Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
We live in a society of advice columns, experts and make-over shows. Without even knowing it, you can begin to believe someone knows better than you how to live your life. Someone might know a particular something better – like how to bake a three-layer molten coconut chocolate cake or how to build a website – but nobody else on the planet knows how to live your life better than you. (Although one or two people may think they do.) For today, trying asking yourself often, especially before you make a choice, “What do I know about this?”
Oh there have been so many people who wanted to tell me how to live my life. Maybe there are still one or two. People just who think what I should do. They just do not know how it is to live with a partner with autism and it's soooo easy for them to say!
Do I know how to live my life? I may know how to but I may not always act on it and I know that. I divert from my path often only to look back and see that I'm not on the path I was going for. I will stop and think and search for my path again to go further on it. Why did I let myself go on the wrong path in the first place? Often it is because I let myself get distracted from things that happen here in my home most times with my autistic partner. I can yell to myself that I shouldn't let it bother me, or let it distract me or put me off my path but it happens. Every time I feel good about where I'm going, something will happen with him that puts me a few steps back. I can say to myself 'today I will choose for myself' but I just can't. I'm not a selfish person. He was never raised to do things by himself, well of course the basics but harder decisions which he needs to discuss first he just can't. It will always end up in me diverting from my path and becoming an anxious person again.
A few years ago one of the phychologists who was supposed to help him said I was supposed to be guiding him for the rest of his life. When I said I wasn't planning on it, that he was very capable of doing that on his own if taught right, the man looked at me as if I was a down right hag. Of course we women know that every man has to be guided somewhat ;-) but autistic men have to be guided to an extant that it can cost you your relationship! I never thought it might, but it does. I already had one divorce I don't intend to have another. But to say it is hard is an understatement. You have to fight hard to stay sane first and foremost.
So plan a life? Make a choice? I know there is one but that's not one I am willing to make again. Even though I am feeling I am losing myself again sometimes and I am straying form my path and can see the vultures sitting on the trees waiting for me to fall down and give up. I won't give up, not again! I will fight for myself. If I fall I will get up and crawl if I have to!
© KH
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