about asperger’s syndrome, in plain english

i was having a harder time than normal functioning on saturday, and hung out with a friend despite this fact. having a hard time navigating in my head choices regarding what to do, planning, i was breaking down, cuz i was really tired. we had a bit of an impasse resulting from this, me trying to work thru it in my head but i couldn’t, and she couldn’t understand why it was such a problem, implied i was making it up, my inability to.

people with asperger’s syndrome speak an entirely different language, and see the world in a completely different way, which makes moments like these harder. i did talk to her about it the next day, and she responded heroically, coming full circle; i realized that one thing i could do, if i want somebody else to understand, is to help them understand it.

if you google “asperger’s syndrome”, i don’t like what you find. because you’ll see a lot of people use the term “asperger disorder”, which, right there, tells you how they’re gonna go about it. they’re gonna classify you as wrong, tell you need medication, etc. a lot of sites quote directly from the dsm i.v., which doesn’t tell you anything. they use extremely bad writing, almost as if the government were doing the writing, all dry and clinical, removed from the day to day. also another problem you encounter, if you’re an adult researching for yourself, is that a lot of websites and research out there are focused on kids. this is because, as i understand it, there had been a pretty substantial parents movement to understand what was going on with their kids, banding together, trying to figure it out.

if you google asperger’s syndrome, the wikipedia article is at the very top, and i’m glad for that, because it’s a pretty good one, with a considerable neurodiversity focus.

o.a.s.i.s. is near the top as well, and it’s another good link, though exceptionally short.

andrea’s buzzing about is another good site, she talks a lot, all thru her site, about not just asperger’s but also auditory processing disorder, executive function, face blindness, all sorts of stuff.

this way of life is another good site as well. why i like this particular site will be explained by reading one of its opening paragraphs:

Welcome to my site about autism and advocacy – or, as I like to say, about the way of life that is a bit different but just as valuable as anyone else’s. I am an autistic adult who wants to see my people succeed and prosper in this world. Unfortunately, there are a lot of difficulties we experience, only some of which have anything to do with our actual autism. Many of them deal with the way society sees and treats us.

my post on auditory processing disorder lists several links i’ve found helpful, written in an easy to understand way, about auditory processing disorder, which is rather comorbid with asperger’s syndrome.

the institute for the study of the neurologically typical is a beautiful site. i think it will be only funny if you’ve been diagnosed with asperger’s syndrome or autism, and been confronted with the overwhelming reality that the medical community implies that you are dysfunctional and need to be fixed. no, i don’t want to be fixed, damnit, i instead want people to speak a language that makes sense, and to be respected for who i am, and left alone.

i apologize for the pop-up ad with this next link, but the autistic adults picture project… i can’t tell you how important this site was to me when i first discovered i had this “disorder”, and was trying to connect, find other people with it. i looked at those pictures and said, “wow, that’s what they look like? they look almost… normal.” so do i, which has been a deficit, oddly enough. if you can pose like a normal person, reasonably function with small sessions of small talk, then people look at you and say, “you probably really don’t have this syndrome, i think you’re just making it up.” it’s harder to get help if you’re able to pass, because people don’t take you seriously.

one of the worst things a person can say to me is for them to not understand why i would say i have asperger’s syndrome, “because you do so well when talking to me.” you really don’t know how hard it is, all the complex translation going on in my head, that i never talk about. just to functional normally, or appear to do so, requires a lot of work, and is stressful. the person with asperger’s experiences burnout frequently.

when i first started researching this, the asperger’s association of new england was very helpful; i was living in boston at the time. if i remember correctly, i didn’t find their website too helpful, but sent them an email (and found it confusing that they wanted me to call instead of email), knowing they had adult support groups. they sent me a packet of information that… i carried that with me for a month, extremely helpful. i wish they would publish that packet on their website.

