In the shadow of Asperger's Syndrome

This has been an interesting journey. I've gone from anxiety to know what was going on with Harley to grief once I knew what was going on to determination to find information to fascination with what I was learning to anxiety to hurry up and get the "official" diagnosis so that we could start working with the school system.

While I am waiting to hear back from the neuropsychologist we went to, I have been educating myself on Asperger's Syndrome - AS. I started this journey of discovery with the assumption that I was educating myself as an NT (Neurotypical). (Lets keep the smart ass remarks to a minimum here people.) Reading Tony Attwood's book, though, I came across an interesting concept called shadowing. Apparently, it's very common in the immediate family members of individuals who are "on the spectrum." (Refers to those who have been given a diagnosis that falls under the umbrella of Autism spectrum disorders.) Anyway, in shadowing, individuals show traits of AS or Autism, but to a lesser degree.

This is why I really like the imagery of a spectrum of disorders. You know when you open the paint program on your computer? It gives you an option of choosing your own custom color. Then it shows you a color spectrum. It doesn't just show the colors of the rainbow individually. It shows how they blend and melt into each other. It also shows their progression from light to dark. Well, being on the spectrum is a lot like that. Only, infinitely more complex. For example, in our color spectrum, a purple would have gradations between red and blue and then be somewhere between so light it fades into white and so dark it fades into black. With the autism spectrum, there are a huge variety, much more than two!, of "colors" that can contribute to the individual "color" of that person - with each contributing color having a level of light or dark that contributes to the overall intensity of that person's experience.

So, with shadowing, the person might have a variety of contributing colors, but with most or all of them exhibiting toward lightest end of the spectrum. And the thing is that the more I read about Asperger's, the more I can see how it has "colored" my life. Am I upset? No. I have this feeling that I'm supposed to be unhappy about this. The "NT" thing is to be appalled at the suggestion that my brain is different, but that's nothing like how I feel. It's more like a fascination, an interest, and I LIKE it. Why? ????? I don't want to be like everyone else. It doesn't appeal to me. I don't want to care about the things that I see most people caring about. I don't want to see the world the same way.

I don't mean that there aren't things that bother me. My memory issues have to be the biggest irritant I have. I cannot explain the level of frustration I experience in knowing that the fact that I KNOW something RIGHT NOW, has zero bearing on whether or not I will know it later. KNOWING that I am hearing something that I am going to forget and don't want to. It pisses me off. I HATE that!!!!!!

But what is the trade off? What if I could trade having a memory that works better for my sensitivity to touch and sensation, scents, sounds. What about the way that I don't care about appearances or others opinions or pretending to feel things that I don't or my indifference to having stuff - would I be willing to trade away my indifference to those things for a better memory? What about the intensity of my relationships with the handful of people whose existence are actually important to me? Could I trade those away to seem more "normal" or to be more interested in social norms?

The fact is that I LIKE me an awful lot. I like my bluntness. I like the way that I am passionate about things that I feel matter and completely indifferent to everything else. I like that while I can care about a person, a part of me is disconnected enough to freely admit that I really don't care if I ever see them again. I LIKE the fact that I often miss the fact that I irritate/appall/shock others or just simply make them feel superior to me. Really, I'd rather not know than know and then feel like I had to do something about it.

I love my love of language and my insistence on accuracy of expression. I don't like that I don't know how to join in a group discussion, but I would never trade that for my ability to verbally express myself in front of a group really well.

You know, even the whole memory thing comes in really handy. :-) My husband and I were discussing someone one day. He was appalled that I was willing to consider speaking to them. When I expressed confusion concerning this attitude, he attempted to remind me of something that had happened a few years previously. Apparently, this person had said really terrible things about me to several people, including Chris. At the time, it had ruined their friendship and I had been very hurt and angry. I still have no memory of it. It's like it never happened. Really. I can't remember it at all. In FACT, I can remember now having this conversation with Chris about this person, but can't remember anymore who it was we were discussing. It's gone again. And I'm o.k. with that.