I am talking, of course, about how I am partially ultraviolet light.
OK, OK, not really. Instead I am going to discuss my feelings about how I may or may not be slightly autistic.
Now let me be time crystal clear here : I am not autistic. And I am not claiming to be autistic. Rest assure that I am not trying to sneak onto your sacred ground, my friends on the spectrum.
I have checked myself over many, many times and I simply don’t match enough of the diagnostic criteria for autism or Asperger’s. So I am not in the club at all.
However, I have identified certain traits within myself that resonate with my understanding of the spectrum and that therefore I can better understand by looking at them through that lens.
Got it? Good.
What I have been thinking about lately is the problems I have had connecting with people. No matter how hard I try, regular people and myself just don’t click. I can tell they are looking for something in me and not finding it, and I desperately want to give it to them but I just don’t have it.
It’s like they are looking for a USB port and all I have is Bluetooth.
That’s when that soul-crushing chasm opens up between us and I feel a hard cold breeze hit my heart from all directions at once and I feel alienated and isolated and I am once more stranded naked in the midnight tundra of the void between our souls.
And I find that highly discouraging.
So do others, because there is nothing obviously weird about me. I am articulate, empathic, funny, intelligent, and approachable. All surface indications are that they should be able to connect to me the same way they do everyone else.
But somehow it just…. doesn’t work.
So now I am wondering what the heck is the deal with that. Sure, in an of itself it isn’t autism, but then what the hell is it? What do you even call that?
I am clearly different from most of my fellow humans and I am pretty sure I was born that way. Even as a preschooler I was an oddly serious, self-contained, focused, and mature little boy.
Being denied kindergarten only reinforced this tendency.
But even before that, I was very odd. I had no interest in toys. Dolls, action figures, toy dump trucks, and all the rest held no allure for me.
Because I had no urge to concoct and enact the sorts of scenarios that seem to be what “play” means to normal, healthy children,.
I never had an imaginary friend. I never had a stuffed animal I thought of as a real animal and carried around with me everywhere. I always had a very sharp understanding of the difference between fantasy and reality.
And this was true before the rape, before the lack of kindergarten, and before I ever was bullied by anyone.
So what the ever loving hell was wrong with me?
Because I sure as frick wasn’t normal, and I am not normal now.
To be honest, I never stood a chance.
More after the break.
Random thought : what of instead of watching someone strip, you watch someone being stripped? An undressing show. Could be pretty hot.
My major malfunction, part 2
I’ve put the question of what the fuck was/is wrong with me out to my Avoidant Personality Disorder subReddit. So far, only one reply, and they talked about functional play versus symbolic play.
Functional play is using something exactly as intended – like bouncing a ball. Symbolic play is the sort of imaginative, freeform play I talked about above.
The responder said that it sounded like I had some functional play but no symbolic play, and I think they are right.
I did do some things like bounce a ball against a wall or jump rope or go climb a tree. But at no point was I imagining anything else happening.
In that sense I was a very dull child.
But the thing is, I had loads of imagination. And of course prodigious intellect. I could, and can, lie in bed for hours just thinking about things.
And yet, even within the world of my mind, I never imagined myself to be the hero of an adventure I was creating on the fly. I never told myself elaborate stories. I never conjured up a sorcerer’s orchestra or pictured myself flying on the back of a Pegasus.
I was always me. Flights of fancy never carried me away. I always had that very firm sense of what was real and what was imagination and the two never crossed.
It never would have even occurred to me to imagine my way out of my problems. I often say that I am a dreamer but…. not that way. Not in the doe-eyed idealist sense with stars in their eyes and hearts full of wonder sense.
I saw that kind of thing in pop culture, and it always spoke to me. I often wished I had that kind of overpowering hope in me, and I would enjoy it by proxy when it came up.
But it was not for me.
It could never have been for me.
So I might get a really good feeling from, say, this song :
And while I listening, I would feel some kind of connection to the sort of full color enriching hopeful world other kids lived in.
But then the movie ended and the song faded and the color and warmth drained out of me again and I went back to being a sad little robot who went to school.
So again, what the heck was wrong with me? Something was and is terrible wrong with me. I am a defective unit. Does not compute.
And I wouldn’t care except that I think it has a lot to do with why I am so sad.
There is a cold dark gap where some vital piece of social equipment should be and that made me quite unlike the other children and left me alienated and alone.
And to this day I am so very lonely without it.
If I knew what it was called, I would buy one online.
As is, I don’t know if it even has a name.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.