Still searching...

My father died in August 1980, when he was forty-six years old, he died as a result of his alcoholism, which began from as early as ten years before his death. This is the reason why I do not drink. The dramatic change that alcohol manifested in my father, a man who I idolized above all else, prompted my vow, time and time again, to never touch this poison.

As the years passed on after his untimely death I found out that I suffer from Asperger’s Syndrome, which, the more I delve into his past actions, I am convinced so did he.

Now I wonder if his demise was based not on his drinking but ultimately on the cause for his alcoholic dependency. What I do know, from personal experience, is the difficulty Aspers’ have in rationalizing and trying to live in a world that just does not seem logical, as least to us. And as the years of our life progresses this difficulty builds into almost a physical pain we end up living with from day to day.

Was it this confusion between what-is and what should-be that pushed Dad to find a way out of his pain? Did alcohol supply this refuge? Maybe with the right support system he could have been saved or, maybe he had the right idea, the only way out is to dull the pain of living in a land of strangers.

On nights, when sleep cannot conquer the pain of days past, I wish that a savior would appear and take me to the land of Aspergers Syndrome. Where I am not the odd man out, where I fit the norm, where I understand what’s going on and why, where I feel accepted. Too soon though morning comes and I am back in this alien world that its inhabitants call Earth.

My question for me now, is what support system can I use to dull this pain, a support that I know, regardless of my difference, I’d feel safe to completely let down my always-on interface (that allows me to survive “real” life) and just fully relax giving me time to recharge my soul. From my father’s experience alcohol does not seem the right answer.

For a while there I thought I’d found it…love for another. It helped me survive, and for the first time in my life, or so I thought, I could drop my interface and speak normally. Until my savior found out that I was suffering from Asperger’s, from then on nothing I said had value anymore. And once something has no more value you get rid of it, which was why I ended up being discarded. So love did not work out and now I wonder if my father had the right answer from the start.

So here I am, pass my middle years, still looking for a respite to my pain, which has grown to the extent that some days I have to force myself out of bed in the morning and I’m not winning as many of these morning battles as I used to. My daily hope is that I will find this nirvana but of late more and more my thoughts are coming to the conclusion that there is no such thing.

Is more than 3 loves too much to ask for?

These last two months I've had more, than any other period in my life, time to spend by myself. Hey, after sending out job applications and project submissions, roaming the net and scrolling through Facebook and YouTube, I am still left with way too much alone time.

With nothing much else to do I end up spending much of this down time roaming through the file boxes in my mind, playing the time traveller, as I relive the past, remembering what I've done, what I shouldn't have done, and with my accumulated fifty-four years of experience, realizing what I should have done.

Piercing these veils and once again experiencing the life I've lived I can now identify the three times that I've been in love, and here I mean really in love not infatuation and not lust which, face it, are important motivators to all of us as we grow up.

This is not to say I do not recognize the importance, to me at least, of my first real girlfriend, or the first girl I kissed or the first girl I slept with, these three, as well as many other encounters, will always have a place in my heart and mind.

No, what I'm talking about here are the three times I was bowled over both heart and soul by a woman in my life. And unfortunately my life is not a Hallmark movie, so the boy does not always get the girl in the end; in fact I ended up with none.

The first girl I fell for started out as a friend of a friend, but as I grew to know her during the time we spent together I recognized that she was someone who I could share the rest of my life with, the only problem, which ended up being insurmountable, was that she never felt that way about me.

I realized this early in our friendship but being the insufferable romantic that I was, ignored all the continuing signs, and as they say, hope blooms eternal in the young (yes I was young at the time) romantic soul, I ended up spending a long time (years in fact) as a friend, hoping that she, as if we were in a Harlequin romance, would one day wake up and really see me. Alas this was not to happen and I had to finally come to terms with this on the day she got married.

The second love of my life was a co-worker, a wonderful, intelligent and beautiful woman, who was sexy with an individuality that made her even sexier, as if that was even possible. And she was sophisticated but with a down to earth attitude when dealing with people.

