Coma.

I've been aware lately of something insidious creeping around me that seems to want to influence me.  It's crept inside my mind and made it's home there and try as I might, I can't evict it without first letting it have its voice.  It wants to be heard and I must give it what it needs.

I've never had a sense of belonging here in human life on Earth.  I've always felt different and as though I shouldn't be here.  When I was a young kid, up until my teenage years, I always felt that I'm not actually from Earth at all.  I believed I am actually an alien who somehow got left behind here, either by mistake or on purpose and I used to pray every night that my real people would return so I could back home to where I really belonged.  My prayers were never answered of course.

As I've grown up and learned more about autism, I've begun to realise why I feel this way.  This understanding doesn't make the experience of it any easier to bear but at least I know why I feel this way.  I don't like being the way I am but I can't do much to change it, being alone and unsupported.

Lately I've found my mind consumed by thoughts of what it's like travelling between life and death and the imagery always takes the same form.  I'm in a small boat on the glassy sea.  On one horizon is a landmass under a full moon and star filled sky.  Although it's dark, the sense of peace is tangible and the yearning to go there is so strong it's painful to resist.  On the opposite horizon is another landmass in very bright sunshine.  The noise from this place is never ending; a continuous stream of white noise and millions of voices all screaming at once and it's painful to listen to.  I know I don't want to go there; I want the peace of the moonlit shore.

There is a man with me named Peter and he smiles, his eyes never leaving mine. He doesn't speak much but observes my thoughts and feelings.  He tells me I can't go to the moonlit shore, that I must go to the place of blinding light and painful noise.  He reminds me that I know this too.  I reply that I don't want to go there, that all I want is peace.  He tells me he will never allow me to go to the moonlit shore before my due time, but he will never force me to go to the bright, noisy place.  I must make the conscious choice to go there myself.

I can't make that choice just yet, and so we sit in the boat on the glassy sea, between the moonlit shore I yearn for and the bright, noisy shore I fear returning to.  There is no hurry and he continues to look into my eyes and smile.  I cannot go where I yearn to go but I cannot choose to go where I'm supposed to go, so I'll remain in no man's land; the land between where all is still and calm and this man smiles at me.

Sincerely, Invisible Woman