These two pictures are of the exact same trees.
They are not the best quality, but I loved the comparison.
Outside my Window
Sad
One House, Two Worlds
He sits at the kitchen table, the sun shining through the window creates a halo around his head. He stirs his hot chocolate roughly and puts the spoon on the table with a “clink”. He has a frown on his face and his eyes look puffy from crying. He had a tantrum again, a regular occurrence in our household. A tantrum from two worlds colliding into a void of misunderstanding and pain. The first world is one that most of us are familiar with, one that includes sarcasm and hidden meaning. The world of body language and self-control. The second world is one that is hard to grasp and difficult to sympathize with, this is the world in which he lives. The world where everything is black and white, where if something needs to be said then it is said. If you say something then you stick to it, there is no changing the plan without lots of notice.
This second world is one that between 1 in 25 to 1 in 10,000 children are living in, depending on diagnosis criteria according to The Canadian Medical Association. This world is referred to as Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism that can sometimes be difficult to diagnose. The Canadian Medical Association has also found out boys are diagnosed with Asperger’s almost twice as often as girls are. My brother is one of these boys.
Due to the fact that he has a hard time relating to his peers and takes things as black and white, he is easily offended and often holds on to things that hurt him for a very long time. He has never had many friends and would rather hang out with adults than children his own age. He is smart but has a hard time getting what is in his head down on paper. There is a barrier there that we are only beginning to realize. He doesn’t like to talk about having Asperger’s Syndrome or the fact that he doesn’t have friends and feels victimized on a regular basis. Like every other junior high child, he feels awkward and pushed to the edge. But unlike every junior higher it may never end.
When I was in junior high I was always being told that the awkwardness would get better. That I would grow into my body and become confident. I always waited for the day that I would wake up and be confident with an awesome body that I loved. That never happened, it is a process that we all go through. Unfortunately his process may be a little longer and quite a bit more difficult. He may never have a day where he doesn’t feel like everybody is out to get him, like no one understands what he is thinking because his brain works differently from ours. He may never be able to have that connection with someone where you feel like you know exactly what they are thinking. But that is something that he and the people who love him need to realize and get over. Him not thinking the same way as we do is not the end of the world, we just need to make adjustments.
He is 7 years my junior and I have always felt somewhat of a maternal instinct towards him. Maybe this is because I am the oldest sister, perhaps it is because I don’t always agree with my parent’s style of raising him. Whatever the reason, sometimes I feel like more of a mom than a sister. It is hard to be a sister when you are always having to watch out for what he just put on the stove or what experiment he is doing on the kitchen table.
When you meet him someday, he may be that person on the bus who gets angry for no apparent reason because you looked at him the wrong way. Or perhaps he will offer you a random fact about WWII when you are looking at the same pair of shoes in the mall. He may open the door for you and be the nicest guy you ever meet. I can pretty much guarantee that he will tell you how to spell almost anything with perfect accuracy and will do a math equation for you before you have time to take out your calculator.
He is a brilliant boy, who lives in a different world than I do. Sometimes these worlds collide into chaos. But when our two worlds intertwine and become one, I see the face of God. He isn’t perfect, but neither am I. He so obviously loves the people in his life. Surrounding the moments of pain and anger is a river of love and unconditional caring and appreciation. He is my angel and little brother. I am so proud to be the big sister of an Aspie.
The Hill
They walk towards the hill, her hand in his. They are walking slowly while enjoying each others’ company. She looks at him and giggles, he smiles back. He has a backpack on and she is carrying a package, clearly a gift for him. They are happy. You can tell by the way they move around each other, it is like the gentle ebb and flow of the ocean. A constant, even but unrehearsed dance. The sound of someone mowing the lawn in the distance mixes with the soft humid breeze, teasing the leaves of the poplar trees. They near the hill, she stops to look at him. He looks back at her, planting a soft kiss on her nose. She starts with a skip and leads him halfway up the hill where she spins around in circles, letting her soft skirt catch the wind and levitate up into a disk around her. He grabs her around the waist and pulls her close, from where I am sitting the sun glints in between their close silhouettes. He sits down on the ground and pats the vibrant green grass beside him. She sits. It is then that he opens his backpack and pulls out a black box. She smiles and from the box pulls out a pair of purple runners. The smile on her face tells that this is something she is pleased with, but not what she was expecting. She then hands him the package that she had been carrying. He tears off her neatly wrapped paper to reveal a knife. He grins and kisses her with vigor. He places the knife in his backpack and motions to the shoes, she stands up. She slips off her sandals and steps into the new pair of purple shoes. He gently does up the laces, glancing back up at her face ever so often. She smiles down at him and runs her fingers gently through his hair. Once he finishes with the laces, he looks up at her from on his knees, and with her gaze locked in his he slides his hand into his pocket and pulls out a box. She doesn’t notices right away. He holds up the box and says something. She lets out a scream of delight and kisses him urgently. He smiles and stands up. They embrace. He picks her up and spins her around still holding the box tightly in one hand. Her newly shoed feet land in the grass and he slips the ring onto her left hand. She stands there in awe, her face is un-readable and she seems happy but hesitant. He picks up his backpack and they begin to descend the hill hand in hand. They are walking faster this time, with more purpose than before. She turns around and looks back at the hill with a look of confusion. It is clear that she is not sure about the decision she has made. He puts his arm around her and she looks forward again, snapping back to reality.
