I am far more emotionally and psychologically handicapped than the normal man in terms of making decisions that others take for granted. Yesterday, I was again whining about my loneliness at this blog, but remain entirely unable to change my circumstances, despite the urgings of others I know to do just that. They make it sound so easy when for someone with my disability it isn't. I am just not a normal socially well-adjusted person. Part of the blame can be assigned being born with Asperger's Syndrome (I'm sorry to keep blaming this condition, but upon careful self-reflection about a misfit lifetime it's the only explanation that fits the strange behaviors, emotional blocks and chronic selfishness, and the physical clumsiness I've been plagued with ever since I can remember). I don't know how to function in dealing with people constantly. I've tended to be a loner, especially after a bad nervous breakdown suffered when age 12 in seventh grade. I was always awkward outwardly and inwardly on many occasions during public events. I often committed some social error that a normal personality would never have done.
Now I have a little bit of money to live on thanks to the final generosity (or guilt) from the purchasers of my childhood home in 2011. But $2,000 isn't much (with $1400 paid to my new landlord for 4 months' discounted rent) and unless I gain an unexpected breakthrough to my writing career (defined by me either as an interest by Ace Books in accepting my Sister Helena of the Sword novel for their line of fantasy and science-fiction publication stable, with contracts for the second and third novel planned in the series) or a small advancement into freelance writing (a ghostwriting job I may have already blown by not having the desired experience in publishing by the party seeking someone to ghostwrite a 300-page adventure novel), all the hope I have left is either in securing another mundane job in which I most likely will NEVER be happy and have to endure for the mere sake of survival, or taking steps to qualify for Supplemental Security Income (essentially welfare due to the mental disability of Asperger's Syndrome as an admission I cannot function in the everyday working world).
Based on my reading of the Bible, I had my earlier preconceived notions of God changed forever. Growing up raised by nominally Christian (father a Mormon and mother a one-time Baptist) parents, I had the image of Yahweh (Jehovah) as the vengeful, angry being easily displeased by human failures and sins, ready to strike out from Heaven and destroy the world or we tiny insignificant humans that are His greatest creation. After reading the Scriptures during 1997 and 1998, I came to see Him instead as a patient, long suffering deity who only became angry when humans pushed against His Will too often and hard in defiance of that will. He is also more loving one comes to realize in understanding the sacrifice of Yeshua (Jesus) the Christ, the Messiah, King of Kings, etc. for the sins of all mankind that one afternoon nailed to a cross. We can never know, especially those that dress as He appeared and pretend to hang from crosses say around Easter time, how much the Son of God suffered in those short hours or the several hours before the execution began when He was beaten and mocked by Jerusalem's Jewish and Roman authorities. Unfortunately I have also come to see my Maker as being akin to a Tough Love Father, someone who loves you but never makes anything come easily, and if something does come easily then it isn't being done correctly or you're not learning the required hard lesson from the experience. I mean, if He would not spare His Son the crucifiction, what will we never be spared - what pains will any one of us be required to endure?
I am supremely terrible at making most decisions, especially when given more than one choice in the matter whatever it happens to be. And if there are two choices (seldom more than that), I invariably make the wrong one, but not every time obviously. The indecisions and the failed choices I'm often forced by some urgent circumstance to make only reinforce the lack of confidence I've suffered from a young age. Being a perfectionist, every mistake (and as a human I cannot avoid mistakes entirely) I make only compounds that inadequacy I sense within me as a human being and man. I ask and pray for God's guidance, but He lets me keep making one mistake in life after another. What good is free will, when you lack the basic confidence and self-reliance a normal minded person would possess to navigate through life? Every rejection and correction received is not instructive in my case. I tend to not learn from mistakes (obviously there are occasional exceptions to this in my case) because I don't want to MAKE them in the first place - again a sign of perfectionism (not being perfect but wishing to be so).