i don’t process information like most people do. i have a considerably hard time processing anything linear, and instead extrapolate things in my head using brain workings that i don’t quite understand myself. i have found out that i am an exceptionally visual person, i literally feel music turned into orchestrated visuals in my mind, and i can communicate with people much more comfortably using 1) limited sign language and 2) by writing. though i can manage with small talk well enough to pass, in a limping kind of way. (much conversation with people i have, though it appears to them i’m doing well, is a blur for me.) i can organize thoughts in my head more easily if i use a visual framework, and this i always do. anything linear it’s quite arduous to have to work out, i literally have to go in my head, “okay, for step 1, i just said step 1, step 1 means it’s the first one, so i’m gonna put my first finger out right here, and the finger is on the top so it means the first, and now i’m gonna shake my head to try to get me to remember this, step 1 is this (rush of information), and i shake my head again, and say all right, step 1 is… (say it all over again).” it’s a lot of work. i’m not making it up, that’s literally how i have to work it out in my head. instead i much rather prefer to simply write the instructions down, or be given an illustrated chart instead.

this visual mode of thinking (i’ve taken psychological tests that’ve said my brain is veered 87% toward visual, with only a 13% capacity for auditory processing) is called picture thinking, and the wikipedia article is a place to start to research about that, though it isn’t very good. temple grandin has an excellent page about it. picture thinking is related to asperger’s syndrome as well as auditory processing disorder

i also experience, to a considerable degree, something called synaesthesia. i literally feel music, like it’s fabric being rubbed against my skin. sunlight becomes sound. etc. i use a lot of mixed metaphors when i write. =) since i was a young kid it’s been like this, and way back then i decided it meant i was an Artist (always capitalized, of course, because it’s Important), because Artists lived fantastic flights of fancy, lived in a deeply swooning world. and quite seriously, then as in now, things hit me HARD. i have to block the world out continually because if i didn’t… way too much of a rollercoaster, way too intense. it makes for some really good, really out of this world dancing though.

i am ridiculously, unbelievably hypersensitive to sound. i hear things no one else hears. dead asleep in the middle of a quiet, quiet neighborhood, no sounds that any mortal human ear could hear, i am woken up out of a deep sleep by a persistent annoyance at the edge of my consciousness that i find out, after 2 hours of investigation, is the barely perceptible whirr of a generator in someone’s house 2 blocks away. someone once suggested that i should use my powers for good, turn my supersensitive ears to the far corners of the universe and try to pick up interstellar life. i am easily agitated by sound, people slamming doors, slight vibrations in desk, etc. things bother me that bother no one else. coming each day to work in an office environment feels like entering a warzone. i have to wear an ipod when i work, and can’t sleep without 1) silicone earplugs and 2) a fan, on high, set on my bed right next to my pillow so that the vibration from the fan cancels out any incoming sound vibrations.

try to imagine being this hypersentive to sound and this much of a light sleeper, and trying to sleep with someone else in the same bed.

i take things extremely literally. i am up in arms if someone says something to me like, “if you do that i’ll slap you.” now, in some distant way it appears to me that they think it’s okay to say things like that. but i will only respond to the actual words you use, and if you’re threatening me with physical harm with the words you’re using… it just becomes problematic. i have a hard time communicating with vague imprecise people. there is, from what i hear, this entire world of nuances and unspoken communication most people communicate with, something about body language, expression in the eyes… i have no idea. i know i don’t get it. all i get is the words you use, and most of the time the words you use aren’t what you really mean… i keep to myself much of the time, by necessity.

i’ve been told, thru research, that i miss approximately 75% of most human communication, given i don’t see the body language/nuance-like communication that goes on around me.

hinting doesn’t work with me. you have to come out and say it. also, you can’t assume anything. the rules in my mind are not the rules in your mind, it is very wise if you do not assume ANYthing.

i don’t respond well to imprecise directions. for instance if you tell me to go clean the living room, i’ll walk to the living room and stand there, confused, not knowing what to do. how, exactly, am i to clean the living room? should i just take things off tables? go a step further, vacuum? should i make it immaculate? if i move the things off tables into a box on the floor, is that really cleaning, aren’t i just moving the mess from one place to the other? given all this, it’d go over much better if you said, “can you clear the things off the table, put them in the box on the floor, and vacuum around the furniture?” unfortunately, communicating successfully with someone who has asperger’s requires extra work on the part of the neurotypical.