I completely messed this relationship up by betraying her. Worst, is that I really think I had an opportunity with her because, unlike my first love, I think that this amazing woman was really starting to fall in love with me. H ’mm…I may be wrong here, since I am no longer in contact with her and have never spoken to her about this but my ego would like me to think that this was so.

This is one of my “I should not have done” life events. The ignobly fact is that I unrealistically thought I might have had a chance, one of many I tried to convince myself of,  with my first love, so I dishonoured the growing relationship with this fantastic woman by bringing it to a complete end without any regard for what she had invested into our relationship.

To say she ended up hating me is an understatement, and I feel that she is completely justified in her hate. To this day breaking up with her, both how and why I did it, even after fifty-four years of making mistakes, is still the one thing that I have done that I feel most ashamed about, ever.

My third and final love is of course my ex-wife. I won’t go into the details of our break-up (since I've already chronicled them) other than to say that it ended in my being betrayed, not by the actual breakup, which I can rationalize as two people growing apart as their life experiences changes them, for the better or worse, who can say, but betrayal by my ex’s actions after asking for a divorce.

Maybe this is my karma coming back to haunt me for my betrayal with my second love, who knows, who can tell?

Recently, one of my ex-sister-in-laws told me that I am still an intelligent and handsome man and that I can still find someone to spend the rest of my life with. Is this so, can anyone really expect more than three real loves in any one life?

And is my sister-in-law telling the truth, I mean, at fifty-four, I am over-weight (obese by medical definitions), with jowly cheeks, more than one chin and man boobs that many a woman would be proud of. Not to mention the dappled grey hair on my head, face and chest. At least the hair on my back hasn't gone grey as yet, or at least I hope so since I cannot see it and none of my friends have said so, and yes I have hair on my back a lot of it. So am I really a catch?

We all have self-images of who we are and what we look like, and most of us hold these images of ourselves from when we were at our best, which tends to be sometime in our twenties. So too do couples, they keep that idyllic image of themselves when they got married or where dating, and these are the images they see whenever a wife or husband looks at their spouse, regardless of the extra weight or additional wrinkles.

Do women really look for the middle aged, over-weight, out-of-condition, greying man? For an answer guess how many more women drool over George Clooney as they do over Paul Giamatti?

Truth be told, these days, when my friends indicate that a good looking young woman is eyeing me, my first thought is that she has daddy issues.

This is not to say that infatuation and lust are totally counted out, they played a big part in many relationships I had when I was younger and maybe they will once again, at least I can hope, but a true love again…maybe that’s stretching luck a bit too far.

Re-Coding my life

I am not the person I was when I was in my teens, nor in my twenties, thirties or forties. Thinking back on my life I can see the difference in me as each decade of experience goes by.

The thoughts that defined who I am keeps getting modified (some are actually discarded) and re-moulded as each second, each minute, each hour of living experience allows me to build my character byte by byte. The biological program that is called Antonio Rodriguez constantly goes through revision after revision attempting to generate, to create the best Antonio Rodriguez possible.

This is one of the reason's I could never understand when being told, "You never did that in the past?" or "You always do this" in an argument. If it was yesterday or last week or last month then I could understand the comment but when referring to years past, surely this argument is invalid. Either that or the person believes that change is impossible and who we are at birth is who we remain for the rest of our lives. And that's just sad.

But no matter the sophistication of our software, sometimes the hardware fails and the program needs revising to best suit the changed abilities.

I think that is what is happening to me. With the disappearance of my Pituitary gland, in my late forties, my physical body lacked many vital neurological signals, signals that would prompt the body to produce chemicals to keep hardware and software operating as one.

I no longer produce and regulate these chemicals automatically. Now I take them in tablet form every morning and while they supply the correct chemicals in the correct quantities, the tablets cannot supply the regulation required by my body's needs. As a consequence I am active, bright, intuitive and full of initiative after I take my tablets in the morning but by the afternoon I have to prod, cajole and drag myself to complete most tasks.