The most painful personal manifestation of this churning indecision that God permits within my mind has been the lack of romantic entanglements and the solitary lifestyle resulting from this colossal failing. I've gotten the usual advice to go out and get to know women somewhere. But how can you do that when you're intimidated about meeting new people (strangers), don't always know how to act around them or when to pick up on non-verbal social cues a non Asperger's man could easily, and have only negative experiences to draw upon that are no help in navigating any new situation? I never could become close friends with women, either in my adolescent years or since as a poorly-adjusted adult. I'm not very loveable, apparently no fun to be around most of the time, and not handsome or naturally charismatic. Even when eligible single women tried getting to know me in the recent past of 2012, when the stranger wasn't just some scam artist trying to con me out of money by pretending to be in love, they either concluded we had nothing in common or suddenly lost interest after very brief online chats. I don't know what it is I'm doing wrong in these situations. People often give someone like me the advice - be yourself. But what good does that serve when you can't stand yourself and are too self-conscious of your flaws to forget them and relax or go with the flow?
I seemed cursed to be alone for the rest of my life, and I know now that God doesn't care if I ever marry. He's leaving the search for a mate up to me, not commanding me to wed some strange woman I've never met before, all because of free will. What good is free will when you can't even make basic decisions the next person has no problem doing? I've often envied (to the point of hatred) overconfident jackasses, smooth players, leisure studies majors and other romantically inclined lotharios or lounge lizards capable of playing the field until they find who they want for a keeper. They have it easy. Just talk to a woman, maybe buy her a drink (slip a ruthie into it when she's not looking if he's Glenn Quagmire), have a few laughs and take her to bed for sex if she's a slut that puts out on a first (or fairly early in the relationship) date. I'm not that guy. I don't have the confidence to even attempt it. I couldn't talk to the whore and the only way I could get any sex is by paying for it. If nice guys always finish last and never win, then I'm the biggest loser I know in life. When I was still a teenager I always seemed to attract the interest of older girls wanting to take my virginity as a sick joke at my expense. I never took them up on the offer being shy and a bit inhibited, but such so-called "experience" would've done nothing to improve my pitiful self-image today.
I can only conclude, unless I meet someone unexpectedly one day who is the right woman (and that usually only happens to losers like me in fiction), God doesn't care if I ever wed anyone (preferring to keep me for Himself as a spiritual mate with other believers) and doesn't have anyone in mind for me. I'll miss out on one of the basic human experiences (one I should've had twenty to twenty-five years ago - romance leading to marriage) all because I'm a cowardly misfit who never had any chance at becoming or ever being normal. Is it any wonder I sometimes say "I wish I'd never been born" or "I wish I could die." I don't know what God's will is for my time on Earth any longer, but obviously marriage is not among the plans He had for me before I was even conceived in the summer of 1967. I can resent this hard truth all I choose, but nothing will change it.
Now I have a little bit of money to live on thanks to the final generosity (or guilt) from the purchasers of my childhood home in 2011. But $2,000 isn't much (with $1400 paid to my new landlord for 4 months' discounted rent) and unless I gain an unexpected breakthrough to my writing career (defined by me either as an interest by Ace Books in accepting my Sister Helena of the Sword novel for their line of fantasy and science-fiction publication stable, with contracts for the second and third novel planned in the series) or a small advancement into freelance writing (a ghostwriting job I may have already blown by not having the desired experience in publishing by the party seeking someone to ghostwrite a 300-page adventure novel), all the hope I have left is either in securing another mundane job in which I most likely will NEVER be happy and have to endure for the mere sake of survival, or taking steps to qualify for Supplemental Security Income (essentially welfare due to the mental disability of Asperger's Syndrome as an admission I cannot function in the everyday working world).
Based on my reading of the Bible, I had my earlier preconceived notions of God changed forever. Growing up raised by nominally Christian (father a Mormon and mother a one-time Baptist) parents, I had the image of Yahweh (Jehovah) as the vengeful, angry being easily displeased by human failures and sins, ready to strike out from Heaven and destroy the world or we tiny insignificant humans that are His greatest creation. After reading the Scriptures during 1997 and 1998, I came to see Him instead as a patient, long suffering deity who only became angry when humans pushed against His Will too often and hard in defiance of that will. He is also more loving one comes to realize in understanding the sacrifice of Yeshua (Jesus) the Christ, the Messiah, King of Kings, etc. for the sins of all mankind that one afternoon nailed to a cross. We can never know, especially those that dress as He appeared and pretend to hang from crosses say around Easter time, how much the Son of God suffered in those short hours or the several hours before the execution began when He was beaten and mocked by Jerusalem's Jewish and Roman authorities. Unfortunately I have also come to see my Maker as being akin to a Tough Love Father, someone who loves you but never makes anything come easily, and if something does come easily then it isn't being done correctly or you're not learning the required hard lesson from the experience. I mean, if He would not spare His Son the crucifiction, what will we never be spared - what pains will any one of us be required to endure?