i also have a problem with executive dysfunction. quite simply, i get confused very easily. ask me, “how are you?” and i will stand there staring at you, paralyzed with indecision. there are SO many ways i could answer that question, and i can’t figure it out. you could be asking as to my health and well-being, or whether i liked the weather, do you really care, do you want me to narrate my day’s events? in my world what i would do is ask you, specifically, what you mean by that question, but i know that’s just weird, you won’t know what i’m talking about, you’ll just stare at me like i’m some alien, and i get that so much of the time i’m tired of it… so there i am, 30 seconds later, still staring at you with a blank, confused look on my face, not knowing what to say.

that’s executive dysfunction for me. it also comes in other forms: i can literally stand in one spot and can’t move forward. it’s like the entire universe has opened up into a cascading radiance of infinite possibilities, infinite paths i could take, and i cannot, for the life of me, decide which one to take. how to choose? all decisions, largely, for me are pretty equal to each other, neutral, not much in the way of good and evil, and i don’t respect any authority over any other, so how am i to decide? i get trapped, continually in these spaces. i will sit in my room for hours at a time, not moving, because it takes a lot of work, tricking myself in my brain, to set myself into motion.

i have a hard time, in my head, navigating possibilities as a general rule. i am lousy with money. i have a hard time understanding that my actions, right now, may affect me at a future date. i cannot relate what’s now to what will come later. innately i have a very hard time organizing work, email, task lists, etc, and have to erect elaborate systems to counteract that. to figure it out, i have to do all sorts of logical mathwork in my head, which is a lot of work to do on a daily basis.

there are many ways that will make me seem standoffish at work, and one of them is that i can’t deal with too much confusion, and for self-preservation i have to cut out anything that does not directly pertain to my core responsibilities. staff meetings, dress code, politics, what another department is doing, etc? i will not allow those things, at all, into my mind, because if i do i’ll lose the focus on my own line of work completely. i feel bad about this when i attend my monthly department meetings. i work with a good group of people, very dedicated, and we all help each other out. i do feel bad, though, that because of the way i am and also how i have to block a lot out in order to focus, it’ll seem like i’m not being part of the team.

i will wear the same pair of shoes for 3 years in a row. i will listen to the same playlist of music on my ipod for 2 months, not even registering the repetition. i will eat the same thing, every day, week after week, for 3 months in a row. i am a creature of habit.

i can’t sit with my back to a room, it drives me absolutely nuts, not being able to see what’s coming up behind me, it makes me very on edge.

not looking people in the eyes is one of the more common asperger traits. i have that too, although my own variation. i couldn’t look people in the eyes at all when i was a kid, constantly talked to people staring at the floor. when i actually stared at people in the eyes it was so intense and invasive i felt they were stealing my soul, scraping right thru me. i’ve mellowed out a bit with age, and do look people in the eyes more when i talk. partly because i know it’s expected of me, and it makes the other person uncomfortable if i don’t. (though i know some times i stare blankly, with that confused not there look on my face, which is because cuz most of the time if you’re babbling on i most likely don’t have a clue what you’re saying.) i also look people a little more in the eyes now because… when talking to you, i will continually be not looking at you, always veering away, oftentimes talking while looking away, but i do feel the need to return to you. despite my innate aversion to eye contact, i feel that it’s important, and the more important the topic is, the more important i feel i be looking at the other person. otherwise it feels too dirty and random.

all that said, if you are trying to tell me something, and i know it’s very important that i understand/get what you are trying to say, i will look down, at about a 40 degree angle away from my body, around the spot where my hands would be if i were holding them out slightly in front of me; i will tilt my head slightly toward you, and my eyes will be, out of the periphery, be aware of your face moving. it may not look like i’m listening to what you’re saying, but what i’m actually doing is focusing very hard on the words you’re saying, and translating them to visuals in that space my eyes are staring at, and working out little tricks in my mind to try to get the words to stick, translate into something i can actually understand. i find that actually looking at somebody as they talk is the worst thing for me to do if i want to understand the words coming out of their mouth. if i look at somebody directly, the intensity, my awareness of the other person is too distracting, and the words wind up being pure noise.

