socializing online when you can't leave the house

I suppose one of the reasons I started this blog was to reach out to others like me in similar situations, a universal desire, I'm certain. We all feel better in the company of others who can relate to whatever we've going through.

Ever since my mini stroke last year, I have made a concerted effort to get out of the house more, even though I feel less like doing it than ever before. But I was so determined to force my kids to socialize more even though the two oldest pushed against it. The truth is they need it, and they benefit from it, despite disabilities that make them fight having human contact, especially NEW human contact. The little one loves to get out and play with others, although he often wants to keep doing whatever he's doing in the moment, so he has also joined the protest movement against leaving the house. Once he's out though, he's usually happy about it.

Anyway, that is all about the kids. My dh hates leaving the house almost more than them. A grown aspie is harder to get into motion that the children, who at the very least will eventually capitulate rather than suffer my wrath. But the dh is practiced in the art of passive aggression; he will often say yes, and then sabotage our ability to actually do something with his behavior. But he needs socialization too, and occasionally I overcome inertia for the both of us, and out we go. Sporadic outings do not build long term relationships however, so he doesn't really have any friends in this fine city/state/region of the country. But everyone who knows him likes him, and my relatives are all very nice to him on the rare occasion that they see him. It's still not enough, but it's better than nothing. What I really want is for us to once and for all pick a church, and build a relationship with it as a family. Heck, I would even settle for all five of us choosing a different church each and rotating. You can still build relationships that way.

But I need something more for myself. My best friend is over an hours drive away, I'm lucky if I get to see her three times a year. We are both consumed with family drama that makes it difficult. Most of the rest of our good friends are in Los Angeles. The disability level in our household has really escalated since we've been here near Philly, which has made building new relationships very difficult. I try to keep in touch with some of our friends and family online, but it's been a struggle. But at least I have that option in this day and age. I've made some new friends online, and even met some of them in person.

We found a new church through web surfing a few years ago, and I was excited when I found out that there was an online community active in the church in addition to their relatively local physical building. As it turned out, other members of my family had a history with this church that I was completely unaware of, but it made me feel that my prayers to find the right church for us had been answered. I knew that it was likely that dd would have a hard time with any regular church attendance, and though some of the people there were absolutely outstanding as far as fellowship opportunities were concerned, sure enough, she eventually pulled back. Our attendance since 2005 has mostly consisted of participating in their yearly halloween alternative celebration, but I still like the congregation as a whole. I figured we could always participate in their online forums as well, but alas, the webmasters apparently have new responsibilities that have put maintaining the website a bare minumum priority.

Well I was pleasantly surprised this year to find out that several of my favorite people from the church have started blogs which have become my favorite new nightly reading time. I really enjoy this fellowship, though I'd love more of the in person variety. But I find as much entertainment value in blogs as I do with novels. Don't get me wrong, I still read voraciously from the local libraries, but now the spare hour or two I get to myself after everyone else is in bed is often devoted to blog reading. I also have found great comfort in several blogs of autism parents and some individuals with autism.

I was reminded recently by a friend whose wife has a rather high degree of physical disability that one needs to be creative with social pursuits and hobbies in those situations. They are both addicted to Warcraft, which is an online role playing game that is very popular though it bores me to tears. But his principle is correct; social outlets are so important that you take them however you can, and we are lucky to have such opportunities in our present circumstances.

Last year I began a love affair with myspace that started as a chance to share a bit of our lives here with family and friends far away, and expanded into something so much more. My enthusiasm waned a bit as site content is not monitored nearly as much as I would like when it comes to a program that I encourage my children to use; there is way too much almost-porn on the site for my comfort, but I still get a lot out of it, and I will quote one of my blog entries from myspace from last year:

START
MYSPACE IS FUN. And you get to hang with your peeps when it's convenient for you. Like in the middle of the night when a toddler wakes you, or insomnia gets you, or the freaking dog won't stop barking, or when you have ten hours of work to do while the kids are sleeping and out of your hair. Myspace helps those make those moments much more bearable. So I will still be here on myspace, representing myself a little more personally now, and sharing my minute details when I feel like it.

I've been searching for some friends and family on myspace to see if I can find some people that I miss being out of touch with ... myspace does make it a lot easier to hang out with people online, which is great when you are all the way across the country from most of them. I have to credit my sister in law Hazel for convincing me to give it a thorough test drive.

MOST of the people I added as friends are ones that I know very well, or at least used to. I have added a local musician that I love plus my favorite health food store and a couple people connected to that, but, for the most part, my friends have a very personal connection to me, and I LOVE it. It's been really great finding friends from freaking elementary school, junior high, high school and college. Also some friends from the post college, pre Philadelphia work era. Some of them I found by accident while I was searching for someone else. Very very cool. I have a desire to kind of reconnect with people lately since I turned forty last year, and sort of almost but not really died. Let's just call it a too close for comfort brush by death.

I have kind of been out of the loop since my second son was born, but he's five now and I'm starting to have a little bit of time to think about something else. Mostly that time comes late at night, but all the more reason to myspace. It does seem like a verb to me.

Plus some really great friends of ours moved away last summer, and I miss them so much. I've convinced at least one of them to give it a try. Honestly, myspace is a good chance to build better relationships with ones not only far away who are near and dear or even just on the edge, but also with people right in front of my face or close to it. Lets face it, with my husband's long work hours/ horrendous commute, three kids I'm home schooling, and a couple family members with agoraphobia, plus a definite diabetes fatigue, I just don't get out much. And that isn't likely to change anytime soon. We haven't been to church in over a year. I've been out of the visiting circuit for so long that people far away are coming to see US.