Based on actual events.
Why.
I have started to come to the realization that being able to be honest with yourself and the people around you is a difficult but intensely rewarding thing. Over the past couple months I have grown not only as an individual but also as a friend, I have begun to see how amazing friendships can be when effort is put into them. There is one person in particular who has come to mean a great deal to me, we never used to get along very well but due to certain circumstances we have grown very close and she is now one of my closest and dearest friends. This poem is for her.
I have always been one for pretty words, and a couple years ago I tried my hand at poetry. I can’t say that I am very good and I may not be following all of the rules of poetry but for me poetry is what happens when my soul speaks with words rather than my brain. My brain likes to over analyze things but my soul knows exactly what it wants to say. So I present you with a poem that came together out of the blue. It captures some of the feelings that I have been experiencing over the past couple months. It seems a little more depressing that I had really intended but I think It gets a point across…so without further ado. Why.
Tears ooze a soothing balm
Over the fissured soul,
Bright eyes faded to grey
Clouded with misery,
Deep breaths come out
Cut. Up. In. Sobs.
A china tea cup in your palm
Gold leaf pealing at your touch,
Cracked from over use
And un-careful users,
The slightest movement causes a leak
Bitter tea trickles through your fingers.
Wind wanders lonely
Calling through forgotten panes,
Shut out of all that is love,
Voice of a vexed lover
Whimpers one word,
Why.
~ Bethany Epp ~
This blog is here so I can remind myself to be honest with not only the people around me but to make sure I’m not trying to convince the world of something I myself know to be false. Thank you for letting me be honest with you.
All the things.
As much as I would like to tell everybody in my life that I am completely over my past relationship and that I am fully ready and capable to move on…I don’t think that is completely true. My ex-fiancee is on his second “relationship” since we broke up and it will be 5 months in February. I am not quite sure how to read into this and whether to read into it at all. We have not talked since christmas and I know that is a good thing considering the last time we talked he practically tore me to bits. What confuses me though is how someone can be in a relationship and say that they are completely past their previous relationship when their previous relationship was so serious. He was prepared to marry me this last christmas and spend the rest of his life with me. I am the one who did the breaking up but that does not mean that I had it easy, there have been days when I have regretted my decision and wished that we were back together. I know it is best that we never got back together, but I miss having that companionship, that constant friendship.
I am now at a place where I feel happy that he could move on and is in a good relationship with someone else but I also know that I am not in that place. I still think about him often and I long for our friendship too much to get another man involved romantically in my life. Not to mention the school work and other things I have going on in my life. A relationship is not where I want to be right now.
I am slowly starting to find out that being single is fun and can be a really uplifting and growing experience after not being single for almost two years. As a teenager I longed for guys to notice me even just as a friend but it never really happened, I was always craving that relationship with a male. Only once I graduated from high school and gained a little perspective was I able to be friends with guys but under those friendships were always the awkward undertone of me being infatuated and them being uninformed. I was never fully able to be friends with a guy and not have any hint of romantic desire driving my friendship with them.
This is the moment that I discovered online dating, not a bad thing but definitely not a good thing…just a thing that happened. The first guy that I dated was four years older than me and the relationship only lasted approximately 3 weeks. I was much too clingy and over bearing, I wanted our relationship to move quickly because I felt as though I had missed out on so much relationship time that my friends had gotten. Needless to say, he was not a fan of a young clingy girlfriend so we broke up. I am glad that didn’t last long, he had much different morals that I did and it was not going to be a good situation if we kept dating. The second guy I met and dated online was the one who ended up being my fiancee and best friend. We dated for five months and then broke up because our relationship was getting too serious too fast. (see a theme?) We got back together nine months later and dated till June when we got engaged and then I broke things off in September. I do not have a fantastic record for relationships and I’m really good at pushing things and making things go faster than I really want them to.
I am the worst at being patient and need some help. But now after being single for almost five months I’m good with where I am, I have a long way to go yet before I am ready to be in a relationship but I’m on a journey. After all, the journey is what makes you who you are. This was fairly heavy and I’m not sure who will all read this but if I know you, just take this with a grain of salt and know that I am putting myself on the limb here and sharing with you personal details. If I do not know you, I hope you can take from my story something that makes you think. If you are a potential boyfriend, please know that you should talk to me and really get to know me before you judge me.
One day at a time
If you read my previous blog post you will know that my life has not been all that fantastic as of late. It has been almost a month and a half now since we broke up and I’m not going to say that I’m doing 100%. It is a struggle but I’m hanging on, moving one day at a time.
These are both amazingly strong women and I definitely consider them both to be role models. I wish someday I will touch somebody else’s life like they have touched mine. Sometimes God sends angels in the most bizarre packages.
How not to get engaged.
