Aspie Brain

The musings and self-discoveries of a female on the autism spectrum

[enigmaticasperger]

Too Much Free Time!

I hate weekends. Today, I have spent the entire afternoon on social media, waiting for people to go online so we could chat. There is too much free time and not enough structure at weekends. I spent Saturday evening looking at a book for an A level subject that will not start until September, checking the time allowances for each exam paper and calculating how much time of that to spend on each question. I do not even have my A level interview until June. 

This is how much I need to have something useful to do with my time. I am looking forward to starting A levels as a mature student - I hope that I will be able to go on to University in the future. Six months without a course or job to keep me busy has turned my brain to fluff.

[andthenweloved]

And, because disability is so identified with dependence, let me talk for a moment about that. I am a dependent person. I eat food whose final preparation I handle myself, but which has come to me across roads laid and maintained by other people from stores staffed by other people – and even those people didn’t grow or raise or harvest or slaughter any of it. I wear clothes made by other people from cloth woven by still others. I am human: I depend on others. And this is called independence. I am a dependent person. I need human contact, most of which I receive through an Internet built and maintained by many other people. I do not know my neighbors, but even face-to-face interaction requires someone’s cooperation. I have learned from my time in isolation rooms that I can handle a while without human interaction, but that eventually it will become unbearable. I am human: I depend on others. And this is called independence. I am a dependent person. The words I work with were taught to me by people who wrote and read them before I traced my first A. The language I work in is a living entity, shaped and grown over centuries by billions upon billions of speakers. The ideas I work on are part of a tradition nurtured by many thinkers. I am human: I depend on others. And this is called independence. I am a dependent person. I do not – have learned that I cannot safely – live alone. I require the patterns of life to be modeled for me over and over again. I struggle to get, and to keep, jobs in workplaces designed for “plug-and-play” workers. I learn some things quickly and easily; I need to be explicitly taught many things that seem obvious to others. I am human: I depend on others. And this is called dependence. Independent can mean self-governing. It can also mean self-reliant. It can deny others’ influence on our decisions or others’ support in carrying those decisions out. Dependent can mean controlled by others. It can also mean requiring the support of others. None of us, of course, is independent in either sense. We grow up in social contexts, supported and denied, enabled and disabled by those around us. But some rely on supports which are so common as to go unnoticed, while others use support that is atypical and therefore apparent. Some supports are provided by the community as a whole and go unnoticed, while others are borne – or not – by a small number of people whose lives are profoundly affected. So I know the ways in which I am dependent not by looking at how I depend on others, but by watching other people. I look to nondisabled people to tell me which kinds of dependence are recognized, which are devalued. I know the shame that comes with asking for “inappropriate” help. Within the disability community, too, there are fault lines around which kinds of dependence we recognize, which kinds we devalue.

Critic of the Dawn (via moriartysdance)

[happymonsters]

[tastefullyoffensive]

Introvert problems. (comic by happymonsters)

[horoscope101]

The "Doing the project the night before and it's still better than yours" Squad

Gemini, Taurus, Cancer, Leo, Libra, Scorpio, And Pisces

[enigmaticasperger]

Umbilical Cord - A Poem

This is not about babies! It is about an adult trying to find her way without relying on the support which has always been there - The support which now makes her feel claustrophobic.

With this cord attached I am happy

I am safe

I know where I am in life

I am grounded

This cord is my life line

If I cut it, I will surely die

Without this cord I have no one

I will be alone

I am growing nicely

This cord has sent me all the things I need

I am growing bigger

I am not sure how long I can be sustained through this line alone

My senses have developed

I can see and hear

I can smell and taste

I can think and feel

I want to reach for something

It’s far away

It is something I want and need

I am too far from it

I tug at my cord

It lets me reach further

I tug harder but like a rubber band I am pulled back

I set my sights lower

I try again

But like elastic I bounce back

Even the closest things are not within my grasp

I feel my frustration and desperation grow like little sprouting seeds

Inevitably someday this cord will decay and I will be left with nothing

This lifeline will not sustain me indefinitely

And to be attached for so long might be causing pain

If I stretch the cord I hear strange unhappy shouts or screams

I want to break the cord with my hands

It is too strong to do so

I try to cut it with my teeth

I hear the screams again

This cord is my rope

It supports me, it restrains me

I cannot be free, I will not be free

Not yet

[enigmaticasperger]

My Working Style - A Poem

Also posted on my LiveJournal account, this poem expresses how I like to learn and work.

And so begins my next attempt

It's so much harder than it looks

I only wish to test myself

I'm bored and wish to learn from books

 The information that I like

Is often very detailed and

I like to talk and write in depth

In case you do not understand

 I sometimes try to learn it all

It's fun, it's almost like a game

I get upset when efforts fail

And then I start to hand out blame

 I want to try my very best

In all that I might learn about

Perfectionism helps a lot

I want to make my work stand out

 I may look gormless when I think

Of things I want to say or write

Appearing blank is common when

My brain is busy, day and night

 My information processing

Is slow at best, I need to find

Some extra time to organise

My thoughts to paper from my mind

 I have to read a sentence twice

Or more to fully take it in

My short term working memory

Prefers to send things to the bin

 I often find my final draft

Is also the original

The work is mostly in my head

So changes will be minimal

 I'm not the brightest person and

I have an awful lot to learn

I know it didn't work before

But now I want another turn

[enigmaticasperger]

Class Daydreams and Exam Rage

I often find that I don’t remember a lot of classes at primary school. Although not really ever described as a daydreamer at school, it was clear that most of the time I could not take in information during classes and I was often either preoccupied with my own thoughts or retreated to my own thoughts when I reached my limit for taking in new information.

These thoughts could be a conversation in my head with my imaginary friend (imaginary telepathy!?), a memory of something that had bothered me and a plan to deal with the problem, or even just a simple song (such as a nursery rhyme), stuck in my head, playing over, and over (and over...).

I sometimes wonder at how I managed to get into secondary school, when I could never even concentrate on my homework or revise for exams. I somehow managed to get through my GCSEs with As and Bs (all except art, for which I got an E even though I scored A* for a few of my projects), and still have no idea how I did it, eleven years on.

i do remember one of my common entrance 13+ exams though. We were sat in rows in alphabetical order and next to me was a boy who I quite detested. He was not as unkind as some of the boys but definitely not the nicest and tended to rhyme my surname with a biological internal organ. Setting that apart, I was just developing the first signs of Misophonia around that time and one noise which I could not stand was someone sniffing. Of course the one person who needed a tissue and continued to sniff at regular 30 second intervals for the entire exam had to be this boy, the one sitting next to me.

I do not remember a single question on the exam paper, nor do I remember the subject (though it was likely to be geography as this was generally my worst subject anyway). All I do remember was the pent up rage I was feeling inside and seriously considering to strangle this boy until he could no longer inhale air at all, let alone through his drippy nose.

The rage would go away as soon as the noise was gone. I could not ever describe this feeling to anyone, as I was quite sure it was abnormal and only I had this problem with sounds. I came to understand in later years that my father also suffers from these problems. Was it genetic? I only discovered quite recently that there is a name for this condition and that we are not the only ones out there with it.