Turning Inwards

With the advent of the new school year, Herself must go through the routine paperwork and meetings associated with ensuring that Offspring the Third's individual needs due to his Aspergers are met by his teachers and the school.  Offspring the Third is doing remarkably well; he has learned many skills to cope with social issues, and on the whole he handles admirably his internal frustrations.  Herself is so pleased for him.  He has come so far.

Ever self-reflective, Herself contemplates her own middle school years, and methodicially mentally trudges through high school, college, graduate school, and on into adulthood.  She sees in retrospect all the hallmarks of her own issues and difficulties that are so very similar to those of Offspring the Third.  Was Aspergers even a clinical entity thirty-five years ago?  Would anyone have put all the little pieces of her oddness together into a coherent picture that would even yield such a label?  All the signposts seem so clear today.  Or is it all in her head?  Is it perhaps just an excuse to justify her failures?

She is quietly enraged at her own deficiencies: her awkward social interactions; her emotional tendencies; her difficulties at understanding, reading and predicting the reactions and motivations of others; her perserverations; her inability to place herself in another's shoes; her social mistakes.  She tries.  She fails.  Is she not trying hard enough?  Are her own needs and wants interfering with her ability to comprehend and successfully navigate all the social waters?  Why do those waters seem so calm some times, and so treacherous at other times?  

There have been some occasions, as we have written, when she is more accepting of her eccentricities. Other moments, she has looked for validation in the things she reads. Today, though, she is solely angry at herself.  She would like to retreat into solitude.  See no one, speak to no one.  Be obligated to no one.  Perhaps alone, she will grant herself a reprieve from self-criticism and locate a seed of her own self-worth.

The desert is calling.  She needs its tranquility right now.