my sleep pattern is whack!

[A-S warrior]

i never want to sleep again, i had a dream i was having sex with shirley from eastenders last night, woke up and shuddered. i had to endure that dream to, in detail right to the end. typical, whenever its lucy pinder i wake up halfway through.

[darkshine]

[JeanneA]

Oh dear do sorry to hear that Lets hope you don't have that dream too often!

[A-S warrior]

ahhhhhh and now relax. the maddness of the last few weeks has finally come to an end. i got through the reading today piece of cake. thank the lord for aspergers, i was up there all alone, on the podium with my familly looking up at me with tears streaming down there cheeks, and i felt little emotion, or even remorse for them. i had a job to do, and did it. and thats how it was. i even had my dad in tears after my reading, and he never crys. and again, i felt no pitty. i was too focused on my reading to let anything disturb my order of things. i went to a level of mental nerve that i dont think is possible without aspergers. (i could be wrong) (or maybe i went through the whole ceromony in denial) either way i got through it with a smile. with all this said, i can finally get my life back together, and my sleep pattern up and running again. its not to late for me tonight to get a good night sleep and wake at a decent time. with that said, im going to bed.

[LancsLad]

A-S Warrior I think at times we can be very task orientated and simply focus very much on the job in hand. We deal with emotions in our own ways and as such I would be carefull of feeling guilty simply because you did not respond in the way other people did. I think in some ways doing a reading helps as it places you in a different context from the main congregation.

 

I have always had problems at funerals because of the way I am. These places are very emotionally charged environments. I can remeber one of the most difficult funerals I had to go to was to bury a friend and climbing buddy who died aged 19 after slipping off the top of a crag in the Lake District after free climbing a realtivly easy route solo. I travelled up from London the night before and felt very emotional about the whole thing and was close to tears walking to the church on my own, I was very concious of breaking down. When I got there people were very upset by the event but when I saw the emotion I simply became very calm, I was also fortunate because I could focus on carrying the coffin. Throughout the service I thought I would be upset but I was not really rather very thoughtful. After the funeral a few people I knew from school who had turned up but were not really his close friends rather just class mates came up to me and had a bit of a go and caused a scene, because they felt I didn't care. It was that sort of event given the nature of his death and the publicity around it and i felt out of place even though he was such a good mate, he would have hated all the fuss as well. Back at his place his mum came up to me and asked if I was alright and thanks for coming up. I said it had been a massive shock to us all and I would deal with it in my own way in my own time.

 

A couple of years later I was in Langdale in the Lake District with a new climbing mate having a beer in the early evening when I asked him to go with me I had something important to do. I picked up my climbing boots from the tent and made my way to the crag my friend had died at the foot of and we soloed the same route. I sat at the top of the crag and asked could I be left alone and watched the sunset and cried and cried. About an hour later I returned to the tent when my mate asked are you ok, and I said yes very much so, he then pointed out if we hurried up we might make last orders and it was my round next, I said fine but we are having the best scotch they have, and we drank a toast to lost friends.

 

I think at times us Aspies can react in different ways to many people. In my experience this can be misunderstood that we simply do not care, we do but have difficulty expressing ourselves. This does not mean however that we are unemotional rather we are often quite serious and thoughtfull individulas who need to find the right way to go about doing things. After sorting my own emotions out up in the Lake District I realised that I had not seen my friends mum since the day of his funeral. On the way back to London I stopped off and took her a Dundee cake, her favorite, and we ate it over a cup of tea or two. I explained what I had done. She asked me to describe the climb and what the view was like in great detail as she could not face going there in person. For me there was closure at that point. I know it helped his mum a lot as well, wish I had done it sooner but I was not ready.

 

A-S Warrior take your time over this. I often think first time through such experiences we face a learning experience in trying to understand how and why we react. The funeral I have described was one of my first such experiences. I have gone through similar experiences since but with a far better understanding of myself. You will do things in your own way at all points in the process, some are in the open crowd, some might be shared with another individual but much of it will be by yourself. As we get older people leaving us is something that seems to happen on a more frequent basis, it helps to remind us that we are human and will not be here for ever.

 

Hope yopu slept well and you have a quiet period in your life which affords you the space to reflect,

 

Best wishes.

[A-S warrior]

thankyou for a good post lancs, and thankyou for the support.

[LancsLad]

A-S Warrior the point I am making here is quite an important one, and I am sure you understand it. That point is at times when we are in unfamiliar situations such as around the death of someone close to us, we tend to look at other people as a benchmark as to how we might choose to behave. Often we simply can not behave that way and a natural conclusion is that we have got things wrong, we are somehow flawed and there is something deeply wrong with ourselves.

 

In reality I think we are a long way off those simple assumptions. I think we can have enormous levels of meaning in our lives as can NT's but like a few NT's we are not prone to groupthink emotional behaviour. The best example of this is the death of Princess Dianna, where people were almost hysterical about someone they had never met, knew nothing about in reality, rather they got dragged into a groupthink emotional bandwagon. I am not for one second saying that a family in grief is displaying artifical emotion on this level, but I am saying I do not think we are very sucseceptable to this level of mass emotion and as such can stand out very starkly in such environments. When I was 6 for example I was beated by father when he came home and told me my nan, his mother had died, simply because I did not cry and was not upset. I triggered the beating and verbal assault because I said i was pleased that she had died, that is what she wanted as she was in great pain due to being riddled with cancer throughout her body. I still think I was right but I didn't know the social rules.

 

Deal with the aftermath of this period in your own way, because it will be the right way. Do not feel guilty about how you feel or how you responded. We gain experience through life which serves us well in our futures, this will when you look back be a key month or so in your life, and as you have said before it will be one where you grow and develop as an individual. Time to get a bit of structure back in your life.

 

Best wishes.

[darkshine]

I remember the day she died... (princess di) I was on holiday and my mum didn't like me much that day cuz me and my dad had gone for a walk and we got back and it was all on the telly and my mum was going to watch it all day so I put my shoes back on and said so what let's go back out again then so me and my dad just left her watching the tv for hours and stayed out of the way until later. I didn't see any point in being upset about someone I didn't know at all and who wouldn't have cared if I cared cuz we didn't know each other. I think my dad thought a similar thing - but my mum was like crying and all that - it didn't make sense.

 

The first funeral I went to was a family member (sort of removed relation) and the vicar kept saying amen and we (me and my dad) kept standing and then realised that he wasn't done and we had to sit back down again which made me and my dad burst out laughing in the church which made people think it was my fault for being insensitive - and it was worse when we couldn't stop and trying to stop made it worse - we stood and sat like 4 times each!! The prayer didn't seem to end!! It was a sh** day cuz my mum forced me to wear a bl**dy polo neck jumper with the really high neck and I felt like I had a hangman's noose on all day and I felt like I was being choked - I threw up the whole way home cuz I got travel sick and the stupid jumper made me sicker - 140 miles of being sick... it wasn't great.

 

I said before I did a reading at my nan's funeral... I made a few people unhappy at that too cuz my reading was honest - I said that they just left here in her chair alone and didn't visit and that there was no point being sad and guilty now cuz it was too late - it was quite poetic and some people said they liked it even if it wasn't normal.