i tend to get followed in stores by security guards because they think i’m a shoplifter. this might have something to do with the quiet way i come in, keeping to the walls, not looking anybody in the eyes, very slowly walking thru, and the sideways way i look at things, out of the corner of my eyes. oh yeah, that too, i tend to not stare at things directly, but from the side.

i can’t meditate with my eyes closed, because the visuals are too intense in my mindspace, i can’t escape the words and thoughts, they never stop. opening my eyes, seeing things, that helps me meditate more.

given i’m so easily distracted, easily agitated, i have to consciously block the outside world out, which can make it seem that i’m being selectively deaf. i can sit in a noisy bar reading a book, and continually have people coming to me saying, “how can you read in this noise?” it’s easy, actually. the overall noise of the bar is static, cancels itself out, and i’m able to tune it out completely. i’d have a harder time reading in a library, with the random noises of people dropping books, clearing throats, blowing noses. THAT would drive me nuts, trying to read in those types of conditions. geez, what kind of fool would want to read in a library? =)

people will talk to me and i have tuned the world around me out so much that though i’m aware they’re there, as part of the background noise, i cannot pull my attention away from what i’m concentrated on to recognize that they’re addressing me. as a general rule i have a very hard time switching my attention from one task to another. it’s constantly vexing me at work that i work with earphones in by necessity, completely immersed in what i’m doing, and someone will come by, ask for my attention, and it’s a lot of work to switch focus to them. i get frustrated when they do that, not understanding why they simply couldn’t have emailed me instead.

when crossing streets, i have to cross precisely in the center of the block, and divide the blocks equally, and in an ideal world cross at an angle so that it’s the straightest distance possible between two points. if i can’t do this, especially if i’m walking with friends, it bugs me to no end, i find myself looking back where we’ve come from, wanting to go back and do it over again, but the right way. i never mention this when i’m walking with friends, it’d just be too weird, and i’m weird enough as it is.

the pathways i walk are very deliberate, very calculated. each route i take to get home is full of planning and meaning. very little i do is random, i am way too conscious. i really wish i were the kind of person who could be all “whatever”, walk randomly. i’ve known people like this, who will set out walking for a restaurant having no idea, at all, where the restaurant is, just a vague feeling, and they’ll circle a block endlessly, or ten times. i cannot walk with these people, cuz they drive me nuts. before i start out for any destination, i have google mapped it, imprinted the map in my head photographically, and have already analyzed the pathway i will take that will involve the least amount of walking, and i’ve rotated the view around in my head so i can see the pathway from various angles, slightly 3d and geometric.

i don’t do well in crowds at all, and veer away from them at all costs. if i’m walking on a sidewalk with a few people, i try to pick the path that involves the least amount of pathway interference. i feel a need to walk in a straight line, and having to deviate from that line i’ve calculated to be the proper one cuz somebody isn’t watching where they’re going… endless frustration. you can frequently find me walking on the street beside the sidewalk, by the curb. if i need to go into more densely populated parts of a city i will go out of my way so i can walk thru alleyways, between buildings, take side streets.

for the longest time i had no idea what to do with people, was constantly saying improper, tactless things, off the top of my head, no idea about boundaries, respecting peoples’ space. it got to the point where i’m afraid to say anything, for fear it’s gonna go badly. if i do talk, i take a long, long time to think about it, making sure it’s the kind of thing i should be saying, if i were a normal person.

i constantly have that going on in my head: “what would a normal person do?” my friends discover that i’m continually asking them questions about how to socially behave, is it okay to sit right here upon entering your friend’s house, was it okay for me to’ve said this to that person, etc. it’s not a matter of insecurity or lack of self-esteem: i really, truly have no idea. it’s all guesswork for me. i will stand there at the very far corner of a bar, staring at everyone, and i see bodies, the clothes they’re wearing, some are good looking, some are not… but i get the persistent feeling, which i feel is manifested in how i wind up sitting in a corner, reading a book, no one talking to me, that there’s this entire interconnected world all those other people are experiencing, which i somehow am missing out on.

