Tuesday 24 March 2015

Isn't Anyone Trying to Find me?

Those are some words from a song by the poptress Avril Lavigne.

"Isn't anyone trying to find  me?
Wont someone please take me home?
It's a damn cold night,
Trying to figure out this life,
Wont you take me by the hand
Take me somewhere new.
I don't know who you are but
I, I'm with you"

For some reason, this song sums up how I felt growing up with Aspergers. I did all the normal things that teenagers do. I rarely hung out with a group though, tending to just have one female friend at a time.

If my friend could not go out, then I would go alone. I must have seemed quite odd looking back.

I never felt comfortable though. It was a feeling of incompleteness. That I did not belong and that I must be on the lookout to see if someone recognised me. I don't mean me as in people I knew in real life. No, it was more of a feeling of having fallen out of a nest and having been put back in the wrong one. That's a funny way to describe it I suppose.

Or, a bit like ET left behind and his new existence filled with ways of trying to get back home.

Only I did not know where home was and I made myself very vulnerable to predatory men who I bumped into on my lonely walks. I really was so gullible its untrue. It makes me cringe to think of how trusting I was, how I believed that people cared about "me".  I thought that love happened in an instant.

The sad thing is, that despite the years, I am still the same inside. If I dared to let someone into my sphere, then I would be right back at square one. A young girl full of naivity. (sp).

The Art of Imitation.

When you start to read about Asperger Syndrome in females, a lot of things can begin to ring bells.

For me, there is one that really resounded with me. That was about little girls watching a particular girl and then imitating and taking on her personality.

I know I did this a lot. I also became obsessed with their stationery of all things!

Actually the first obsession I had was about a biro that a Nun who taught me used. I can see it now. It was maroon in colour and was rounded where the biro nib wrote and it tapered into a long thin shape.

How I used to dream about and covet that biro!

The girl that really stood out for me though was when we went on a seaside holiday. It must have been on a caravan park or something but in the evenings they would hold a dance and the adults would be drinking at the bar.

The kids would be out on the dance floor doing their thing. The girl must have been about 10 years old and I think older than I would have been. She had on a shift dress (this was back in the sixties!) and it was sleeveless with a roll neck kind of collar. It was satin and was patterned. Maybe gold and black.

I became entranced by this girl. She seemed to be everything I was not. Taller and slimmer, whereas I felt dumpy and short.  I stood and watched her and felt that if I was like this girl then people would like me and my Mum would really love me.

In my imagination I became her for the rest of the holiday.

It happened a lot throughout my childhood years. I might take on the personality of someone from an annual. There was one in particular. A girl called Rusty! She was a tomboy and I can still see the clothes she wore. They were boyish. Checked shirts and pedal pusher type jeans.

So I was Rusty for a while and would draw freckles on my face to look more like her.

There were many girls throughout the years who I admired, wanted to be and liked their things.

At my senior school in the first year there was a girl who had these rubbers that fitted on the top of her pencil. They filled my head and dreams. If only I could have them. I was delighted some time later when I found them in a stationery shop. It had never occurred to me that they were a fairly common thing. They seemed magical to me, and something that only that girl could have.

This all sounds a bit mad but it is true! I think lots of girls are like this but I am not sure that they take on other personalities.

It could also get me in trouble too. I might repeat something that I had heard in a film or read in a book and out of context it was not as charming or clever coming from me.

I liked the idea of girls who could manipulate people and get what they wanted. I wanted to be like that, but it never worked. I just got told off. In the films or books, these little girls would be very pretty and could bend people to their will. Of course it did not work in real life but I never really learned! I just kept right on imitating.

I don't imitate anymore. I do still look at people and wish I was them though.

Saturday 7 March 2015

Crazy Hair Syndrome

During my research about AS. I have come across several mentions that women with AS tend to have messy and unkempt hair.

While I doubt that it is a key feature of AS, it just so happens that it is true for me.

I have really wild hair. It is a combination of textures and is curly, straight and wavy all at the same time. Most of all, I have way too much of it!  Possibly I have enough hair for two if not three people.

Whether I have it short or long, it takes a lot of management. If I have it short, it has to be wet down constantly as there is no way I could just leave it all sticking up and out after a night's sleep.

If it is worn long and down then it goes off the Craziness Stratosphere!

Consequently it is generally tied back in a very thick pony tale. Even then it looks a mess as it tries to escape it's constraints.

