One Year Since

I admit, I'm a little off on time. Technically, it should have been last Saturday that I noted the one-year milestone for this blog; however, as I was about 300 miles north without access to the internet, let alone electricity, now is as fine a time as ever to look back.

The launch of this blog was, as are many of my hare-brained ideas, met with utter ambivalence, though it did once cause a prodigious argument on my Facebook profile, back when I had one. It became utterly critical for me to keep writing and publishing, writing and publishing, always with humor at the forefront because, I figured, no one wanted to read anything else; life was depressing enough without me adding to it. It took less than a month for me to start obsessively monitoring the weekly view statistics, cranking out more entries when I didn't get enough responses on the previous ones. I wanted feedback. I wanted dialogue. I didn't get it. People were hung up on the title. Finally, that's when I realized how tired I was of the constant posting and the constant monitoring, of setting myself up to use my personal information to please other people. I was giving myself away and getting nothing in return. At least whores get money for their services.

It's taken me a year at least to realize that I don't actually have to please anyone. Mostly, this came from re-reading The Way to Love, which I don't feel obligated to chronicle chapter by chapter anymore. Check it out if you want to learn more. From it, I have learned two truths that are gut-wrenching in their difficulty, based on my ingrained habits, or programming:

1. I don't have to please anyone.
   • Pleasing another person fuels a desire for further pleasure and becomes, above all other things, a chain. Realizing this has made it so much easier to overcome my fear of talking to people. Not giving a shit what they think about me, because there is nothing they can do to ruin me, has made dealing with people so much less stressful than ever before.
2. Happiness is not a destination.
   • I devoted nine years of my life to the search for a "soulmate." In so doing, I lost a great deal of my creativity, my focus, and my self-esteem. What I learned is that the soul does not need or even have a mate. Can we call the Enlightened Ones who did not marry "incomplete?"

For the first time in recent memory, I'm finding the very thought of a relationship repulsive. To me, a new relationship, while pleasurable to the senses, would be a spawning pool for insecurity, distraction, and self-deprecation. The idea of returning to the old habits of paranoia and codependency, of making sacrifices for the personal benefit of others, makes me physically ill. When I talk about the last year of adventures that I've had, my married coworkers wag their fingers and cluck "Wait 'til you get married and have kids; then we'll see about your freedom." There is absolutely no appeal to this.

However, I do sometimes still feel alone. It's not easy converting your love for a physical human to a love for something intangible: a feeling, an idea, or a deity. Yet, I seldom feel alone when in solitude; it is when I am around people that the feeling strikes. I spent my birthday camping in northern California, alone. I had no problem driving, dining, or sleeping alone; nor did it bother me not to have a cake and presents. In fact, it was lovely all around. The trouble came at dinner time the second night, when I was camping at Mount Madonna. I was alone at my table, surrounded by people chatting with each other. Need I say more on the matter?

So, after a year of delving into the inhibitions surrounding Asperger's, I've reached the following status: I am now secure enough to choose Will over Obligation and start building my social base, but after the years of a false journey, I am disillusioned enough to see no real point in building such a base up again. People are too busy for me, and I for them. A thousand moments of solitude eventually drown out a moment of loneliness.

Though the foundation and the walls are built, there is still an empty space inside. Building on the progress of the last year, the new quest will be to find what will best fill that space.