Month: December 2014

530: Just Three Minutes of My Day (Aspie Exhaustion)

| Aspergers Girls

Ironically, after posting about ‘small talk’ on a social media site, I was in Trader Joe’s grocery store last night and the male checker locked eyes with me and asked, with a toothy-grin, “So, what have you been working on?”
What have I been working on? My face squished up in confusion.

Number one thought barged in: Glad I am wearing a winter hat to hide my burning red ears.

The bombardment of thoughts that followed went something like this: What does this question mean? I am embarrassed. Can he tell I am beet red? I wonder if it bothers him he is balding. I wonder if he is single. What does he think of me? Why would he ask this? What am I supposed to say? He is staring at me. Can he tell I am embarrassed? What is he thinking? How should I respond? I am taking too long. Do I look autistic, shy, or stuck up? I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want him to think I am in a bad mood or mean. I am not. I thought I was better equipped than this. I thought I was prepared. I bet I look stuck up. Just like in high school, always misinterpreted. The people in line are looking at me. I wonder if they are married? I wonder if they can tell I am so embarrassed. They are frowning. Are they tired or sad, or mad at me? I look flustered. How much time has gone by? Why did I choose the shortest line and not the line with the female checker? (That’s about half the thoughts, anyhow.)

Only seconds had past, but in my reality it seemed hours.

I refocused. All l I could think to say was: “What made you ask that question?”

I realized immediately that I sounded evasive, suspicious, and even perhaps flirtatious. Not my intention.
By this time, I wondered if he was perhaps psychic, and could sense I was working on many projects.

The checker responded quickly and easily, in a manner that screamed ‘this is so easy for me. “Oh, I was just making small talk to pass the time.”

Small talk. Small talk. Small talk! Should I explain there isn’t such a thing in my mind?

He stared at me, and I knew as the blood-shot through my cheeks and up to the bridge of my nose that in this communication game it was my turn to speak. I stuttered some, and then formed some shaky sentences about my new job and such, remembering of course, with screaming reminders in my head, to ask him about himself. By the time the three minutes were over and the checker had scanned and bagged my ten items, I felt I’d been to war and back.

Sam Craft, Everyday Aspergers

529: I Call Out… Aspergers

| Aspergers Girls

I misinterpret simple statements. Well, I guess they are ‘supposed’ to be simple statements. But to me they aren’t. Because nothing is simple. I don’t plan it that way—the complexity of my world and my thoughts. It just is, like I just am.

I have learned and relearned that I do to people what I do to my world. And the process isn’t so much ‘doing’ as ‘being.’ I am in a natural state of observation and puzzle-claiming. I am taking piece after piece, some robot-like creature created to decipher, interpret, and solve. And I solve people. Not on purpose or with intention, but more so quite subconsciously, at an interior level, mysterious to even me. I cannot help myself. My actions are akin to breathing, or whatever tells my heart to beat.

I respond to my environment as a detective on the search, the continual search for clues. And in so seeing another human being remark in a particular way, the particulars must be sorted.

I don’t lack the keen ability to decipher social clues and what-have-you. But I do have the over-exaggerated, hyper-mode-chip of discernment that bursts open everything and transforms what is in appearance a simple-nothing—a passing comment, a just meandering—into towering depths of possibility.

I ponder and dissect my own actions, self-correcting in my mind, and teaching myself to do better. I am the way I am, but many times I don’t quite like the way I am. I like me. I even love me, mostly, but I despise the way I work in this world in various moments. By despise I mean I want to change the representation and presentation of said self to better blend in and have a neutral and somewhat positive effect on my environments. By despise I mean I hate in a way that summons up thoughts of constant seeming ‘failures,’ thusly labeled by others, and digested by me as truth.

No matter how much I try, in my exceedingly building efforts, I manage to blunder to no end. I can’t much stop myself from bursts of truth-tellings, or processing delight, or fact-after-fact of the whys and hows of things, and situations, and even people.

I coach me. I truly do. Before and after discourse; however brief or so-perceived ‘minor,’ I beseech the person within this person to be calm, to leave space in the conversation, to not be too logical, to not critique.

And so it goes that each encounter is a great risk to me, and a great stretch of energy exertion: the coaching beforehand, the coaching afterwards, the coaching during. And all the traveling fragments attempted to be gathered.

Always I am wondering what my friend thinks, what he or she is deciphering, regarding my input and approach. And always I am that absent judge, pulling apart the pieces of me, and examining each on their own, in hopes of finding the missing part, the flaw, the inadequacy, so that I might self-correct, and pull myself back into the good graces of the one.

I over-think each and every thing I hear. This goes back to the over-analysis and misinterpretation factor, but it’s deeper than that. I am hearing a symphony of analogies in my mind within minor fractions of conversing.

I am jumping back and forth, reviewing the very rules of my conduct, the rules of his conduct, and the way I ought respond in a manner that is precise, non-judgmental, factual, empathetic, and keen.

I am pressuring myself to deliver the best of what is, instead of partaking in a natural flow of response and conjecture.

I know not how to simply be and take in what is said without wanting to know what is said in exactness, and wanting to respond to what was said with the same elements of truth. I need to be this truth-bearing one who gives out what is authentic, even as I get completely bewildered in regards to what is my truth.

I fear that I am being manipulative, that I am being selfish, that I am not being who I am meant to be. And this doesn’t have to be anything complex from the observer’s standpoint. This happens, this way in which I fall into thoughts inside myself, from the simplest of requests and from the simplest of comments.

I need not be exposed to anything more than one word to become lost in a galaxy of confusion. I know not how to be at times.

Through trial, I have learned to trust who I am, and to trust I am trying my best, and that others’ interpretations are naught. However, this does not carry over always. Sometimes, I somehow think a one is the end-all of who I am. I think what is said IS.

I am learning to accept my mind is eternally blossoming. That I am the seasons, the flowers, the rivers. That I am instant knowledge and instant chaos. I am learning this mirror to the universe named ‘US.’ And I call out to the all within me.