I Feel Better Today

     I feel better today.  For me the days are longer than my nights.  I sleep late to shorten them.  Life is slow without my swim.  The car was totalled several weeks ago and it has made prisoners of me and Mom until it is repaired or replaced.  I used to live inside myself quite happily.  Now, it is all I can do to keep from going crazy inside my house outside myself.  I pace and stim and music play, read and eat and type.  It bores me all.  I think I want to start school again.  Pat says there are free online courses I can take; maybe some Math or Psychology or even Writing, if it is slow enough for me to keep up in it.  In typing I am much faster than before. We can type at the computer now without Mom seeing my keystrokes. She pushes me ever further to initiations of self.  It is good and bad.  To do it is good. To want to do more than my current limitations is bad.  It is a marathon being run by a sprinter that tires easily and looks for the finish line too soon. Mom needs to know I am tired sometimes.  Living challenge everyday wears you out, not just the parents, but autistic children too.  I will continue the race, but sometime I wonder at my opponents.  Are they my autistic limitations, parental demands for social functioning beyond my ability, or society as a whole?  Opponents you try to beat.  How much easier it would be as a relay run with teammates.  But the structure of treatment remains a conflict for control.  If you believe otherwise then you must be on the neurotypical side of it.  I am on my own side now, just trying to cope with a hostile environment called the world at large.
.