Category: Autism

Irony is writing my last blog on my Blackberry but such is my own hypocrisy.

Could it be possible that with every passing second the words that were once my joy to create a no longer mine? I have become uncertain in this craft of writing almost like a deaf man who has lost the ability to speak but can still see with his eyes and absorb information but has absorbed so much information that he has become stupid and lazy.
I once wrote everything of mine down in a notebook but soon traded everything in for the convenience of a computer and over time have become like all the other inept useless ignorant fools that cannot survive without their laptops and their smartphones unable to write a single sentence without an lol or an brb or some other abbreviation of a word.
These linguistic perversions are destroying language. Maybe it may not seem that important but language is the basis of culture. Once we lose our language we lose ourselves.

I will never be perfect. I need to stop trying to be perfect or pretending that I am or I will just flush my dreams down the drain. I need to stop burying my head in the sand and face my own imperfections with dignity and embrace them with open arms. I guess its hard to do that when your mother who raised you tells you that she is disappointed in you for not being the perfect son and all you do is try to live up to those expectations. Now I have begun to think that those expectations are unrealistic and based upon the idealization of who I should be and not who I am.
I am sorry that I am not perfect by your son. But by own estimation I don't need to be perfect I just need to be me.

What is wrong with me? Lately I seem to spiralling uncontrollably downward in to a world of selfishness. Can it be that I am so angry at the world that I have been blinded to my abject loss of morality and compassion?
Yes.
Now I have to wonder where this anger is coming from so I can let go of it and move on with my life. Until then nothing can get better things can only get worse. I am so angry that I often cannot feel remorse or regret or even sympathy until after the damage has been done and the words thrown back and forth like spears.

I sit here at the Starbucks by my house listening to the music as it emanated from the speakers.
Still I love days like this when the weather is nice and the people are milling about the streets lazily strolling to their destinations.
This is my favorite part of my hometown Pomona with all of its old buildings and the history that binds the bricks of the buildings together.
I have recently rediscovered some of the old jewels in Pomonas downtown area which combines the old with the new.
Yet I cannot help but feel the history in the buildings in this rustic yet metropolitan area of the city filled with brick buildings, bistros, bookstores, murals and lofts.
It was here that the heart of the city was born with the theater and the packing houses and where it was buried when all the stores moved out after the mall was built a few cities away.
Now new life is slowly coming back to this city.
The Glasshouse is here and the Fox Theater is slated to reopen in January. On weekends the streets that were once dead now teem with the young as they make their way to some of the clubs. And every second Saturday art lovers meander down the streets swaying to the sounds of live jazz as they stop at the galleries along Third and Thomas Streets. Yet as they walk they may not notice the sign for the old Pomona Bakery which closed years ago. But the times being what they are new bakery has opened up on Second Street where gourmet pastries delight customers. Now in a telling sign new has replaced the old but things have stayed the same.

It just hit me like a lightning bolt.
In every persons there comes a time when you begin to see who your parents really are. They are not bad people with evil intentions. They are good people who only have the best intentions for their children. They are not perfect people so despite their best intentions they can make mistakes and completely fail their children. My aunt has made a lot of mistakes recently.
I suppose that is exactly what has caused all this pent up hurt and anger to rise to the surface after having been repressed for so many years.
These emotions have been buried for so long that they may just consume me.

These just occured to me.
I vow never to give up.
To never lose hope.
To never stop at the world as beautiful.
To never stop seeing good in the eyes of evil men.
To never stop enjoying love.
“Love is life and life is love” is a phrase I have said before and vow to continue believing in.

I make a pledge to myself to never give up.
To never stop fighting for what I believe in.
To never stop cherishing each moment.
To never stop loving.
To never stop caring.
To never stop believing in something better.
To never stop striving for perfection.
To never stop being happy with my flaws.
This I pledge to myself that when the world buries me in the soils of its own dirty hatred and doubt I will not stop being me.

To my friends,
I find myself at a crossroads as I get closer to the end of the semester. It has been a semester and a year of changes…lots of changes. Yet it has been one that I can look on and smile…perhaps because of all the friends I have made in this past year and a half.. Perhaps if it were not for my friends I might have found myself lying in a ditch somewhere alone and in the dark.If you are reading this…it is because you have had an impact on my life…even if I have only known you a few short months or several years. I would not be who I am without having you in my life…for that I feel blessed. Still I suppose that this is a thank you of sorts.At this time last year I was contemplating suicide, but what stopped me was knowing was that there was people like you to come back to when I got out of the mental hospital. It was because I knew there were people like you who existed. If I had not had friends such as you to come back to…I would be dead.Now here it is a year later…and while those days are in the hospital are in the past, they are not forgotten. Yet as time has gone by and I began to see that there was a life worth living because of the people that were worth knowing.They say that one can define himself by the people he or she associate with. They also say that you can choose your friends but you cannot choose your family. All I can say is that I cannot have chosen to know a better and more admirable and more honorable group of people to call my friends.I spent a long time doubting myself and thinking I was worthless, but then I realized I was not thinking those things about myself but about the people I knew. I could not accept their/your faith in me.I spent a lot of time wondering what people saw in me that I perhaps did not see in myself, but I realized is that I was not seeing those things in myself but in the people around me.It was at that point I realized that I had chosen to hang around the wrong group of people.Now I am with the right people. You.It was not until this past year or so that I heard people say that they respected me. The irony is that I spent most of my time up until last year trying to prove myself to others…when I never had to do it at all. Yet the people I used to know in years past…never would have said such a thing.I remember at the Daily Titan's Reverse Press Conference just this last week where David Carrillo introduced me to the people there as a respected journalist. I have to be honest I did not quite know how to respond to that. Or even when friends tell me now that they are excited about the possibility of seeing again or at some random place or event. In the past, it was not my nature to be happy to see other people.I always thought people did not like me, but I now realize that I was wrong. I always thought that I was a good person that no one else saw. I was wrong.You might think that I am being perhaps a bit cavalier in my usage of the word friend, but I would disagee. For me friend is more than just a word. In many ways my friends are like my family, so I don't bestow this title upon you lightly as is often the case nowadays. I say it because I mean it.Since a good friendship is based on reciprocity…all the good things you have given me, such as your love and respect I want to give back to you. I am not a rich man, so my heart is the only thing I have to give.Now this year is ending a new one with a bright future is approaching.Thank you for being who you are.Thank you for saving my life.
I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving!
Your friend,
Robert