I am supremely terrible at making most decisions, especially when given more than one choice in the matter whatever it happens to be. And if there are two choices (seldom more than that), I invariably make the wrong one, but not every time obviously. The indecisions and the failed choices I'm often forced by some urgent circumstance to make only reinforce the lack of confidence I've suffered from a young age. Being a perfectionist, every mistake (and as a human I cannot avoid mistakes entirely) I make only compounds that inadequacy I sense within me as a human being and man. I ask and pray for God's guidance, but He lets me keep making one mistake in life after another. What good is free will, when you lack the basic confidence and self-reliance a normal minded person would possess to navigate through life? Every rejection and correction received is not instructive in my case. I tend to not learn from mistakes (obviously there are occasional exceptions to this in my case) because I don't want to MAKE them in the first place - again a sign of perfectionism (not being perfect but wishing to be so).
The most painful personal manifestation of this churning indecision that God permits within my mind has been the lack of romantic entanglements and the solitary lifestyle resulting from this colossal failing. I've gotten the usual advice to go out and get to know women somewhere. But how can you do that when you're intimidated about meeting new people (strangers), don't always know how to act around them or when to pick up on non-verbal social cues a non Asperger's man could easily, and have only negative experiences to draw upon that are no help in navigating any new situation? I never could become close friends with women, either in my adolescent years or since as a poorly-adjusted adult. I'm not very loveable, apparently no fun to be around most of the time, and not handsome or naturally charismatic. Even when eligible single women tried getting to know me in the recent past of 2012, when the stranger wasn't just some scam artist trying to con me out of money by pretending to be in love, they either concluded we had nothing in common or suddenly lost interest after very brief online chats. I don't know what it is I'm doing wrong in these situations. People often give someone like me the advice - be yourself. But what good does that serve when you can't stand yourself and are too self-conscious of your flaws to forget them and relax or go with the flow?
I seemed cursed to be alone for the rest of my life, and I know now that God doesn't care if I ever marry. He's leaving the search for a mate up to me, not commanding me to wed some strange woman I've never met before, all because of free will. What good is free will when you can't even make basic decisions the next person has no problem doing? I've often envied (to the point of hatred) overconfident jackasses, smooth players, leisure studies majors and other romantically inclined lotharios or lounge lizards capable of playing the field until they find who they want for a keeper. They have it easy. Just talk to a woman, maybe buy her a drink (slip a ruthie into it when she's not looking if he's Glenn Quagmire), have a few laughs and take her to bed for sex if she's a slut that puts out on a first (or fairly early in the relationship) date. I'm not that guy. I don't have the confidence to even attempt it. I couldn't talk to the whore and the only way I could get any sex is by paying for it. If nice guys always finish last and never win, then I'm the biggest loser I know in life. When I was still a teenager I always seemed to attract the interest of older girls wanting to take my virginity as a sick joke at my expense. I never took them up on the offer being shy and a bit inhibited, but such so-called "experience" would've done nothing to improve my pitiful self-image today.
I can only conclude, unless I meet someone unexpectedly one day who is the right woman (and that usually only happens to losers like me in fiction), God doesn't care if I ever wed anyone (preferring to keep me for Himself as a spiritual mate with other believers) and doesn't have anyone in mind for me. I'll miss out on one of the basic human experiences (one I should've had twenty to twenty-five years ago - romance leading to marriage) all because I'm a cowardly misfit who never had any chance at becoming or ever being normal. Is it any wonder I sometimes say "I wish I'd never been born" or "I wish I could die." I don't know what God's will is for my time on Earth any longer, but obviously marriage is not among the plans He had for me before I was even conceived in the summer of 1967. I can resent this hard truth all I choose, but nothing will change it.