i don’t do very well on the phone. my phone is always buried, sometimes the battery dead, at the bottom of my bag. if i see my phone ringing, i get instantly stressed out, i have to psych myself out to pick it up. when preparing to call somebody, i have to do a practice walkthru of the conversation in my mind. i don’t set it as a strict narrative in my mind, i instead ascertain what the different modular blocks to the conversation will be, isolate them, then visually, in my head, lay them out in a group in front of me, and i keep that visual in my head as i begin to dial the numbers. (i think that the visual voicemail concept apple came up with in their iphone is absolutely beautiful.) i have done research about how to set it up, on my computer, so that incoming voicemail messages get translated by a program into text, and then emailed to me. if cellphone communication ceased to exist through the entire world, and was replaced by text-messaging instead, i would be a very happy person. i find that the tools i prefer to communicate are very close to the tools a deaf person would choose to go about in the world.

i much prefer people to email me rather than call. i get very stressed out when people won’t respond by email, and call instead. i get more stressed out than i know a “normal” person would.

i do have a photographic memory, though not necessarily eidetic. i was a serious underachiever as a kid, quite smart, but frequently bored in school. though every so often i’d do things just to amuse myself, like memorize the entire 30 page chapter of our social studies book in the 7th grade by staring at the pages and reproducing the visual of each page in my mind, and then, on the day of the text, read each question, flip thru the chapter in my mind, find the answer, and then write out the paragraph containing the answer word for word.

i have no concept, whatsoever, of fads. i do feel the need to be “cool”, but i generally go about it in my own way. peer pressure never had any effect on me because…. i mean, seriously, why would it? i don’t connect with you, i have problems seeing you as a real person, there’s this serious communication problem in the way… how is your pressuring me to smoke or have unprotected sex actually gonna happen? i was an absolute mess as a kid, though, and it’s taken me decades to fix myself. i was quite an ugly ducking, and many things for me (first kiss, first time having sex, dressing to look good), didn’t happen til my mid-twenties. when i started dressing up, i went over the top, fluorescent red hair, pierced tongue, etc.

i have a very vague understanding of me as a person. i will hang out, socializing, with good people, and even though intellectually in my head i understand that they are good people, and what they see in me, and how they are of value to me… there’s still this insurmountable distance between me and them. i can’t actually see their boundaries, i have no idea, whatsoever, what’s going on in their heads, the space inside their skull may as well be empty, written in alien language. i have a hard time interpreting the things people do and say. because i have a hard time understanding why they’re there, talking to me, i start to feel unreal myself. because i can’t feel them, i can’t relate, then how can i trust, what am i even doing here?

my last girlfriend told me over the kitchen table one day, staring at me in despondency, that she felt that she could’ve been anybody, someone else could take her place and it’d be interchangeable. i stared at her, not knowing what to say. i don’t really feel “love” the way i think most people feel it. the highest compliment i can pay to you is to tell you that you are useful, and i see value in you. i choose to spend time with you because you do good things for me. “love”, though? i see it only as a made-up hallmark term. if i like you, though, i’ll let you know, usually in some weird way. for instance, a new person got added to our department a few months ago. i kept to myself, almost as if she wasn’t there, head down mostly, per my usual, and she’d later tell me that she got the impression that i didn’t like her. i get that a lot. on the contrary, i realized she was a good egg, and did like her. i just don’t show it in the usual ways: about a month after she started, i stayed a little late after work on a friday, and wallpapered the walls of her still-bare cubicle with pictures of cats, really crazy, happy cats. those cats are still up there 3 months later, and cracks everybody up who walks by, her included.

