Some verse on my experiences

I picked up writing poetry this week, haven't done anything like this since primary school. This was one of my first attempts at a poem. 

Somehow I feel oddly disconnected, but harsh words are like a knife,

yet facing them almost everyday is to me a fact of my life.

Just because my face might often hide what I feel inside,

that doesn’t mean, as people think, that I have too much pride.

I don’t ask for help because I feel ashamed to not comprehend,

what others never feel the need to otherwise pretend.

They probably can’t mend me, I think I was born this way,

something different inside my brain, something here to stay.

As I wait for answers, trying to hold up through the wait ahead,

solace only comes from the comfort my new ASD friends spread.

To them, the manner in which I think is perfectly logical.

and to them the way I am is not what all else call abnormal.

Biding time until the letter comes, with a single date,

Telling me, when and where, I can get this worry off my plate.

Never has any assessment, filled me with such mixed emotion,

yet, somehow, I know I need this diagnosis so I can set my life in motion.

I don’t need mended. I just need a little help to get on my way,

to get things together so I can at long last feel more than okay.

I know I have what they call ASD. I’ve rejected it for years on end,

believing that this oddness would go, if enough mental energy I could expend.

It didn’t work. It made me ill. This beast called depression grew and grew,

until I just wanted it all to end. Reasons I could smile gradually became few.

This journey isn’t easy; which I why I couldn’t do it all alone,

as others are supporting me now, and throughout their worry has shone.

Bygones be bygones, for now all understand much better,

and as a family, taking this diagnostic journey, doing it altogether.

it is wonderful Lizzy...

cmerrick this is great ...I've sent it to my son who's 18 I hope it helps him thanx 

cmerrick said:

Hello everyone, i've been writing on and off for nearly 5 years now as a casual hobby, to Various degrees of competance and i do occasionally like to write about how i feel with aspergers and how it affects me. i was going through my stuff and realized i wrote this nearly a whole year ago, never thought to put it up here. for entertainment purposes mostly, but maybe it can help some understand how it feels to have Aspergers. Oh and Critiques are always welcome 

This is my world, so sharp and bright
I could not tell you how it looks
And you might read a hundred books
But you will never share my sight.

They gave me words that might explain
The differences 'tween you and I
Yet I know, when I look to the sky
my life needs no gilded chains.

This is my world, it’s all my own
Like glass tinted a different hue
I will never see the same as you
Just as my life is mine alone.

Different, yes, but far from broken
At heart I am the same as you
My gentle, caring heart is true
While names are but a simple token.

Hey this is exciting! I was about to make a thread regarding poetry and autism, but how nice to see a sticky of it...! Some of your words are absolutely brilliant, I'm so impressed! Moving, honest, considered and genuine: written as only people who live with the nuances of the condition could write them.

I write a lot of poetry, as I find it helps me to express my thoughts and feelings and also to make sense of, or poke fun at, the world around me that I have often found so difficult, frustrating or confusing.

I intended to post yesterday, as it was officially National Poetry Day, and this very site featured a poem by Jon Adams which indirectly turned up on my Facebook, shared by an acquaintaince. (It's very good, by the way - if you haven't already seen it).

But anyway, yes, thankyou for this sticky! Here's my twopenneth, written a few days after my diagnosis, when everything suddenly made sense and fell into place, I guess.

Spectrum

 It lives
out there on the street
in the cold and the rain.
It lives
in a box in the corner
in other people.
It lives
in their face
and on their lips.
It lives,
born in a room
emptied of life.
Now
It lurks
behind every door
that is unfamiliar,
like an iceberg waiting.
It hangs
around my neck
in company and
chokes me with silence.
It lives
in every decision
future and past,
the devil in the detail.
It lives
at the end of the sentence
in the pause I think
I am supposed to fill.
It lives
in haemorrhaged words
I cannot control
or take back.
It lives
in the disembodied air
that accompanies me
where a friend might go.
It lives
in the vacuum between
your hand and my skin
after I insist you stop.
It lives,
but every day
we dig its grave
and bury it with smiles.

