So any question about status and transition? Transitions in status? My own personal challenge is coming to rest, allowing recovery of my own inner resources. I am sort of spiritually hyper-kinetic, a long habit of running from myself, specifically that part of myself that people have in the past found the most alienating. I learned to hate it, and since it was the core of my being, to hate myself. I think I am moving slowly beyond that though. Should I share what that part of me was? Though you may already know.

Yes, please. I can express it in a moment from my childhood. The only grandfather I had ever known up till then had died, and my siblings were expressing intense grief, stunned shock. It was emotionally traumatic for them. I remained by comparison to them unmoved. My brother was even trying to provoke a reaction from me. I didn’t want to respond. I was all of nine years old. All I could say was death is death. He proceeded to call me a monster, then withdrew to his private room.

My relationship to loss has never been normal I guess. Maybe a general failure to form proper emotional attachments. That’s one of the things they commonly associate with autism. Shall I explain what attachment is to me?

Sure. From what I have learned, both from what people have told me and what I have read, it’s a good feeling, a sense of bodily security like being hugged even when the loved one isn’t touching you, and you become sensitive to changes in the other persons mood or state of being. You become emotionally invested in the relationship and preserving that happy feeling you have with them. Does this describe it adequately?

Yes. I do not experience this. For me, attachment is pain, painful, looking at people, being with them as they go about their daily routine, none of it feels good. If that good feeling is what I was looking for, I would never form relationships nor take any actions to preserve them, but I do form attachments. For me, that pain paints a picture. It forms a world for me, and people do form meaningful impressions in this world. I sense how they effect and change things, and even can appreciate the quality of their… consequence, for lack of a better word. Their intention, what they really mean to do, what they really want to feel, what they want to be. This gives me a sense of hope, a sense of healing, a sense of strength. I love that. I love that in others, and want that in myself. So am I experiencing any less connection with others than anyone else is?

Well, I think we all have an ebb and flow.

No, perhaps more.

Have you ever watched an animal try to ease it’s pain?

I suppose. Even the Marquis de Sade commented on how you only really know someone through who they are in pain. Will Ferrell commented on it in a different way saying before you choose to marry someone, make them sit and try to use a computer with a slow internet connection.

I watch how people try to solve problems, how they claim to understand things, this gives me no hope. It actually leaves me rather depressed if I think on it too long, but with exceptionally sensitive people… and by sensitive I do not mean emotive, I mean emotionally active. Emotional behaviour and emotional living action and reaction are different things. Learned emotional behaviours are abstractions, masks. You can tell when someone is emotionally aware of something in part because they are often afraid of it, and as you watch them react to it, you can see what they really want to do and why. Everything else is noise. This is why I don’t like being touched most of the time. It’s noise. Casual hugging, ritual hand shaking, empty efforts to be polite, civil, fair, this feels disgusting to me. Am I just being judgemental? I would rather be slapped by someone who was genuinely angry at me, than shake hands with someone who holds me in contempt.

I think many people feel this way. Well, this is my emotional life. Have I spoke hypocritically today? My New Years resolution is to practice what I preach. This is my reason for asking.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~