if i like you, i won’t be looking at you as we talk, i won’t ask you questions about yourself, i won’t invite whatever counts as neurotypical emotional reciprocity, and i’ll be rather standoffish and aloof. i struggle, continually, with the realization that in my very nature i am a selfish person. conversation is difficult for me because i have to continually remind myself to ask about the other person, and i have some vaguely defined, dusty collection in the less used portions of my brain that are filed under, “things to say when you’re struggling to have a normal conversation, and want it to seem to the other person as if you’re interested in them.” by my nature, the prominent way you and i would be able to connect (body language, neurotypical conversation) is not a possibility, so what are we left with? me not understanding the words you say, you’re a complete mystery, sometimes static, all i can see is your skin and clothes and the way light falls on your body and the cymbals of lightspace in the room i’m in and so i affect the mannerisms, smile at the right moments, as if in an oddly timed performance, and all i catch is a quickly moving surface, and then you’ve walked away, and i am alone. because of the nature of how i get about in the world, i can’t really connect with people, because their chosen medium of social intercourse is not one i can function in. so it’s me there, alone, parroting conversation, trying to remember to ask you questions about yourself, and having a hard time looking you in the eye when we talk, and i keep getting distracted. if i don’t check myself, i will spin off into really geeky conversational sublets, i mean, i can go for an hour talking about the meta-ness of css and web 2.0, not having any clue if the other person is interested or not.

i am pulled into myself by necessity, don’t connect with people in the usual ways, and my life is oftentimes a mess. i’ve had so many problems with roommates (i’m not social, communal enough, nothing they say makes any sense to me) that my housing for many years has been very unstable. because i have a hard time pulling things together, i still don’t have a driver’s license. because i’m frequently needing to move, nice people i know at the time offer to help. and then i need help again, and so they help again. and then, cuz i’m still lost and yet another aspect of my life falls apart, i need help again…

pull the 3 previous paragraphs together and try to understand why i feel like such a selfish person, that i don’t award the people around me the recognition they deserve, that there’s something i should be giving them that i simply don’t have. it seems that i impartially observe, take what i need, keep to myself the rest of the time. i struggle with the realization that because of my “lot in life”, i tend towards codependency-type relationships, with me the person always needing to be taken care of. it’s… a paradox, that i’m as intelligent as i am, with my diverse range of island-type talents, such a quick brain, and i still experience homelessness and joblessness in my early 30s. it feels like there’s something wrong in my subroutines, the programming got mixed up at birth; i was supposed to be an incredibly talented success story, i mean, sections of code were written into my programming about ambition, desire, imagination, creativity… but there’s a fatal subroutine flaw, and i became less than what i was supposed to be, and because my mind is fashioned of that programming, i am stuck with the decisions of that coding, cannot fix myself.

some people will say that people with autism/asperger’s don’t have emotions. i’m not sure that’s true. possibly for some, but not for all. i am an extremely emotional person, i feel things very deeply. but the realization has occurred to me that i don’t feel the same emotions other people feel about the same things. when my mother told me my father had died, i looked up at her neutrally and said, “oh. thanks for letting me know,” and then returned back to my book. i didn’t cry til 8 years later, and even then it felt perfunctory. but i see somebody with multiple sclerosis walking by painfully on crutches, and it hurts inside, that there’s pain in this world, and i have to turn away and i want to cry.

i do laugh inappropriately. someone falls down and hurts themselves, and i bust up laughing. then realize how wrong and inappropriate it was. i also have a curious relationship with pain. i remember as a kid flipping my pen over and over as i used to do cuz i was frequently bored, and one day in art class it somehow happened that the pencil got embedded a quarter inch into my finger, touching the bone. i held my finger up, staring at it, intrigued, waving it back and forth. i showed it to other people, look isn’t that cool? it’s not a matter of shock or trauma, i really didn’t feel it.

i do have a slight problem with emotions, though, to get deeper to the truth. as i mentioned, i am a very emotional person and feel things intensely, but even when i’m feeling things intensely there’s a heavy amount of dislocation. ever since i was a little kid i’ve viewed emotions as strange alien visitors inhabiting my body. when crying, i know i’m sad, i know i’m miserable, but there’s still a detachment, like i can see myself crying, and i’m analyzing it intellectually, logically, and it doesn’t make any sense at all. when i “feel” things i’m not sure that “feel” is the right word. it’s like… it’s like, i get the impression that with “normal” people they can feel emotions without a filter, no buffer, it soaks into their skin instantly, wham, instant emotion, i am alive, i am a human. for me, though, it’s like the directions got messed up, and the emotions i’m supposed to be feeling got sent somewhere they weren’t supposed to. it’s like i’m feeling them from one room over, and their shape got changed a little bit in the journey to where they are. they’re strong enough that i can feel them thru the walls, but i still feel like i’m in a room all my own, surrounded by a buffer i don’t understand.