Going to the hairdressers will always elicit comments of "Oh, haven't you got thick hair" or you can see the look of disappointment of the hairdressers face when they realise that you are their client!

The thing is that I hate for my hair to look tidy anyway. Once I had to be a bridesmaid and they gave me a shampoo and set! I wept buckets and threw a right old meltdown. I still believe they managed to make a 10 year old look at least 40! You can see in the photographs how unhappy I am.

When I was at senior school, desperately trying to fit in, yet remain invisible at the same time, a girl took me to one side.

She told me that they had been discussing me and they had come to the conclusion that I was never going to get a boyfriend with my hair. Can you imagine how that felt? Thanks for that, it has made me feel much comforted.

Deep down I think I look hideous whatever I try to do with my hair. After sixty years I cannot imagine a bucket load of self esteem coming my way, but I do try to concentrate on the things that give my pleasure and get by.  Anyway, I must go now and wash my hair! ;)

Friday 6 March 2015

Whole Lot Of Thinking Going On

I have been thinking a lot today while I was working. Mainly ruminating on a few comments I had made recently.
 
I find it extremely hard to have and especially own an opinion. Every opinion I feel I am forming brings the Quartet rushing forward.


The Quartet are:-
 
  • The Essence of me which is forming and re-forming continuously.
  •  
  • The Observer.
  •  
  • The Machine/Computer
  •  
  • The Commentator.
 
They are not people in the sense of multiple personality. I know that. I suppose they must be different parts of my brain which operate simultaneously.
 
For example. I will be having a conversation with someone. The Essence will be saying "Come on now, this requires concentration, you had better listen closely". The Observer will just watch over the whole conversation, making notes and observations to be dissected later.
 
The Machine/Computer will then start to fling random thoughts, memories, sensations and an incredible urge to share all these thoughts.
 
Meanwhile The Commentator just, well commentates! It comments throughout the conversation, on how the person I am talking to appears, how I must be appearing to them, cue the appropriate facial expression.
 
It is all so exhausting sometimes.
 
Afterwards the conversation has to be pulled apart. What did I say? Was it appropriate? Did I give the person sufficient attention? Did I come across as a know all? Was I too honest? Did I offend them in anyway? What was that strange look that went across their face?
 
As I write this, The Quartet are busy at work. My brain is zigzagging and it seems impossible to follow any one train of thought.
 
Recently I asked a lady I know how her brain felt to her?!  She told me that if she has to do something, she focusses entirely on that and nothing crowds in.
 
I find it hard to believe that I have Aspergers. I feel I am unentitled to have a reason to be the way I am. This morning there was a post on Samantha Craft's blog "Everyday Aspergers" and then I thought "Yes, this is it. This is Aspergers" and for today I am comforted .........

Monday 2 March 2015

Discovering Aspergers.

I mentioned before that I had no idea what Asperger Syndrome was. I had heard about Autism and how many parents believed that the MMR injection had caused it in their children. I had heard about Asperger Syndrome but never really understood what it was.
 
I expect a lot of people are like this. Unless you have a reason to discover what it means then it may just float across your horizon and then it is gone.
 
As I was getting older, the pressure on myself to fit in with other people was beginning to lessen. I came to the conclusion that I just did not really want to go anywhere (I mean really "want" to) and I found being at home a kind of Nirvana, a feeling of bliss. a feeling of utter contentment.
 
Going out to the shops, even the local one five minutes away was such hard work. I know this is not agoraphobia in the strictest sense. It was more of an extreme reluctance.
 
I am wandering off the path a bit here!
 
Anyway, I was really looking for some way to help my son who was going through a tough time, feeling his brain would explode from thinking and having melt downs. It was upsetting.
 
I will do a separate post about that another time.
 
I was also reading about introverted people. People like me who closed the door behind them on a Friday night after work, not to venture out again until Monday morning.
 
Someone mentioned that they were like this but they also had AS so that got me looking at a list of AS symptoms, particularly those in adult women.
 
To say I was blown away is an understatement! Here was my life in front of me. Nearly every  symptom resonated with me to some degree. Here was the answer to the mystery of me and my impressions of being defective and not belonging with other people.
 
I usually have doubts about being sure of something. How can I be sure of anything after the analysis that goes through my head.  Here though there was no doubt. It truly was like walking up the path to a lovely cottage with a welcoming light on, a cat sitting at the hearth and tea and scones on the table!
 
I was home. AS is my home and it is OK to dwell there.
 
I became an avid researcher and found out everything I could.