Two years ago, my precious grandmother E died, and her funeral was almost an impromtu family reunion. My maternal grandfather's family has had an annual reunion for ages up near Allentown that came to a halt a few years back when the organizers at that time wisely gave over to their retirement years. My grandmother's funeral was a fortunate event in that it gave some of my cousins who had been knocking around the idea of starting up the reunion again the final motivation they needed to push forward.

In June 2005, the E family reunion was reborn thanks to my cousins K and B who spearheaded the event, and so many other relatives that were eager to contribute to the glorious occasion. We were all so happy to see each other, and it really punctuated for me how much less socializing I have done with my family since moving near to so many of them. Total irony.

The saddest part is that DH and I have sacrificed being near our immediate families to live out here and raise the kids in what we consider to be a friendlier family environment, close to much extended family, and yet we don't make the effort to see them. My mother comes to see US. Almost every week in fact. And while that's great, sadly, that is five other of our children's grandparents in L.A. that they rarely see, who I haven't seen myself in over three years. If I'm 40, they certainly aren't getting younger either. My next big push is to convince the grandparents to open myspace accounts. But I'm loving finding other relatives here now.

This also coincides with what would be my 25th high school reunion next year, if someone from my high school bothers to get one together. I didn't go to the 5th, 10th or 20th, and I have a feeling I may have to wait until 30 comes around. 2008 will also be the 25th year since I matriculated as a freshman at UCLA, and though I met many great people through the 7 years it took me to get a 4 year degree (finally graduating ELSEWHERE), the ones I think about most are four great girls I met (three were dorm mates) that year and didn't keep in touch with past 1990, though I bumped into one at Costco in 1996. Nostalgic? I think so. So far I've found 2 of them here.

Reconnecting with people on myspace in all the categories above has been so awesome, many of them don't have direct accounts, but their kids do! Even if some of the content on the kids' pages just grosses me out. And there are a lot of skanky people on myspace. Lord knows my privacy settings are all very high, and they need to be. But the younger generation has rekindled my hope for building on our relationships and reconnecting with their parents. Hopefully, together, we will get them all hooked I know I'm hooked.
END

I'm still going strong with myspace, I have over a thousand pix loaded there. I've been using email for what seems like an eternity, though I guess it's only been fifteen years plus a little. I was trying to remember the first internet service I had to no avail. I'm also on goodreads since last December. And now I'm starting blogger instead of just reading other users all the time. So I guess I'm embracing the online social movement, even though compared with the average age I'm a dinosaur. Truly, I don't know how I'd live without it now.

God is good and god is great, and so I thank him for the internet.

time out for an OCD reflection

I haven't really talked about my dear daughter here yet, because I meant for this blog to be about asperger's. But I was commenting someone else's post tonight that was partially about the sense of purpose their previously challenging son was getting from enlisting in the army and graduating from basic training, and it really touched me as I related it to my own challenging child, the eldest. When she came to us, she was already a half grown teen, and there was a lot of emotional baggage that came with her. But one set of symptoms was really apparent to me, even though I didn't have a name for it at the time: obsessive compulsive disorder. This is a very serious developmental problem that is often a symptom of aspergers and autism, but lots of other people have it too.

It's been quite a journey learning about it, and knowing now that I am the only person out of five in my house that doesn't have it. If you know anything about it, you know how difficult it can make it to accomplish just the mundane details of everyday living. I'm not going to get into a full on description of it here tonight, but I felt like my dd deserved a tribute for the very big achievement she made recently. This in the face of her very active OCD, which in her case includes crippling agoraphobia (fear to leave the house and/or go out in public), claustrophobia, extreme anxiety disorder with panic attacks, major depression, and a truly absurd condition called trichtilomania (google it if you're interested). And she did it all without benefit of an IEP! We didn't have time. But she did have 504 plan accommodations, which were far from adequate, but I doubt we'd be celebrating now without it. Here was the comment I left on the other post:

This summer I watched my daughter's graduation ceremony from high school. She has horrible agoraphobia (thus I haven't been to church recently), and she could have chosen not to participate in the ceremony if she wanted. Even so, I pretty much held her hand all the way through it until she was up on stage, and there was a school nurse stationed nearby, but I was very proud that she had made the commitment to stand up with her peers and acknowledge what for her is a profound milestone.

But the sense of purpose that you were talking about, it was the first time I had felt that so acutely for her. She had made the original decision to return to being accountable to a school authority (after we adopted her, she home schooled for several years), and even though her curriculum was delivered though cyber technology in our house, it was still a really big deal for her to have to complete state set standards, deal with deadlines set by someone else, and communicate with her teachers and other strangers in the school.

The graduation ceremony was the first time she really met some of her classmates, but there was a lot of satisfaction in watching them all rise as a group and hearing the speaker discuss the expectation of their contribution in the world. You could see on their faces how they felt like they were part of something important.

This is a school that really emphasizes leadership and community service, and it really affected her in such a positive way in terms of helping her develop an avocation for her life. I really have to give all the credit to god for leading us to this school and helping her choose to enroll, plus seeing us through all the ups and downs as she finished the program.

I had been so afraid that she might never even make it this far, and I still have a lot of days when I wonder what the best way is to try to access her potential, but this is one of those situations where I have had to really let go and let god, and try to feel his peace.

Crossroads is definitely a good way to describe our current position, but I just have to keep the faith that he will continue to guide us no matter how apprehensive I might be that our hold on something finally positive is very tenuous.