One major difference between pre-pituitary and post pituitary, that I can identify is initiative, I definitely lack the drive I use to have, the need to get the job done, to seek out new options, to boldly go we no man...hang on, sorry got a bit carried away there, Lets just say that I lack the UMPHA I used to have.

So now the challenge is how to survive with this new mindset, the old Antonio Rodriguez ver 5.4 software keeps asking for hardware connections that just are no longer available. Time to change, to re-code, to bring the two systems back into alignment, not sure how long it will take, not sure of what it will take, hey...I'm not even sure that it can be fixed. But I'll try, I'll seek, I'll learn...at least in the mornings.

What do you do?

What do you do when you see the end coming, nearer and nearer? Is it better to fight to the bitter end, to rile against the reaper and go down clawing and screaming for life’s precious gift or better just to relax and slip peacefully into the dark?

I've lived an uneventful yet peaceful and enjoyable life, having had good friends to grow up with; an education to stimulate my mind, a curiosity to allow me to excel in my chosen profession and at one time an excellent reputation among my peers.

For a time I experienced love for a woman who I trusted above all else with whom I had a child allowing me the ultimate adventure of being a father.

My wife ultimately ended up betraying me, leaving me in ruin financially, undermining my working reputation and destroying my emotional well-being.

My son has grown up, just turning 21, and has turned out to be the best of his mother and me; I am so proud of him and his accomplishments and know that his life will bloom from here on in. His love for me is one of the few remaining fuels that keep my life force turning over.

But the cliff edge approaches, I can now see the ragged rocks at its parameter and understand that the last few miles will not be smooth and easy-going. What do I have to look forward to when all I see in my future is the dark hopelessness of living alone in a world devoid of companionship, of love, of the touch of another human being.

Of imminent homelessness as my money finally runs out and no job in sight, of despair, a fall into an unrelenting depression, spiralling deeper and deeper into the abyss without the medicine I need to pull me out, as my thyroid continues to betray me by slowing my metabolism to point where I spend more time asleep than awake, as my sugar levels spike, no longer kept artificially in check, bringing along with it the expected medical side effects.

That’s my immediate future, those are the rocks that I can see, but what is beyond that, what is hidden in the mist hiding the cliff’s edge, an edge I know is there because I can hear the thunder of the water as it hits the bottom at the end of a long fall, I see the river of my life run pass me, picking up speed, as it rushes towards the edge, I see the water eddying, curling away from from the end, just before the edge as if trying to resist before relenting to the inevitability of the edge, of the current, of gravity.

We all swim against this current, at the beginning the river of life is lazy, meandering between all the possibilities that life has to offer but as we get closer and closer to our edges, the water speed picks up and the bed straightens out until it is an arrow pointing straight and true to your final destiny.

How long do we each fight against the pressure of life’s raging river, how do we swim at the river’s end, is it the Australian crawl, fighting the edges’ drop every step of the way,  do we just float on top of the water and let the end come in its own time, or do we accept the inevitability of it all and swim downstream with all the strength left to us, acknowledging the past peacefulness of the slow float along the plains of possibilities but embracing the rush towards the edge and the inescapable drop.

WHAT DO YOU DO!

