This first section that comes in three parts is about my own way of thinking having not been as good as it'll have been cracked up to be.
Part 1
I realise that I pretty much every day have a narrow focus on the things that I want to concentrate on. You know this is just me being philosophical in my own personal way, but my mind wondering off is kind of like the equivalent of a special needs person on a plane with their carer, and they’re visiting the cockpit, and the special needs person would say, “I want to press a button”, to which their carer would say, “No, let’s leave the nice captain to it”. I certainly wouldn’t want to become a pilot myself. To become a pilot, you have to work very hard, and in fact, you need a science degree. At least that’s what I’ve heard personally.
Each time I enjoy going out with my PA (Personal Assistant) whose name I won't mention in case I don't have the right to use it, some time after we get back home, I look forward to the next time I go out with him. I worry about taking things for granted in case it’s the equivalent of me playing the part of a fool. I’m personally not completely sure if there is any such person as nobody’s fool. The Tom Jones song ‘Without Love’ begins with the spoken line, “To live for today and to live for tomorrow is the wisdom of a fool”. It’s got the repeated line in the song, “Without love, I have nothing, nothing at all”. It’s lines like that which have become far too repetitive for my liking personally. There might as well be a line in a song that goes something like, “Without love, all I have is the centre of a doughnut”.
Anyway, at the beginning of Barry White’s version of Just The Way You Are, there is a spoken bit that begins with the line, “I would never take anything for granted. Only a fool would take things for granted”. It’s hearing things like that which stop me from living present moment to present moment, mind you it’s got a lot harder for me to do that, so I’m not really able to live from present moment to present moment anyway. The song 'Just The Way You Are' was originally by Billy Joel, only it didn't have Barry White's spoken words being mentioned in Billy's version. All of the things that I am happy to have in my life, I worry that they will be gone eventually. I want to have the freedom of living from moment to moment freedom like I used to be able to. I know I probably won’t always be able to go out with my current PA, which is why I want to be able to enjoy going out with him while I still can. I know I am right to do so in my own way.
Also, quite often when I choose to think of a certain thing, my brain seems to reject that thought. Also, not that I like going into town anymore apart from when I’m having an appointment at the dentist or at the optician’s, but I remember being in town in around early 2008, and I was having my music on the MP3 player that I was owning at the time and my headphones in, and I can’t remember how I overheard this at the time, but I do remember overhearing a woman saying “We haven’t got much time”, and not that this is a bad thing for me necessarily, but it’s been stuck in my memory ever since, and I’m talking fifteen years ago here. Philosophically speaking, I’m sure the woman forgot about it within fifteen minutes, if not fifteen seconds.
It’s as a result of me overhearing outside things I would be forced to memorise that I cannot be outdoors without having my headphones in while listening to music that I like listening to on my MP3 players. Again, this is just me being philosophical in my own way here, but it’s not the outside noises that are trying to make me memorise insignificant stuff, it’s just my senses that are trying to take in as much as possible without me so much wanting to take it all in. I think the way my brain works, I’d remember anything at all for that matter. I very much hope that there are not too many people in the world who like me have that problem. I think the reason I have that problem myself is not just because of my autism, but because of so many negative noises that will have hurt my ears in the past when I was a child. Examples include overhearing other people sing and overhearing shouting from outside people.
Also, because as a child I wasn’t so much surrounded by calmness, I easily get anxious if ever I feel like I’m in a position where things are not calm. I have problems remembering the times in my life so far when I will have been in calm situations in the past, which is why whenever I’m surrounded by calmness, it’s more of a relief for me than joy. Also, I read on Billy Connolly’s Wikipedia page that at St Peter’s Primary School, Billy decided that he wanted to make people laugh. “I can remember the moment in the school playground. I would have been 7 or 8. And I was sitting in a puddle and people were laughing. I had fallen in it and people found it funny. And it wasn't all that uncomfortable, so I stayed in it longer than I normally would because I really enjoyed the laughing. My life was very unhappy at the time, and laughter wasn’t something I heard all the time, so it was a joy. And I realised quickly that if you can have an audience this way, life was rather pleasant.”
