It's been a rather long day. I am finally taking the final steps at the top of the stairs before shuffling into my room. Since it is after eleven, and C is an eighty-year old woman trapped in a twenty-five year old's body, I open the door slowly, squint in the darkness and rummage around in my purse for my phone, which has a nifty flashlight app. I close the door slowly behind me, cringing at the inherent squeak, and feel my way to the other side of the room, dropping my Mary Poppin's purse and sliding off my Vans in one fluid motion. I open my computer to produce a source of light while I pull on silky blue basketball shorts and an old marching band t-shirt, a size and a half too big. I peel off my socks and slip my aching feet into the furry pet slippers I bought from Target in the Fall. I lie back onto my pillow for a moment, one leg hanging off the side of the bed, one tucked underneath the other. I feel around on my bed for where I have placed my phone, and look at its blaring screen yet another time. No text message. Maybe he is already sleeping. That or Mass Effect has once again dominated his attention for the moment. And I am not worried. I hit the top button to blacken the screen, and reach down to the ground, feeling for the long, thin cord that runs from the white universal Apple box of magic juice into my phone. Nothing. I turn on the phone again to use, yet again as a flashlight, and see nothing. Just an empty power strip, save for a few cords lying nearby, waiting to be used at the proper times...a fan cord for the sticky summer nights and an aging heating pad cord for frosty winters or tummy aches.

She has done it again. In her own mind, sometime during the day, she has suddenly realized that she needs a charger! Oh no! "Well I don't have a charger," she thinks to herself. "Where can I find another one...in the most convenient place..." She may think of venturing all the way down stairs. She may decide to text Mum and ask if she keeps a charger upstairs in her room. But what does she do? She realizes that, conveniently, her younger sister keeps a charger plugged in at all times, open to anyone for use. Why of course!

And that is what she does. It is the middle of the day when this momentary event occurs, and I am off at work, or socializing, or just plain "elsewhere." There is no problem in her mind. And thus she crawls around the bookshelf that divides us and reaches down, pulling out the cord and magic Apple juicer. She goes back around the bookshelf to her cavern and plugs in both the charger, as well as her iPad. Not her phone. Her iPad.

I digress.

So for some reason she needed a charger. Whatever. Not a big deal. I don't really care.
Could she have just plugged in her iPad where my charger was sitting? Sure.
Could she have charged it for a bit and once it had enough, unplugged it from where she had moved it and replace it back to my nook? Definitely.
Did she, instead, remain in her world where only chargers for herself exist, only her space and her needs exist, only her one-tasks-at-a-time exist? Of course she did.
I am aware of her Aspie tendencies. I am aware of her inability to see the harm in borrowing the small device. I am very aware of my own strange, anal tendencies. I face them every day when I wake up every morning and reach down, blindly feeling for my phone, and (once again) blindly checking to see if I am needed. Or I have forgotten something. Or I need to turn off the alarm.

But when the day comes around, and I am scolded for "misunderstanding" her, or being that tightly wound, anxious little creature that I try in vain to keep guarded, I find it difficult to understand how I am nearly 90% in the wrong, versus her 10. I am younger, I should respect her more. I am a hard-ass and should lighten up. My efforts to keep quiet while she is sleeping in the room are "shoved in her face" and only done for that purpose.

I find it hard to understand how my words of logic, if shrouded a bit in my underlying exhaustion and inherent bitterness, are aggressively dismissed by all. And why? Why am I to blame, and why should attempt to respect and understand a bit more?

Well, obviously. It's because of her Aspergers. 

And now I am made to feel like an utter idiot and perfectly terrible human being, because I am blaming the presumably functioning 25-year old Aspie for stealing my phone charger and not returning it to its proper place.

Except that it's more than the phone charger. It's the taking of things--chargers, clothes, make-up, razors--and not returning them. It's the fact that every time I just can't play nice that day, I receive eye rolls and private scoldings later from Mummy. Or I am laughed at, poked fun of, and compared to hard-ass characters like Bones from Star Trek. Really? Making me feel worse and worse and worse is going to make you feel better? Aren't we a little old to be playing that game?

And yet I still feel like I am the bad person, for just, not understanding why she acts like a child, or why I react so strongly to the blatant acts of disrespect.
Maybe I just am.