do people with asperger’s syndrome have sex? are there issues? yes, i say to both questions. i am a very creative person, can get lost in details, feel things intensely. sex can be good. i also have problems with executive dysfunction, sensory integration, things become too much, and language completely breaks down. sex can be bad. there’s a local sexual workshop in the bay area for people who have asperger’s. i’ve found that for me to enjoy sex it has to be very careful, very planned, but then turned on its head in a way that takes the formality away completely, cuz i hate for things to be formal. (i’m a very complicated person.) looking at the person directly, very aware, very honest, very involved. the style i’ve evolved i’ve found to closely mimic tantric sex, and it’s a style i’ve developed out of necessity. i have to make allowances for when sensory integration breaks down, which means changing the play to something different, or taking a break. i am very easily distracted, and losing focus during sex is a major problem for me, i start feeling everything else in the room, the color of the paint, the feel of the light from the ceiling, temperature of the air, and it gets all mixed up. i find mixing it up sexually, keeping me on my toes, to help prevent this.

i do find that i don’t do well on the receiving end so much as i do on the giving end. on the giving end, you can be rather good, sex-wise, if you’re a creative, innovative thinker who’s researched the hell out of sex techniques and looks at it as an exciting creative endeavor. on the receiving end, it can turn into an absolute tragedy if you’re with a good person and you are unable to feel what they’re doing because your sensory filters are all messed up. it’s the kind of thing that makes you want to cry, and makes you feel not so hopeful about life, to be disconnected like this from people in so many ways.

i do need things to be structured. i’m a highly logical person, constantly, in my head, working out diagrams and models in my head, sometimes i extrapolate philosophical problems so that they are elements on a cartesian coordinate system. i lose myself in the pattern of raindrops trickling down a windshield. everywhere i look, wherever there’s movement, patterns, i see some unspoken mathematical potential, the overall dynamic nature of any system i find myself observing. frequently, when i look around, i’m seeing details that i know for a fact no one else does, the shapes of windows, how they relate, in terms of multi-sided polygons, to the shape of the doorway we’re walking thru, etc.

naturally, i speak very formally, have since i was a kid. when i was in the 7th grade i spoke with the vocabulary of someone in their senior year in college. sometime in my twenties i practiced and deliberately changed my speech patterns to be more casual, mixing up into it slang and jargon, to be more normal, off-hand and the habit stuck. i find i switch back and forth between the two styles, although the more stressed out and agitated i am, the more exceedingly formal my language will become. i also had the same thing to do with how i carry myself, how i walk. innately, i walk very quickly, head down, very rushed and distracted, bumping into things. i move that way too, easily distracted, hard time focusing, rushing thru, clumsy. it took me years of practice to slow myself down, adopt a more casual walk, a more casual way of moving. every second of movement that my body makes, every manifestation, i am exceedingly conscious of. regarding any way i am able to pass, i am an entirely self-made person, a for the surface world persona i created by looking in magazines, watching tv, lips moving silently, emulating, practicing. i oftentimes feel that the more closely i’m able to approximate what it is to be normal, the less i am who i’m really supposed to be. i feel that because i am who i am being forced to live in a world of people who are not like me, i have to pretend to be someone i’m not, and that so much of what i do is a lie. and that i don’t really have a choice.

i respond very well to things that are structured, ordered, make sense. i don’t deal well with changes in plans, it’s a struggle for me in my head, one you’ll most likely never hear about. i get really agitated when i’m in noisy, disorganized environments. a bane of my existence is people who are continually late, i have a very hard time readjusting plans i’ve made if someone’s late, and also get very stressed out if we have to rush.