Also, I have no plans to leave Colchester because I have done so for a large majority of my life so far, and this is most unlikely to happen in my personal opinion, but if I was to move to an even nicer place south or here or west of here, I will still have to have my headphones in whenever I am in a noisy environment, in other words, everywhere I would go in the UK it would always the same for me because I am paranoid about going out without someone accompanying me such as my Mum for example, and the fact that there are horrible people everywhere in Britain just like everywhere else in the world, although most people are nice and decent. I want to enjoy my young days while I still can and while the grass is still green, and the fact that I know I am right to do so.
Part 2
Something else which I've had for quite some time now is associating years with numbers from the year 2001 onwards, although I won't have planned to start doing it in the first place. Because new year was still a big thing for me at the time, and it still is to this day to a certain extent thanks to me still associating certain years with certain numbers, it comes directly from being 14 years old in 2001 and knowing about the September the 11th Attacks, aka 9/11 when it happened that year. I would say New York City had its heart ripped out by what had happened at the time. I don't think very many people could quite believe it. I always associate that event with the number 1 because once again it happened in 2001 and both the middle digits of that year were 0, let alone the first digit being 2. On top of that, the main reason why I have been associating certain years with certain numbers by force from my own mind, such as 2001 with the number 1, 2002 with the number 2, 2003 with the number 3 etcetera is because for the next nine years after the year 2000, once again both the middle digits were 0.
I'm not saying me associating certain years with certain numbers is a bad thing for me necessarily, it just happened, and something else that has contributed to me still having it in my life is I have obviously been alive for more of the 21st century than the 20th century. Having a good memory is a gift, but for me it can go to extremes if I'm not very much mistaken, and it's certainly not without its problems if you can't help remembering things that you wish you wouldn't. Also, I have for some time felt forced by my own mind to associate everything that will have happened in each following year after 2000 with each following number, regardless of whether those things will have been good or bad or even neutral. For example, I associate each and every album and single that was released in 2009 with the number 9, and it’s the same with every album and single that will have been released in 2001 and after with the number 1 onwards. I also associate the London Bombings aka 7/7 that happened in 2005 with the number 5 because as well as both middle digits of that year both being 0, it ended in the digit 5. I could be wrong about this, but I don’t think 7/7 in this country was quite as bad as 9/11 in America.
Yet another example is the 2011 England Riots that I associate with the number 11 because they happened in the year 2011, although of course just the first middle digit of that year was 0, let alone the first digit of the year obviously being 2. Who knows what would have happened if it hadn’t have been for 9/11 that happened back in 2001. I don’t so much feel the need to keep being forced by my own mind to associate everything that will have happened in 2001 and after with certain numbers having never had the desire to because of that. I would quite like to step away from it to some extent if I possibly can, in which case it would cause me some freshness I think if I do end up succeeding at that. It won’t have been a very common thing for people to have considering all the different time periods people will have been born at. I think also, it won't have been something for anyone who is still alive and has been for more of the 20th century than the 21st century.
Also, there are people alive today who wouldn’t be old enough to remember the year 2001 vividly enough, unlike me who is old enough to remember 2001 to a certain extent. I don’t so much envy those people seeing as I’m so used to having been born in the year 1987 myself. I know it sounds an ironic reason for me to mention on my website something that I personally wish not to always have. Plus, it probably also wouldn't be something for people to have who tend to get the years mixed up. This part may not even always be a part of my website. Also, I get mildly anxious each new year because as well as each new year that begins, with certain things that happen each new year, I feel forced to associate those things with each following number. Also, I associate the 2024 United Kingdom riots with the number 24 hence them having happened in 2024. I’m going to feel forced to associate certain things that will have happened this year with the number 25, hence the current year being 2025. As I say, it's not a bad thing for me so much.
I'm even going to feel forced to associate certain things that will happen in the next year with the number 26 which you hardly need me to tell you what year that will be. Also, although the Falklands War happened in 1982, I don’t so much associate that with the number 82 because although the year ended in the number 82, the first two digits of that year were 1 and 9, just like with all the other years of the 20th century, and the fact that the first two digits of every single year of the 21st century will have been 2 and 0. Anything that will have happened before 2001, I wouldn’t so much feel forced to associate with certain numbers. Because certain things will probably happen in big news this year just like in every other year, it’ll probably be a lot easier for me to associate the bigger things that will happen this year with the number 25 more so than the littler things that will happen this year. At least I don’t so much associate the year 2000 with the number zero.