LIME…Life in a Monopolistic Environment

Customer Service, taken literally, describes the interaction between a company and its customers whether that service is good, bad or in-different.
Many companies assume that to have a Customer Service Department and/or Customer Service Policy is all that is required for good service, but like any tool, be it a kitchen knife, a screw driver, gun or customer service representative, it is the user that determines the function and not the tool itself.
Last week I went into LIME to discuss a problem I had with their service and my bill(it still amuses me that a company built solely around the use of the telephone refuse to carry out business on the phone. Come on people! I carry out my far more private banking business by phone but, the phone service provider, oh no, they demand that you must see them in person to discuss even the most trivial revisions to your account.)  I had previously written them about it but to date, one month later, I have yet to receive a reply.
I moved into a new Apartment in July, which has an existing telephone and internet service. I utilized the internet right away but the telephone I did not use, mostly because I use my cell phone as my primary phone contact, until, almost a month later, to realize that I had no dial tone.
I assumed that the fault was internal since, after all, the internet was working, so after changing each separate component one at a time, the connecting wire, then the DSL filter and finally the phone itself to no avail, I finally called in a telephone repairman, who indicated that the fault was with LIME and not my internal connections.
By the time all this happened a month had passed, so I wrote LIME indicating the problem and asked that the phone portion of my bill be credited to this account since the phone was not (and still is not) working. The internet portion I will gladly pay.
So, three weeks later when I received my bill with the phone charge still there and no indication of any credits, I went into see LIME’s customer service. Only to be told that 1) they issue credits only after the fault is fixed and 2) credits are only issued from the time the fault is reported until service is restored.
My next question to the Service Representative was what happens if they take six months to repair a fault, this system, as explained to me, seems to have no accountability on the company’s side but all the liability on the customers side. The Customer Service’s answer…”Sir you’re not listening to me, a credit will be issued only after the fault has been repaired.“
My first thought was of Skynet, maybe the take over is imminent and this person in front of me was really a robot with a glitch in her system. That would explain the repeating of a previous answer to a different question. So to confirm my hypostasis I asked the new question again. She replied, “Sir you’re not listening to me, a credit will be issued only after the fault has been repaired.“
Definitely a robot!
While she was talking to me she was also clacking away on her keyboard, she then advised that they had received no fault report, so they were not liable for a credit for the June and August periods that my phone was not working, hence the robot supplied information that credits are only due from the time of making a fault report.
I decided, since I was dealing with a robot I would use my considerable experience in dealing with Positronic brains (after all I’ve read all of Isaac Asimov's Robotic novels, more than once) to pose a new query using cyclic logic.
“So,” I said to LIME’s customer service representative, “if I report my functioning phone as being out of service, continue using it until you get around to fixing it, then I could request a credit for the period between reporting the fault and it being recorded as fixed?”
“No sir!” She replied emphatically. “We can check and see that you were using the phone.”
“Why then, can’t you check to see that I haven’t been using the phone for the period I claimed your service was unavailable and get my credit?” I replied smugly.
“Sir you’re not listening to me, a credit will be issued only after the fault has been repaired.“
Back to the default answer, I had gone as far as I could at this stage so I asked for her supervisor.And after five minutes of waiting another young lady approached me.
“This young lady,” I started, pointing at the robot in front of me,”has indicated that a) LIME issues credits only after a fault has been fixed and b) credits are only issued from the time the fault is reported until service is restored. Is this true?
“Yes!” She replied.
Looking into her eyes as she responded I recognized the same uninterested, unemotional stare, closed mouth with the same slight smile at the corners of her lips, crap another robot, it was then I realized that I was wasting my time, so I smiled back and said thank you got up and left.
LIME…Life In a Monopolistic Environment!