*SIGH*
So much has been going in my life lately…I know I haven’t updated this in a very long time but in the time that I have been gone I got engaged! I know this should be exciting and it very much is…was. I was not expecting him to propose so soon and when he did I was dumb founded! I didn’t know what to say, of course I said yes, how could I not?!? There was a handsome man kneeling in front of me asking to spend the rest of his life with me, it seems like a dream come true and as much as I wanted it to be it wasn’t. From the moment I said yes to his proposal I was second guessing my decision, I didn’t know if I was ready to settle down and I had not yet made up my mind whether I wanted to do it with him. (Now I know this seems really ridiculous and everybody said that I shouldn’t have said yes, but I couldn’t say no). He did ask my parents the day that he proposed and they said a tentative yes but wanted to wait until we could have a discussion together, they were not expecting him to propose that day. After he asked me we got home and I was overjoyed, after all this was what I thought I wanted. My mother did not talk to me for about a day and a half and when she did she was in tears the whole time and my father although he tried to be supportive and happy for me, I could tell that he was not completely sold on the idea of me getting married so young to someone I had met on the Internet only a year and a half prior. We continued to plan our wedding and discuss a wedding date which ended up being the subject of most of our arguments, we fought a lot in the two and a half months that we were engaged. We fought about the table arrangements, what kind of food to serve, where to have our wedding. Needless to say we were not in a very healthy relationship. Almost as soon as we got engaged he went off to camp to work there for two months meaning I would only get to talk to him on weekends and only for a couple hours which would be a huge stretch from our routine of talking a couple hours a day. While he was away at camp I had a lot of time to do some thinking and really figure out whether this was something I really wanted. In the last two weeks of us being apart something hit me, I knew for a fact that I couldn’t marry him. It was like all of the questions that I had ever had in our whole relationship just came and slapped me in the face. I was a complete mess for those two weeks, crying myself to sleep every night not wanting to admit to anyone or myself that this was something that I couldn’t do. There was one day when I had just had enough of pretending to be okay, I told my mom that I was having second thoughts about everything and that I didn’t think I could continue my relationship with him. She asked me why and this was the tough part, how was I supposed to put into words all the feelings that I had been caging up inside my mind and my soul. How was I supposed to show my inmost feelings and lies. I told her that him and I had to many major differences and that I had so many bigger dreams for my life then feeling like I was settling for something I wasn’t completely happy with. I knew that love wasn’t a fairytale and that love is not like it is in the movies, but I also knew that love had to be better than what he and I had. I then continued to call him and I told him that we needed to take a break so I could collect myself, I needed time to figure out how I was going to break up with the man who thought I loved him. I kept putting it off which only made things worse. He came to my house to surprise me a couple days after I told him we needed a break. He took me out for supper and we hung out a little bit but when he left I knew what I had to do. There was no option anymore, I was no longer in love with him and I could no longer lead him on. I moved into residence at university the day after and proceeded to catch up with friends and get back into the groove of school. The worst part of this was that everybody still thought that we were engaged and I wasn’t going to tell them otherwise until I had broken up with him. He came to see me the day before my birthday which was about five days after I moved to school, he had baked me cookies and brought me ice cream. I felt so bad because never in our year and a half relationship had he ever baked me anything. I sat him down on my bed and read him the letter that I had written out earlier that day because I knew when it came to it I would have a hard time saying what I needed to if I did not writhe it all down. He took it well but I was a complete mess, he held me while I cried then we talked for a little while then he left and I have not seen him since.
Many people ask me how I let it get that far, I don’t really have a good answer to that question but I do know that I felt as though if I let this go I would never have anything like this again. I didn’t want to give up having a best friend and someone that loved me for potentially being single forever. In our relationship I felt very put down and like all my dreams, talents and ambitions were being forced down so I could fit the square mold that he was trying to put me into. I am more than a house wife who will wait around for her husband and answer to his every beck and call. I am a loving person and I know I will make a great wife someday…SOMEDAY! If it is God’s will for my life I will fall in love again, but for now I am single and I am free to make my dreams happen one day at a time.
Those Stupid Things We Do
You know how sometimes you do something that you know is wrong and that you will probably regret in the next few days? Like telling someone you have feelings for them, gossiping about someone, telling a lie that you know is going to come back to haunt you, even cutting your own bangs…we all do it. Why?
I don’t really have an answer for this question but I do have experience with it. I tend to make stupid mistakes as soon as someone is trying to get close to me, I have a really awesome way of pushing people away because I feel like I don’t deserve them or the attention they are giving me. I screw myself over and am left feeling pitiful and sad. I don’t want to push them away, I want them to love me and I want to be able to love them too but I can’t seem to stop doing stupid things to prove to them I’m not worth hanging out with.
I am a really friendly person, at least I like to think that I am. I don’t have many friends, but I am okay with that. I have a few really close friends and some extra people that I hang out with so thats all I really need. I just need to learn to be content with the way things are and to not push people away because otherwise I will soon have no friends. Being patient is also something that I would benefit from learning, I tend to think that things have to happen sooner than later otherwise they won’t happen at all and therefore I end up initiating everything and become the “man” in all my relationships and that is really not what I want.
I need to learn that God is in control of my life and that I need to stop thinking that it’s my job to figure it all out.
Bethany Christine Creative 