I think me having possibly an exceptionally good memory and having been alive for more of the 21st century than the 20th century has got a lot to do with me so far associating the years 2001 to 2025 with the numbers 1 to 25 and certain things that will have happened in that time with each number from the numbers 1 to 25 so far, besides which, many years have passed now since the millennium.
Part 3
This third and final part of the first section on my website is something not to be underestimated, but because it’s just somehow very easy for certain chemicals or neurones in my brain to jump around a lot, I often feel like I’m having voices in my head that are just giving me too much monkey business, when in fact I don’t need it very much at all, that’s if you know what I’m trying to say here. They seem to think that I have a problem, and they just don’t seem to understand that I’m not the one with the problem, and that it’s them that seem to have a problem with me controlling my thoughts and my life for myself. As long as I’m going to have this problem where my brain would automatically make me memorise anything at all, I’m better off remaining an introvert.
Either because of me possibly encountering too much disapproval in the past or because of my autism, or possibly even a combination of both of those, my main problem is although I don’t often encounter disapproval, I constantly worry about getting it from time to time. It turns out I have something which I haven’t always heard of called ‘Rejection Sensitive Disphoria’ (RSD). Sometimes, the smallest change in tone can make me catastrophize, and I tend to worry for days what I did wrong. It’s easy for me to forget who I am when criticised and hyperfocus on my negatives. It makes me feel as if this moment of hurt is my new ‘forever’. I can’t help but feel like other people take it that I take everything too personal, and that I feel like they have a hard time understanding why I tend to get emotional and stressed out all of a sudden.
My emotions can get so unbearably strong and unstoppable that I’m afraid of experiencing them at all. I tend to avoid going outside and socializing because me constantly trying to hide my faults is just too nerve-wrecking. After years of ridicule, I’ve buried my emotions so deep that I sometimes forget that I am supposed to feel anything at all. If confronted or hurt, I have a hard time forming words and my heart beats so loud that it feels like I’m about to pass out. I’m so afraid of disappointing other people that I constantly expect myself to work at unrealistic hyperfocus levels (If I just don’t give up). I get incredibly upset when people don’t take me seriously, so I tend to make fun of myself to protect myself. I am just afraid of myself when I get hurt. Sometimes I wonder who I really am.
I have involuntarily become good at finding out and saying what people want to hear, and not so good at defending my own opinions. It’s just too difficult for me to reach out for help and for others to really get to know me. Intimate connections can hurt the most, and I’m just too afraid of ruining them. The Canadian activist Jim Wong-Chuwo who was born in 1949 and died in 2017 said in 2016, “In my late teens and early 20s, I was very confused. You’re constantly haunted by this idea that you’re not legal. It destroyed me totally as an individual… That’s identity for you. When you talk about identity to the infinite extreme, it feels like you’re a fake. It feels like you’re not a part of everything around you, that your participation is not welcome and not well-received. That’s what you’re looking at. I was sad and outraged”. I do very much identify with what he was talking about the year before he died.
For me it’s a very understandable feeling because of how difficult growing up was for me because of all the negative things that I witnessed and had affected me during my childhood and again over the 2010s. Also, and I know some older people maybe like this themselves who knows, but I regularly have this fear inside me where whenever some young person is serving an older person in for example a shop or in a pub, although the young person doing the serving is completely unaware of this probably because they didn’t grow up with this idea themselves like I have, the older person is looking at them or talking to them as if they are actually saying to them, "You are not a good person", and "You are not worthy", and "You don’t count", as if they think that they are among the young people that cause trouble or that they think they count when in fact they don’t, which I myself worry that I might be the target that kind of unnecessary judgement myself from people who would be quite a bit older than me.
It’s nothing concrete can I just point out, it’s just that I constantly worry about being the subject of that kind of unprovoked disapproval myself from various members of the public, probably because a lot of the older people will have had more life experiences than those that are a lot younger than them. You know I’m telling you the truth when I’m telling you it’s nothing concrete. This whole thing of my head contradicting that the older people are trying to put the younger people down despite the younger people being blissfully unaware themselves is just one of those things resulting in me developing a paranoia for taking part in everyday society like some people have to.