An Asperger’s Life–Part 2

Each of us have a few unusual foibles, in rare cases they define who we are but in most of us they simply help, along with physical characteristics, identify us as individuals. In many instances these imperfections are seen in a positive light, as a character quirk or a small sign of eccentricity, “Oh, that’s John for you!”
But, label a group of people with a unifying description, and these same traits become disabilities. As an Asperger I have a number of traits that can be identified as being common with others labelled with the same mind set, because, face it, that’s what Aspergers basically is. A group of people who share a particular vision of the world in which we live.
One of the traits that impacts on my daily life is hypersensitivity. In the normal use of this descriptive word, it defines a person as more prone to allergic reaction from an external stimulus. For me this means noise and touch, but not just any noise or touch, just a few specific types.
Complicated noise, that is noise made up of various components, like the hubbub of conversation of a large group of people (the level of the noise is not the deciding factor) since this hubbub could emanate from a cocktail setting or a nightclub with throbbing music, it’s the jumbled babble that acts like hay fever’s pollen and every verbal stimuli, no matter how banal, sets off warning alarms throughout my system, overloading my brain.
Random gentle touch does the same thing. Moving through a packed crowd where you have to frequently and randomly touch people as you (or they) do to get through the crowd sets my nerves all on end, with each touch escalating my sensitivity to a point where I feel I have to scream to to release the tension.
I think, for me, a big component of this hypersensitivity is random patterns. Patterns dominate my life, they explain, they sooth, they comfort and they entertain me. From the banal ritualistic life patterns of getting up in the morning, getting ready for work, working, getting home, going to bed in preparation for another day, the patterns of eating – breakfast; lunch; snack; tea; dinner, the patterns in music, the patterns in dance, the patterns in numbers…even the patterns in human relationships.
Not being able to discern a pattern, hence jumbled noise, random touches etc. are hard for me to deal with. Even simple things like a cluttered desk makes it hard for me to work, first I have to convert it into a recognizable pattern. For entertainment I play a game whenever I'm driving, I look at the license plate of the car in front of me and try to determine the pattern of relationship of one number/letter to the other. Letters are converted to number by their position in the alphabet.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t transform into a raving lunatic from hypersensitivity, after all I've been dealing with this since I was born. Like most people who suffer from allergies I know the triggers and try to stay away from them, but when it’s necessary to place myself in such a situation I can steel my mind against it for a limited time, and I have to withdraw from time to time, to reduce the stress before heading back into the fray.
And like the allergic, my hypersensitivity does not end with the elimination of the stimuli, it takes time for my body to return to normal. This means isolation time, a removal of stimuli, to allow my body to return to its normal state.
These, and other traits, make me an Asperger but it does not define me, it does not control me. The one mistake many people, including some of those closest to me, make is defining me based on a series of general traits that can be ascribed to Asperger’s syndrome, instead of seeing my positive virtues which break me out from the crowd and define me as an individual.
They mistakenly try to mend my weaknesses, rather than build upon my strengths, excellence can be achieved only by focusing on strengths and managing weaknesses, not through the elimination of weaknesses.

Back…but to what?

I’m into my second month “back in Barbados” and into my final stages of settling back into a Bajan lifestyle, similar to what I experienced before but, at the same time, different in many other ways.
I’ve finally moved into my permanent home, as permanent as renting can be, and I am really comfortable here. It is on the south coast, a different feel to living on the west coast, where I spent most of my 23 years in Barbados, and only 3 minutes from where I work.
“Where I work”! For the first time in twenty-one years I am now, once again an employee. It is a different experience from working for yourself, the best being the feeling of working as a team. This definitely has a benefit from working for yourself where you end up being chief cook and bottle washer…now I can concentrate on my core activities.
My divorce is finally behind me, not that my ex-wife has settled anything, but I’ve decided that after over $30,000 in lawyers fees and nothing to show for it, it was time to see it for what it is, a futile waste of time and money.
If my ex-wife refuses to acknowledge our settlement agreement (so far she has all the assets from our life together) and the law appears impotent in forcing her to do so then all I'm doing is wasting time and money on a lawyer.
So I'm done. My last instructions to my lawyer was to tell my ex, through her lawyer, that I expect to get my share of the settlement. Do I expect to get anything… I haven’t got anything in the three years since she asked for the divorce, though she has travelled extensively and renovated (and re-decorated) our Rockley Apartment (where she lives) to suit her life style and me, nothing because, after all, it is my ex I'm dealing with.
I remember a conversation her beloved Uncle Andrew (now deceased) had with me, while planning our wedding at his house, in which he warned me of the dire consequences, if I should break his favorite niece’s heart, I wonder what he would say now that it is reversed. 
And my life from here on…well I’m re-booting my life (at fifty-three that’s no easy feat) from necessity since the last thirty years with my ex, except for my son Laurkan, were a waste, all of my trust, our family life and my commitment to her now all a colossus waste of effort and time.
What is open to me now? Who knows, though my paths are not as limitless as they have been at the start of my marriage, at least I can still see a future, shortened and with definite limits, but a future none-the-less!