your friends and talk about your crush on me?”. Sure, with all my intense anxiety and with all those other people sitting around her, or at the stressful building society with waiting people, I could just come out and say the most embarrassing question to a girl. To me, I’ve always considered girls with awe. I had several crushes in my life, but I could never act on any of them, I was far too nervous and anxious. I was too concerned that if I went up to them, I wouldn’t know what to say, and if I say the wrong thing I would be hurt badly. After I was called a ‘creep’, the awareness of the power a girl could have in rejection terrified me, especially with my difficulties with socialising in general. This has never changed, but I’m not so terrified as I’d never want to talk to girls. I just want to find the right way to express myself and start a dialogue that can grow. I want to find a way to socialise on my terms, a way to get to know someone steadily over writing to them, but I find it difficult to instigate conversation. A personal reason why I created my forum is to attract others to write to me so that I can build upon my own social rapport with women around my age. I want to conquer that fear, and grow a strong bond.

Anyway, all of those main events in terms of talking to others happened out of my control. I have never had the confidence to start socialising with someone out of the blue. It is totally out of my zone. I find it far too difficult. I wouldn’t know where to begin, whether they’d want to know. Or, the most important aspect of all, if I am reminded of my triggers. You see, if I did write to someone and I found out something that reminds me of education or having girlfriends or boyfriends, well, it would bring back all those pains that I’ve been through and they would hit me all over again. It would immediately trigger a meltdown, and I couldn’t face responding. I would be in too much pain. This has caused me a lot of problems, and is a very prominent reason as to why I haven’t felt the confidence to write to others around my age. I’m in fear that it will trigger my bad memories, and they are all very sharp. I want to be able to make new friends, socialise, and find that strong connection I’ve been searching so hard to find. I’ve written on my forum about triggers, but I’ll have to create a blog post about them at some point, but they are one of the main reasons why I find it so difficult to open up to others around my age, I can’t bear to bring all that pain back again every time I exchange messages.

AS and ASD – Building Bonds Forum

I’ve recently set up a forum for people on the autistic spectrum who wish to find a community to make friends in the United Kingdom.

I would love for others on the spectrum to join my forum and make friends. I wanted to create a social community in the UK to talk about whatever interests them. I feel that there aren’t enough social forums in the UK for people on the spectrum. I find it difficult to make friends and I wanted to create an online forum that is specifically based on building friendships and stronger bonds.

I welcome all to my forum, from whichever country, but I personally come from the UK, and the experiences I’ve been affected by are as a result of the system in the UK. I just fear I may be misunderstood in relating my experiences in the past to others in different countries since the systems for those on the spectrum may be different.

Being bullied at school – Part 1

Throughout school I encountered bullies and when you have no friends those bullies can have an even greater impact. Many incidents have happened to me with bullies at school and one incident that was particularly bad involving the P.E. teacher who was also the head of year.

As far as I was concerned school consisted of bullies, those that were neutral and, if you’re lucky, a friend. For most of primary school only the former two surrounded me. As I was going into year five of primary school I felt I had to change classes due to people bullying me. I was glad of this, though to be honest, I was still bullied in the other class as well.

I noticed I was the only person in class who used to put my head on the table and cry when something went really bad, like being bullied. The thing is I remember the table top most of all; it would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. In secondary school the tolerance I had to bullying was still crying but also telling them to go away, it made no difference though. I told the teachers many times and it made absolutely no difference, they would just keep bullying.

I think it was either in the fifth year or the sixth year that a bully from my previous class came up to me in the playground just before the bell rang to go into class either during break or lunch time. He came up to me and punched me square in the stomach and I was winded for a few seconds. I looked up at his face and there was the biggest Cheshire cat grin I’ve ever seen from one cheek to another. This was just one of the experiences I had of bullying in primary school. Much later I think I found out from television that he appeared on the television programme Road Wars and was arrested for apparently stealing alcohol. He was just as arrogant as he was in person all those years ago. This gives you an idea of how much I hated school. I could look at it saying that he was arrested so that was that, but at the same time, I was in a class with a soon-to-be criminal that used to bully me a lot at school. That brought back horrible memories.