I would say for someone on the autistic spectrum like me who feel like they have voices in their heads talking to them all the time, the autistic people trying to shut them up is like in the song Rabbit by Chas And Dave, especially with the line in it that goes, “You won’t stop talking! Why don’t you give it a rest!” Although my voices seem to interfere with my life a lot, I would never interfere with other people’s lives myself. It’s like if I chose to do that without good reason, each time it would happen, my voices would force me to add it to my repeat list regardless of whether I would want to or not as if they would think that I knew it would happen anyway. That’s the way it seems to work in my life, and that me, my voices and everyone else in the world despite all the different social backgrounds in it all work together in that context. But my voices just seem to be bugging the system, and I am fast becoming very tired of it now quite frankly.
One of the main problems with my voices is they don’t seem to run out of energy, whereas I, I’m easily short of energy, and that although I’m possibly developing energy for myself, I end up spending a great deal of it in trying to be what my voices seem to want me to be on their behalf. They even seem to be the equivalent of someone who someone else would say about him, “I just don’t know how he has the energy to keep going”, or “Sometimes he’s got to know when to quit”. I even feel like because of my voices, my head has been full of rubbish a lot and I can still play in my head numerous things that bothered me in the past. My head is certainly not like how in the 1960s, a teenager’s head was full of Beatles, probably shortly prior to Cream having just appeared and having turned the sound of pop music upside down within twelve months, and also Jimi Hendrix round about the same time.
Also, despite me not wanting to participate and socialise in the outside world and society to a high enough extent, which if I’m not very much mistaken is more for the confident people unlike me, although it’s nice for me seeing fresh faces, I’m better off seeing them in action rather than in certain episodes on YouTube of various programmes that I used to watch in the past such as quiz shows. To clear things up, I do know damn well that you don’t have to be good looking to win in a quiz show, and I am confident in certain areas myself, but certainly not enough to for example be as successful as Meat Loaf was with Bat Out Of Hell. I think also, a proper relationship shouldn’t be for people who like me have high support needs. I think that’s something I have learned the easy way in a sense. I haven’t always known that relationships can be tough going at times, and that all women have periods on a monthly basis until they reach the menopause stage at a certain age.
And another thing, although I prefer not to have anymore appointments having been so used to doing comfort zones myself for a number of years, I would never sulk about having to attend certain ones that get pencilled in my life every now and again. It’s my personality to be sensible as well as reasonable under circumstances like that. Talking of which, I take pride in studying where my behaviour stands today and where it’s got to. I don’t cry anymore, but I still have the occasional bout of eye leakage about some of the things that I feel I could have handled better in the past, though not in an upset way. I’m sort of not actually wallowing in self-pity and feeling sorry for myself about it, but I have painful moments where I feel that had I’d have handled certain things better in the past that weren’t worth me flying off at and that I wouldn’t now, I probably wouldn’t be complexly reminded of those past occurrences from time to time. I say painful, it’s actually not too painful for me thankfully.
This has been an every day theme for me for a long period of time now, but I’m just having this constant battle with the authority of my voices in my head in trying to get them to grant me present moment freedom in my head. For far too long now they have been a continual conflict with the system in me, and have been proving tough nuts for me to crack as well. All the time I have certain thoughts stored in my memory for when I need to think about any one of them at any chosen opportunity, but I constantly have to be careful which thought I would choose for fear that whatever thought that might me, my voices would reflexively move in on me and try to make me think about it for as long as they want me to rather than let me think about it and shift to another thought in my own time.
These are just some of the thoughts that I have stored in my memory every day, but pretty much every one of those that are a part of what is mentioned in the latter part of the previous paragraph, I am constantly reluctant to think about any one of them for that very matter. My main problem is I feel like I have to be universally popular to get my voices in my head to praise me, and that if I do or say something that someone on the receiving end would disapprove of in any way, even if I don’t see the disapproval coming, my voices seem to think they can give me a hard time over it as if they seem to think that I don’t know how it feels to be criticised and that I don’t understand the seriousness of the effect and the consequences, which is obviously just complete rubbish.
This could be either an ADHD thing or an autism thing or even a bit of both, but I feel like my brain has got Tourette’s syndrome and that it’s just constantly blurting out things that are not true as well as things that I wouldn’t want to say to other people. I would never deliberately do or say anything that would upset anyone. It’s like at any time in the future I chose to for example act like a lunatic without good reason, which I wouldn’t can I just point out, it would get added to my repeat list because my voices would force me to let it happen because they know that I would know they would make me memorise such action of mine regardless of whether I would want to remember it or not.