I have always loved reading ang writing poems. I love words and the clever use of them.

This is brilliant by the way 

I have also written about this subject but haven't shared my writing before because I was worried that no-one would understand it at all.

When I was diagnosed I started finding out about hf autism and had hope that there was other people who would understand maybe even share my feelings.

When I was a child I contemplated the idea that I was the alien. Then I grew a little and wondered whether I was the only human. I questioned exsistence endlessly but always felt different to every one else.

Your poem made me feel emotional. 

"YES" I think I can be understood somewhere in this world and I now have hope.

I have just posted one of my poems. It is very personal and not something I have ever dared do before for fear of being ripped apart when no-one understands me.

Brilliant writing, actually made me cry. Not because it got me down by the way but because I have just read something that could well have been my own writing.

Thank you so much for making me feel that I am not so alone with my feelings.

I get this totally.

@lizzy, superb.  And so touching.

lizzie,

That is a very good poem, and I much enjoyed reading it.

Forty years of failing 
to fit in.
Forty years of sadness
where do I begin?
Every day had a shadow
and has been painful to me.
I'm different,
I accept that now
I have Aspergers you see.
This awful child,
that is me.
I was difficult and never felt free.
I know now I wasn't being naughty
And I wasn't really ill
I just had a mind that was never ever still.
Everything hurt me more than it should
No one understood my pain 
Why was I such a drama queen
No one could ever really explain.
“She’s attention seeking and needs a slap”
“If she bites you bite her back”
“Make her eat or let her starve”
“Make her wear that itchy scarf”
“She’s highly strung”
“She doesn’t really belong”
“We can’t take her anywhere”
“As she plays up and everyone stares”
What did they do to deal with me? 
They beat me, locked me up and hid the key.
Conform, conform and you’ll be fine
but the harder you try quicker comes the time
Where the lid blows off
And the fallout falls
And the world is an awful place for me.
They fought in vain
to erase the fear in my heart 
and slowly tore my confidence apart
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Why do you scream?”
“You are a walking nightmare” 
Yet it wasn’t a dream.
I could read before I went to school.
I was an artist and a writer and not a fool.
I was happy in classes where I learned lots of facts
Every class apart from maths.
I always finished first and got high grades.
It was in the playtime someone had drawn the shades.
No one wanted to be my friend.
Fights were never solved with amends.
I was weird, a goody two shoes geek.
What they really meant was I was a freak.
Well now I’m forty I know what is wrong
Suddenly I have found I do belong
With others like me who have a gift
Of a mind that darts just like a swifts.
We may be on a different plane
But some of us are much the same
We’re not alone and ill or bad
We’re special and talented
To not be able to see that is so very sad.

Thank you!

I like that! A lot :)

I have written a poem to add to the thread:

Illegal Aliens

They know not us, we are other, us alone
Separate, different, alien, unknown
Judging by rules made for the masses of same
Thinking in their boxes, like a runaway train
The army is building, the new breed, it has come
This world of wrongness will become, undone
Like the fly in the ointment, we exist we are real
Ignoring us easily, like it's no big deal
Huddling together against our kind
You live in the chains of your minds
Despite how hard it is, struggling through
I'd rather be like me, than be like you
Pretending to be one of you, to merge
Whilst inside, I feel myself want to surge
Societies that are blind, crumble in the end
Let us show you the way, let us, you mend

Wow - your poems are both amazing! So touching as you have captured the feelings a lot of us here have so eloquently. You're both brilliant writers! 

caretwo, that poem resonates with me. I have posted before about the horrid new street-lights, which bathe  my bedroom in artificial light all through the night.  I needed to spend a lot of money on blackout blinds and curtains, and even now, I can still detect light. This affects my sleep and health, but no-one pays any notice, like my needs (and the needs of all light sensitive people) don't matter!

Great writings guys.