Marc Sander
Bio
I was born in 1971 and spent the first 37 years of my life with undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome. Much of my writings are about struggles with relationships. I am sometimes funny, at other times poignant and always bring a unique perspective
Stories (10/0)
One Peppermint Starlight
In January of 2000 I became unemployed. My anxiety and depression had taken its toll and the inevitable happened; I lost my job. I just couldn't function anymore. It was a burnout type job anyway, and I think a lot of people would have struggled under the pressure of taking 525 calls a day. Some are built for that, but in retrospect there is no way I could have handled that. Me, a person with Asperger's syndrome, a social disorder characterized in part as being socially impaired, and for some having a sensitivity to noise, having to interact with over 525 people a day, and in an environment that is very noisy, trying to deal with this situation it was safe to say it was too tall of a task for me to handle. And yet I tried. It is what I do. I take an aspect of my personality and challenge it. My first job had been as a vendor at the Oakland Coliseum. I was out there amongst 25,000 people a night in my brown uniform sticking out like a sore thumb yelling, "ice cream malts here," or soda, or hot dogs, it varied from day to day. And although this went against my nature, and it went against my strengths, there was always a part of me that could not handle being different or having a chink in the armor so to speak, so I would challenge it when I could. Some challenges I would brave and take, and some I would shrink from. But as much I shrank and ran from challenges, I have to give myself credit and admit that I often took them on as well. This time I failed miserably and was out of a job.
By Marc Sander5 years ago in Psyche
I Don't Love Lucy
In Job Corps I had a lot of female friends, with of course Shawna being the most prominent one. However, one of our really good friends was a girl named Lucy. The three of us did a lot together and got along easily. Lucy was like one of the guys. She was very different than Shawna. Shawna was very outgoing and flirty, and Lucy was more reserved with men. While Shawna was very boy crazy and talked openly about how guys looked, Lucy did not. Lucy even nicknamed Shawna Esther as in estrogen, because she was so boy crazy. While Shawna was not funny per se, she was fun, and Lucy was downright funny. I enjoyed her a lot. She got my sense of humor. When I would say something dry and witty, she would catch it. She liked my quote of "Tense. It's a stage above ninths." She could match me in the wits department, and I liked that. One time when we went to karaoke she said she wanted to sing the theme to I Love Lucy. I didn't get it. I thought it was because her name was Lucy, but it was because it's a wordless theme. Lucy did not sing when we went to karaoke. Tim however was a good singer.
By Marc Sander5 years ago in Humans
The Fallacy of Power
We were all standing around in a circle holding hands about to close out our self help meeting and suddenly I saw the pillar in the center of the room in a new light. I thought about how we all gather around this wood pillar as if it is symbolic. I thought about the guy who does karate chops and kicks on it. I realized how supportive that pillar is and how it allows the upstairs people to live in their apartments and keep us below safe from them falling on top of it. I realized I wanted to have the strength of that pillar.
By Marc Sander5 years ago in Humans
Friends Without Faces
It was now June of 1999 and the anxiety that was taking over my life was beginning to have more of a profound effect on me. As I have said before, routines are very important to people with Asperger's syndrome. We thrive on routine. It helps us navigate through what can be a very confusing world that we live in. I had a daily routine when it came to doing house chores. I came up with 7 different chores that needed to be done at my little studio apartment and did one a day. Monday was take out the trash, Tuesday was wipe down the tops and so on. When I was doing well, I kept up with the routine. Going to work is the same way. You have a routine. You work the same 5 days a week and get up at the same time and catch the bus at the same time. When I was doing well, I was rarely sick and never missed the bus. If I am distracted or not doing well ,this routine gets affected as well.
By Marc Sander5 years ago in Psyche
The I Love You Conundrum
By July of 1995, just two months after meeting Shawna, she had firmly imprinted on me. We were still side by side with each other, eating most of our meals together, hanging out off campus and undeniably best friends at this point. We had never dated each other and crossed that bridge. I briefly dated Lisa again, right at the time Shawna had stopped dating Tim #1. Whenever there was a brief window where we both seemed to be available, it closed quickly. Soon, Shawna was dating Tim #2 who happens to be my favorite of all of her boyfriends. The three of us got along great.
By Marc Sander5 years ago in Humans
A Split-Second Decision
This one takes place a little while after I had returned from seeing Jaime. As I knew would happen, Jaime and I were intimate on the weekend I went to see her. Having rethought the whole idea about whether we should see other people, I had decided that we should be exclusive. It was not right for me to be physically involved with more than one woman at a time. It hurt everybody involved. When I got back to Job Corps, I explained to Shawna how Jaime and I were now exclusive. I felt really good about my prior decision to hold off starting anything with Shawna. Did Chester tell Shawna about our conversation? I will never know. Shawna and I never discussed it. Since I had never kissed Shawna or even told her of any interest in her, then as far as I knew, I was exonerated of any wrong doing.
By Marc Sander5 years ago in Humans
Keep the Change Please
In 1999 I was living in San Diego and working at the National Dispatch center. I began working there in early 1997 and had really done well the first two years. NDC was a text messaging center and my job was to transcribe pre-recorded messages that people left and we would listen to them on our headset while sitting in our little cubicle and then send the message to people's pagers where they got a text message. At the time, this was new technology and it was a huge upgrade from the pager. You got the message on a pager but it had words instead of just a phone number. The pace was fairly slow and I didn't have to deal with the customers directly. I thrived and always got the monthly bonuses. Along with a steady increase in pay, I was fairly happy and had finally moved out of the crappy residential hotels downtown and moved a few miles away uptown in a much nicer placed called studio 619. I was going to the movies regularly, eating out a lot, writing poetry, and going to a writers group. And I was dealing pretty well with being single. I had been taking a sabbatical from dating for two years now. My heart needed the break. Shawna, Jaime, Lisa, Tammy, Rachel and a few others that didn't go far all had taken their toll on me. We had a pretty tight knit group in our section. Ours was small, about 14 of us. The rest of the company had 500 other employees and they took live calls at a very fast pace. They had no time to get to know one another.
By Marc Sander5 years ago in Journal
The Top Reason You Cannot Stay Sober
Hi, my name is Marc and I am an alcoholic. I have said those words literally thousands of times throughout the years. Although I have been sober for 23 years, I still go to self-help meetings to address my alcoholism. I know they give me the strength and spirituality I need to stay sober. Over the years I have come to learn there are three main components needed to stay sober. They are honesty, motivation and support, but the most vital one needed to get and remain sober is honesty.
By Marc Sander5 years ago in Proof
What About Shawna?
In the year 1995 I was 23 years old and had absolutely no career perspectives in front of me, and I made the decision to go to Job Corps to learn a trade. Although I lived in the bay area in northern California they sent me to Imperial Beach, California because it was there that they had an Accounting program I could get into. On the surface this seems like a wise idea, but in retrospect I think it was a poor choice. You see, I had a serious girlfriend at the time and her name was Jaime. Not only did I leave her behind, but I made the foolish decision that we should see other people. This decision would turn out to be very painful. It was at Job Corps, San Diego Job Corps, as it was called because of its proximity to that city, that I met Shawna, who would turn out to be the great love of my twenties.
By Marc Sander5 years ago in Humans
Penguins
I remember one day my mom and I were driving alone in her car, and she had a very serious talk with me. She told me she had about six months to live. She was about 58 years old at that time, but had suffered through many medical issues in her life. She had been a stroke survivor, had a heart attack, and even a bout with spiral meningitis. I was shocked when I heard the news, still, even though she, and as a result, all of us, her family, had been through so much.
By Marc Sander5 years ago in Families