The comedian Sean Lock said on his first live DVD recorded and released back in 2008, “I hate getting told off, it seems you get told off a lot, you shouldn’t get told off at all”, which is fine, accept that this may well have been as a result of me having got told off for little things that weren’t worth me getting told off for, possibly having happened too many times in the past if I’m not very much mistaken, my voices would reflexively move in on me and tell me off for instances of minor misconduct, such as little things that I would do wrong that I won’t have meant to have done. It just makes me feel paranoid all the time because it constantly makes me feel like my voices in my head are just spying on me and watching my every move, which as you can imagine robs me of present moment freedom and joy.
I shouldn’t really be having this issue in the time of my life, particularly in the modern day, and especially as I have been out of school for more than twenty years having left in 2003. I don’t want it to sound like I’m making any blasted accusations to anyone who doesn’t really deserve to feel like I would be towards them in any unnecessary way at all, but I feel like there will have been various people in my past who are to blame to a certain extent for me having various chemicals in my brain making me feel like I’m having voices in my head every day trying to divert my thinking and stopping me from absorbing the things that I want to get into my stride with. It’s something which although it was easier for me to do that in the past even though things weren’t good with my life then, it’s got harder and harder for me over the years to do so whenever I’d feel the need to.
I also feel like my voices are trying to get me to play ‘Simple Simon’ with them all the time when in fact I’ve constantly got more important things to think about for myself. If I’m not very much mistaken, my voices trying to play with my brain all the time is a bit like some idiot on a plane interfering with the pilots’ controls in the cockpit, something which again I would never do myself. Plus, I would never go on a plane again myself for fear that I would die in a plane crash, and the fact that I would find airports much too overwhelming myself. I constantly try to reason with my voices, like I would say to them, “Play with your own life, but don’t play with anyone else’s”. In some other words, I often tend to say to myself, “I would never play with anyone else’s lives, so why should my voices try and play with mine?” It’s obvious when you think about it a little bit logically unless I am wrong here.
Again, it’s just the way certain chemicals in my brain work, and this may well be as well as my autism possibly, but my voices in my head are just stopping me from figuring myself out all the time, as if they care if they even so much as realise that themselves, and they seem to think that they can figure me out for me rather than let me figure myself out for myself. Another thing I can’t help thinking about too much on a regular basis is in the back of my mind, various people in the world are trying to make people in the world understand various importances in the world as if they’re trying to beat them down about it. I know there may well be some people like that in the world, but it’s something which I would never try and do myself. I’m sick to the back teeth of various members of the government thinking that they can think of other people such as those who are younger than them as bad excuses for human beings, and that those government members think that they can try and make them feel like they’re just like something that’s worth being wiped off somebody else’s boot, I’m not being funny here.
Again, this may be a part of my morbid paranoia, but I feel like I’d just be an easy target for people such as those that are older than me thinking that I’m a lot younger than they think I am. That’s one of the main reasons why I can never want to leave the house without people such as my Mum accompanying me. I can’t just ignore happenstance reactions from other people, that’s how paranoid I am about going out by myself, and it’s important for other people to just recognise that. Really, I’m not meant to live strong enough for the outside world and society myself. I think while some people show they can take bad criticism or disapproval, I myself just can’t. Again, in some other words, because of all the disapproval I have encountered in the past without meaning to and certainly without wanting to, I always feel like I should encounter no more of it, while other people will have themselves, some certainly deserving it even. I also think pretty much every sensory issue I have developed for myself overtime was just involuntary.
To try and explain it as clearly as possible, my main problem is I can't help but feel like because other people don't understand me means that they don't approve of me at all. I also can't help but feel like although most young people are not a menace to society, a lot of people that are quite a bit older than young people, including myself being a young 37 years old, I fear that they are taking it that we are all culprits, which certainly is not true about myself anyway. It's a constant fear inside me that reinforces my lack of self-respect if you can see where I'm coming from. I trust anyone reading this bit on my website to know that I'm telling the truth when I'm saying I'm not treating it as anything concrete. As I say, I think it's just my rejection sensitive disphoria, a condition which I think is unheard of as far as I'm concerned. I'm just trying to sound as philosophical as possible when I say that.
