dear Lew, do sensory issues ever get in your way of living the maximum amount of life you can fit in one life? sending a splash of sea breeze your way, Kat
thank you so much for this question and i will be very honest here so indulge me for a moment. you see, I am autistic. and I have the good autism. I can remember things very easily. working hard comes easy to me. I excel in most academic and professional environments. I love public speaking, negotiations, high pressure social environments. I learn everything fast. languages, rules, instruments, disciplines.
but i am also twenty seven and my mother has to buy my clothes for me still because I don't know how to do it. I have just moved countries for the fourth time for a prestigious job and she needs to send me my shirts in the mail because I don't know how! I just can't figure it out. i also cannot touch porous materials like unglazed clay or unburnished metal. i find it so deeply disgusting it makes me sick to my stomach just picturing it. two months ago I cried for an hour because the hotpot place me and my friends went to didn't have a instructions on cooking length and the lack of structure freaked me out so hard I nearly threw up.
the best way i can explain it is: everything others find hard I find easy. everything other find easy i find hard. and it's such a fascinating way to go through life like everything is upside down for me. and i am not complaining! this is the easiest form of being autistic by far, and it has given me massive privileges and acces to a life most people never get. but i really struggled with it as a child because no one seemed to understand that i needed accommodations even though I was a child prodigy. that I wasn't being difficult despite being smart and knowing better but because of it.
I guess there is not a big moral to this story but maybe the answer to your question is this: it has stopped me in many exiting and convoluted ways and there is many basic things that i can't do. but i love the cards that i have been dealt and I would not change them out for any money in the world. I'd just like it if people would believe me when i told them that I am not better at playing the game. I am just drawing from a different deck.
