It is generally known that people with autism don’t like to go outside of the places where they feel safe. This can be their private little room, their hugchair, a bench under their willow, or in my case, the top of the clay mountain in the town of Boom, Flanders. From there you had a wonderful view of my town, the old clay pits surrounding it and if the weather cooperated a little you could even spot the Atomium on the horizon. Yes, sitting there abandoned, on my own, were to me moments of pure magic. They brought me peace and I completely felt at home and sheltered, amidst my world.
What is less known, is that this urge for security is not only limited to places, but that it also – at least as far as I’m concerned – encompasses moments in time. Moments in an often very distant past which I long back to, and not always for positive reasons. Sometimes I just long for a moment like the one I just described about the clay mountain, somewhere in the middle of the eighties. Images appear in my mind, but also sounds and the music I strongly associate with that period. The perfect whole of observations which make me in my thoughts go back to that safe moment; a rare moment when I was allowed to taste perfect happiness. I close my eyes and the world around me doesn’t exist anymore. There’s just me, the clay mountain and that music. You know, a number of years back I had the opportunity to visit my clay mountain again. A moment which I had longed for for perhaps fifteen years and which ultimately became a true disaster. The clay mountain wasn’t my clay mountain anymore. The elements had eroded the long peninsula of clay, which stuck out no less than thirty metres above the wasteland of the old clay pits around it, such that it had become dangerous to still walk all the way up to the end. But what was even worse, the wild nature with the derelict drying sheds and the crumbling chimneys had gone completely. Instead they had created a modern public park with tidy lawns bordered by straight footpaths. My world had been destroyed! My safe place had been taken away from me! Even now, again many years later, I think back with regret and anger to this horrible discovery. It’s like something inside of me has broken. Fortunately I can still turn my world alive and as it should be in my thoughts . With the derelict sheds and the tunes of Scritti Politti’s “Absolute” on the background. It’s the only thing I’ve still got left.
These nostalgic moods don’t only carry me back to safe moments, like I already insinuated. They’ll also not fail to remember me about my big failures, or at least those events which I consider to be failures. In my mind I relive them second per second, word for word, but this time I react differently and I say different things through which the in reality painful scene will get a happy ending. Often this is about love, because I’ve had my share of misery in my youth. With my pathetic way of communicating I wasn’t what you could call the dreamdate of all the girls I fancied. It’s weird that I still cling so hard to that because eventually I’ve found the perfect love in a woman who loves me unconditionally and supports and understand me. Even if I make life for her sometimes far from easy. Yet I can’t resist going back to these many parties and other events in the distant past in order to rectify a thing or two which I seriously cocked up back then.
This week however, I was struck by the most dangerous of all of my nostalgic moods. The sort that actually tries to bring me back in touch with that past which I should rather leave in peace. Why I’m doing it I don’t know. It’s so strong. I just can’t resist the urge, even though I realise for more than ninety-nine percent certainty this mood will lead me to a disappointment infinitely greater than the disappearance of my clay mountain. Because I was so clumsy at chatting up girls but still had so much love to give, I sought again refuge in my fantasy. I made up the perfect girl and at least she saw what a small, kind, golden heart was beating inside of those seven foot thick walls of armed concrete which I had built around my person. She was my great love. By coincidence I then found a picture on an ad with on it the girl of my dreams. It was truly amazing! She was indeed the girl like I had always imagined her in my wildest dreams. I nicked the magazine she appeared in and secretly worshipped her picture, day and night. Sometimes I even took her to my clay mountain to show it to her and to be happy together there, in our little paradise. Eventually, twenty-five years later, the memory of her has withered although every now and then it still appears in front of me. Not as such because I regret my current situation. I already told you that eventually I’ve found a dream of a wife. But only because I would like to have had a better, happier past. Coincidence would strike even more mercilessly this week. Every now and then people mention the power of the internet, but I’m sure that only very few people actually realise how powerful it truly is. I was just surfing a bit and before I knew it I was back in my safe past again, although this time with “Everybody’s got to learn sometimes” by The Korgis in the back of my head. I surfed ever deeper and deeper on the infinite web and suddenly I ended up on a website about beautiful girls of the eighties. And to my amazement also about my girl of the advertisement. I had lost her picture since long, but there she was, with name, date of birth and the lot. Apparently she’s Danish and there was even a picture of how she looks like today! Her eyes were still the same but now she’s a woman in her mid-forties and she doesn’t really resemble the girl I cherished for so long anymore. A most painful stroke went through my heart and I cursed myself that I had once again wanted to return to that bloody past. The shock was so hard that her beautiful memory exploded like a soap bubble. My dreamgirl wan’t anymore. Of course I do know that people grow old and change. Perhaps I can accept it more easily of myself or the people around me because you live the aging process so silently that you hardly notice it. Except maybe when you’re standing in front of the mirror in the morning and you suddenly discover yet another wrinkle. But those twenty-five years difference with my picture hit me hard in the face. As cold as ice and merciless.
After the clay mountain, the fact that my parents recently sold our house to go and live somewhere else and so on, this is once again a terrible blow to me which I refuse to accept. No, everything should remain exactly as it was and how I want it. And everything should happen exactly how I want it. Sounds pathetic, doesn’t it? O, how I long for a bit of peace of mind…
