Goodbye.

And that's me done for the night/early morning.

Still praying that I never wake up. The loneliness I've felt around other people tonight reminds me of just how deficient I am. Autism or not, I'm just not all there - I'm incomplete. I'm a ghost around people. I can sense them and they can sense me but never the twain shall meet. Indelibly cut off from human interaction. I can mimic their mannerisms to a point and get away with blending in to a point. But I'm getting more and more exposed as the loner out in the cold. I can't keep masking what I can't be anymore.

But I'll keep trying. There's got to be more to life than this. The shunning, the insensitivity, the complete pointlessness of it all. I'll wake up, as I always do, and it'll be another day: another challenge. It'll be the best day of my life because I'll be with my kids and, most importantly, I'll still be alive to spend it with them. But I know that it'll soon be over before it really starts. My presence drifting away - both in time and place and in their lives.

Holding it together for them. Praying that I can break down and cry myself to sleep just so that I can immerse myself in that little bit of human feeling but I know that it just won't come. The numbness takes over. The sleep is interrupted. The agony of living as me builds up once more and so we march on. To war within myself and with the world around me. We march.

A

And that's me done for the night/early morning.

Still praying that I never wake up. The loneliness I've felt around other people tonight reminds me of just how deficient I am. Autism or not, I'm just not all there - I'm incomplete. I'm a ghost around people. I can sense them and they can sense me but never the twain shall meet. Indelibly cut off from human interaction. I can mimic their mannerisms to a point and get away with blending in to a point. But I'm getting more and more exposed as the loner out in the cold. I can't keep masking what I can't be anymore.

But I'll keep trying. There's got to be more to life than this. The shunning, the insensitivity, the complete pointlessness of it all. I'll wake up, as I always do, and it'll be another day: another challenge. It'll be the best day of my life because I'll be with my kids and, most importantly, I'll still be alive to spend it with them. But I know that it'll soon be over before it really starts. My presence drifting away - both in time and place and in their lives.

Holding it together for them. Praying that I can break down and cry myself to sleep just so that I can immerse myself in that little bit of human feeling but I know that it just won't come. The numbness takes over. The sleep is interrupted. The agony of living as me builds up once more and so we march on. To war within myself and with the world around me. We march.

A