given words, speaking is so difficult for me, and i communicate best by touch and visuals, when i was in my twenties i heavily sexualized my relationships with other people. if we have this communication problem and i suck with small talk, am completely confused, i’m still going to want a connection with you, and sex is that connection. now that i’m in my early thirties and i don’t do that so much anymore, i find myself struggling to figure out how to relate to people elsewise, and continually come up with the gaps i’ve mentioned before, not able to understand who the other person really is, their mind, intentions being a blank, empty space filled with alien language. i find dancing or doing art or some physical activity with somebody to really help, i am somehow able to connect with them much more. if my goal is to get to know you, sitting down and “talking” is the worst thing we can do, that is so a second- and third-best way to go about it; “talking” with friends is something i do because i know it’s what most people do, and i’ve practiced enough that i’ve rehearsed proper responses, etc, and i do get *some*thing out of it. but if i want to get to know you, the absolute best thing we could do is sit in the same room together, absolutely silent. we could be doing an activity together (art, fixing computers, playing monopoly or scrabble, etc), or separately (you’re on the desktop computer, i’m on my laptop), but the more wordless it is, the more natural and easy it is for me, and the more i’m able to feel a connection with you. wordless activities spent with people is the easiest way for me to feel another person, it feels like the way it’s supposed to be in my mind.

i struggle with the label, this “asperger’s syndrome” label. it completely makes sense, i’ve been trying to figure out why i have the problems i’ve had for so many years. asperger’s syndrome was the first one that fit 100%. to the letter, completely. i look at the diagnostic label as a tool. in researching ways to deal with my problems, i’m finding that tools people with asperger’s use to help themselves are the ones that help me the most. they speak my language the most. i met several people with asperger’s and meeting them was like… imagine being the one alien on a planet full of humans your entire life, and then one day, in your thirties, meeting another alien, someone just like you.

it was just like that. for the first time in my life, going to a group with asperger’s people, i could actually understand what people were saying, and felt that the language i was using made sense. the pain they talked about, navigating in a world filled with rules, connections they don’t understand, feeling like a robot… my people. but i question this, because, as i said recently to somebody else, what is truth? is truth a word somebody else creates, or is it things i realize about myself on my own? i don’t like labels, i don’t like other people defining me, but this one has fit incredibly well. i like the help, the diagnostic tools, the helping techniques, but i do not like that i’ve had to label myself like this, that i have to, when i go in each day to work, be confronted with the considerable difficulties i have, how for so many years it broke me down so i felt i couldn’t do it anymore, and for the first time i found something that explained it all, and though i hate the label, it has been, in an uncomfortable way, a lifeline, something to hold onto when nothing else made sense, the only thing that made sense.

i really like the autistic rights/neurodiversity movement. since i was 18 i’d done research about all sorts of psychological manifestations, trying to figure myself out. always on the fringe, always such a mess, such a geeky, intense, weird little person, on the edge, making my own rules, all on my own. and having a really hard time. so i was really happy to, when i finally found one that fit 100%, explained everything about me, to find out that it has such in your face attitude. it’s totally cool to discover this community of people with asperger’s who refuse to apologize for who they are. i’ve found people with asperger’s to be very honest, intelligent, creative people into all sorts of things.

i’ve gone on and on about limitations, i think. good things? i am an exceptionally creative person. i think using my own rules, and don’t let anyone else tell me what to think. i am innovative and a superb problem-solver. i do very well at the kinds of jobs where i’m sent into some place extremely messy and given the authority and freedom to clean it up, streamline it, give it rules by which it can operate more efficiently. because of the way my mind works, i’m very good at interface design, visual design. i can pack, for moving, like you wouldn’t believe, i can fit 2 bedrooms worth of stuff into the backseat of a car. i write so much i almost qualify as being hyperlexic. i am affectionate and will care about you if we become close, though if i don’t know you i’ll seem like a strange, troubled robot. because of the way my brain works i frequently crack people up with the things i say. i’m very good at fixing things. i’m constantly coming up with off the wall, surprising things you never would expect. because i don’t care what other people think, i am quite unpretentious, and will not judge you, no matter how weird you are. i am very honest, and will tell you what i mean, and want from you just the same.