Somebody Somewhere

Somebody Somewhere by Donna Williams Page B

Book: Somebody Somewhere by Donna Williams Read Free Book Online
Authors: Donna Williams
Ads: Link
falls somewhere in the middle of my abilities.
    Teaching would stretch a few of my abilities to cover for the ones I don’t have (a lot of bluff and shortcuts to do with reading and understanding). Socially it is way beyond me and I stick out like a sore thumb.
    Still, I think, in the future when I have some security, I will be able to afford the luxury of telling an employer the score to do with my abilities and difficulties so I can really feel okay to stay in a job and others can feel okay with me, too.
    I have thought too short-term before and didn’t realize how obvious some of my difficulties can be after a while. I also thought it was better to feel “on the run” than tell others what was happening (and I didn’t know how to explain what was happening). Needing work badly also meant I had to try to really impress people why I should get a job, but they never lasted.
    From writing to other high-functioning autistic people, I understand some of them are working for employers who understand their difficulties and they get a lot more patience and proper help that way. I think I can now accept that I am disabled, with a very big
abled
and still quite a
dis.
(Smiling works wonders though—smile, and people think you can do almost anything, you know.) Anyway, what life is about is finding a place where you can be comfortable and safe and it doesn’t mess you up or use parts of you while leaving the rest to rot…
    That’s it,
          Donna.

    I moved to the country to live with my father and his girlfriend. I brought in my cardboard boxes of things and put them out along the wall in a row. There were things that needed to be hung but thecloset was full of my father’s girlfriend’s things. She had shown me the bit of space I could have in the closet but as I stood there with some clothes draped over my arm, I could hardly bear what I would have to inflict upon them.
    Her clothes didn’t smell like mine. Her clothes didn’t look like mine. Her clothes had never lived with mine and yet they were meant to be cooped up in the same wardrobe together. My things were symbolic extensions of myself. If they were touched by others I would have to disown them as non-me. I felt choked with impending claustrophobia. “Sorry clothes,” I said, as I put one of her coat hangers into a jacket and hung it up. I moved her things aside. Not far enough. I thought of what to put between them. Other people’s things always seemed contaminating, merely by virtue of being theirs; “my world,” “the world.”
    I drew back the sheets. They were a trendy in-between color. I wished I had sheets. Then I wished I had a bed. Then I wished I had a room. Then I wished I had a home. Then I got depressed and gave up.
    These sheets, whether they were on my bed or not, were not in any way mine. They didn’t smell like me. They had no patterns with which I was familiar, under which I could lie in the morning light, safe and enclosed, the sheet a tent over my head. I didn’t like the “lovely” sheets.
    Just as I got used to them, I drew back the covers one day to find my father’s girlfriend had changed them. Trying to control the tension in my voice, I asked, “Have you washed the sheets?” “Yes,” replied my father’s girlfriend authoritatively. “I don’t like to wash them,” I informed her. “Well around here you do,” she said crisply and invited no response.
    I went to the room and sat on the floor, screaming silently in my head. No words came out but I felt deafened. I felt trapped, my life taken out of my control. I wanted out of this prison.
    This social claustrophobia was an old pattern. It drove me crazy and I knew it wasn’t good for me. I tried to think of whether leaving was a logical response or not. I tried to imagine why this woman might be upset. I thought about how I might feel if someone respondedto my changing the sheets on one of the beds in my own house if I had had one. I wouldn’t have done it. I

Similar Books

Only Superhuman

Christopher L. Bennett

The Spy

Clive;Justin Scott Cussler

Betting Hearts

Dee Tenorio

At First Touch

Mattie Dunman

A Fresh Start

Trisha Grace

Compliments

Mari K. Cicero