In both primary school and secondary school two different bullies, including the one I mentioned above, seemed the same in one particular category, arrogance, and oh yes they had plenty of that. They both used to have wide grins on their faces. The one in secondary school was very good at P.E.; most bullies tend to be don’t they, but he mainly enjoyed psychological bullying. One such example is that he used to annoyingly brush his hand across my head in a patronising way, and that was most annoying. I didn’t know at the time that I had SPD but he took advantage of it, it’s as if he could read the difficulties people had and made the effort of taking advantage of it. There were also two other bullies who enjoyed coming up to people and making funny noises directly into their ears, that was very irritating especially when you have SPD. A bully also poured drink over my head once.

I was always afraid of being told off at school. School felt like a prison to me. I tried my best to get through every prison day to get to my haven, home. When I was in secondary school, there was an incident where the students started messing with a loose paving stone on the ground. I didn’t understand why they were doing it but I tried it to see what the fascination was thinking nothing of it if I was careful, and then out of nowhere someone else jumped on the other side, of course creating an imbalance of weight which in turn caused it to crack. One of my long standing bullies couldn’t wait to tell the P.E. teacher as P.E. was my next lesson and so he ran off at the speed of light, and I could swear he was relishing it. The world suddenly froze at that moment and my heart sank instantly. I have never forgotten it.   I REALLY couldn’t go into P.E. at that time, but I had to, I don’t skip classes. I terrifyingly walked into the P.E. changing room, like a zombie, awaiting the worst but knew I couldn’t cope with it. My life seemed over at that point. My P.E. teacher was also the head of year. He must have been told because when I got changed into my P.E. kit and entered the gym hall he said he wanted to have a word with me. Firstly he got everyone doing an activity then he asked me to sit with him on a small set of table and two chairs in the same room with everyone else (My head was drumming and my heart sank even further, so far I thought that this is it, the end of the road. I thought that my life was over. I knew nothing good would come of this. I was in a living nightmare. I wanted to get out at the nearest opportunity, but that’s not me.  I do the best I can in school, and try to come out the other side unscathed from the prison that kept me there for the first half of the day.). I, painfully slowly, made my way towards the chair. I wanted nothing more than to make a run for it to be free, as I knew exactly what was coming, my life was crashing down around me, and I couldn’t take it. I was amongst the other students in the gym hall but when it came to support, I was alone. He then asked me the painful question “did you step on the paving stone?” and “why did you do it?”, I immediately broke into tears and crossed my arms in front of my face on the table, in a defensive move, as I usually do when I break down in tears, which for me was quite frequent and cried, and cried, and cried. I couldn’t stop crying. The other boy that jumped on the other side of the paving stone came up to me to ask if I was alright. No, I wasn’t alright, I had the head of year interrogating me in front of everyone about something I had no control over. The teacher was even saying “What are you crying for?” over and over again, wasn’t it obvious, I thought, he quite obviously didn’t, though for the life of me I couldn’t understand why, and still can’t. I was in great pain, for many reasons. In fact I never stopped crying all the way home and for days after that, I never attended school during that time either, and I never ever went back. The pain it caused was so fierce I couldn’t face walking into that prison with the ‘head police officer’ being the cause of my pain. The welfare officer for the school knew how badly I was bullied as I was going to him for a while previously over it. It had hurt so badly that when the welfare officer came several times to try to get me back to school, I had this adamant feeling that I have never experienced in my life, and kept saying very strongly ”NO, I can’t”, I was never confident enough to come out as defiantly as that but I did and he knew I meant it. After the bullying, it was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. He knew I wasn’t someone who would cause problems and it was very difficult for me to say no to authority figures, he knew then this problem was very serious. That is the reason why I have not been in school since. I will explain the way I have been taught since then until recently.

Hello, welcome to my blog

My alias is Toshiro Hitsugaya and before my birthday this year am 20 years old. I have aspergers syndrome (AS), sensory processing disorder (SPD), obsessional compulsive disorder (OCD) and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Life can be very stressful trying to cope with these conditions, every day is a struggle. The websites that I’ve given as references with the links above are just three of the many websites that explain about what these conditions are. 

For a long time now I have been contemplating creating a blog. I have never been able to get around to it. Now, at last, I’m trying to create one. I have a lot to say but am never sure where to put my words. I thought that writing a blog would be a good idea. There are many thoughts spinning around my head. Life can feel quite depressing. I will start to put a lot of my thoughts into this blog. I have never done anything like this before but I’m willing to give it a go and see where it ends up. I wrote a lot of things in the past and I thought now would be a good time to put it all together.