Let’s talk about sensory priorities.

I have realized recently that I am heavily biased toward audio. Because I was born with very poor eyesight, I learned to rely on my ears instead. That’s why I love two hearing biased activities so much: music, and words.

And hearing is how I interact with people. I listen to them. Almost all the information I get about a person comes from their voice. And not just the words. I get a lot of information from things like tone of voice, phrasing, diction, and so on. In fact, I would say that 85 to 90 percent of information I get from people comes through my ears.

Actually looking at them comes in a dismal second. To me, faces are like a label on the audio source that is that person. I think that’s why it tends to take me a longer time to associate faces with names than most people. My mind is working so hard on the audio that it lives little space for visual tasks.

That’s why I can tell you what someone said… but not what they were wearing when the said it. I’ll remember facts about their lives… but not whether they parted their hair to the left or the right today.

I am just plain not very visual. I can see well enough to get through life but very little of what I see makes it to long term or even medium term memory. The only way I remember deeply visual information is if there is a strong emotion anchored to it.

Or, of course, repetition. Places I stay for a long time get deeply ingrained. I could draw you a floor plan for my elementary school, my junior high, and my senior high. I could draw you an extremely detailed floor plan of the house I grew up in. Every piece of furniture, every painting, every item in the kitchen. All of it.

Heck, I could probably do floor plans for everywhere I have ever lived for more than a month or two.

That’s one of the dubious benefits of agoraphobia, I suppose.

But that’s it. Otherwise, it’s audio all the way.

And the thing is, I think this makes me, in a very specific way, intellectually impaired. I say that strictly in the sense that there are definitely cognitive tasks (and not just visual ones) where my performance would be significantly below average.

It’s all part of being the over specialized hothouse flower that I am, I suppose. If I was making a version of myself in a point-based RPG like my fave, Champions, I would have to put tons of points into things like intellect and creativity but almost nothing in anything else. Just the absolute minimum required to function in society.

So like other hothouse flowers, I only thrive in a very specific environment, and anywhere else, I wilt and dry out.

I have yet to find the environment in which I evolved and to which I am perfectly adapted.

Maybe I will find it in entertainment.

The real problem with being so audio fixated is that it interferes with social interaction. I don’t look at people when I talk to them most of the time, let alone make eye contact. If I do make eye contact, it’s extremely brief, like a rock skimming the surface of a puddle.

That’s a whole different thing as well, though. Eye contact freaks me out. The connection is too intense and the barrier between me and others threatens to collapse.

It’s possible that I am further along on the autism spectrum that I previously thought. I just hide it really well by being so goddamned intelligent and articulate. It doesn’t take much effort for me to prove to the world that I am brilliant, and I am capable of such things as spontaneous humour, deep empathy. and startlingly accurate insights into people’s personalities that Asperger’s patients, stereotypically, find extremely difficult or even impossible. So I am far from a “textbook case” for Asperger’s

Story of my life, really.   Nothing about me is typical.

But I do have a lot of trouble with social interaction. No doubt it stems back to my extremely isolated childhood. There’s so much that we are meant to learn from our fellow humans, especially those our age. I got none of that.

It expresses itself as anxiety in me. I feel very lost in social interactions when they go outside the group of people I know and trust.

I am getting over that, thank goodness. I’m not going to get far in show biz being a recluse. I plan to build up a number of activities that demand I leave the apartment and go out into that great big beautiful world out there.

Because there is only one cure for the effects of social isolation, and that’s social exposure. Like any other phobia, social anxiety can be conquered via exposure therapy, although that alone is unlikely to do the trick.

You need therapy too.

But it’s only via exposure you can overwrite the bad tapes with new, more positive tapes. It’s also the only way to desensitize your hair-trigger fear response.

My goal is to get out of the apartment on my own around three times a week. Not sure if that will come from three weekly things or three one time things or whatever, but the point is to get myself used to going out to things and at least checking them out.

Who knows, I might find myself a cozy little spot in a compatible subculture. That would do me a world of good. There’s all shorts of odd little niches I might reasonably occupy.

Like bears (the gay kind). Or writers. Or ga(y)mers. Heck, just getting together with my former classmates (if there are any still around) could be fun.

And, of course, I will be scanning for media events in Vancouver I might be able to get into on a constant basis.

Gotta get to know people who know people, right?

And hopefully, somewhere along the line, I will learn social skills.

That would be nice.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

 

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