Far Removed

I went to my disability hearing.  I sat in a room with my legal counsel and a stenographer.  The administrative law judge was in another state, so she appeared on a large TV monitor.  In the room with the judge was a phone with a vocational rehabilitation expert on speaker. The judge asked my legal counsel some questions.  Then she asked the voc rehab expert some hypothetical questions.  Then she asked me some questions.  I don't know how I did.  I wish I'd had the opportunity to prepare what I would say.  I tried to be clear and concise.  I entirely forgot to address her as "your honor."  My legal counsel said afterward that he thought the ALJ wanted to decide in my favor.  As of this writing I am still waiting for her decision to arrive in the mail. The thought that I might be denied what I deserve because I mispoke or failed to explain something adequately is disquieting.  I am grateful though that the hearing was recorde...

Once, I saw outside my window a child whose shoelace was stuck in the crank of his bicycle.  It was raining and I left my apartment to help him extricate himself.  I act compassionately, and I care about fairness.  My therapist has suggested that this is a contradiction in my character, since I don't have strong emotions and usually don't form attachments to people.  After a therapy session,  I was thinking about the contradiction that seems to arise from my apparent empathy.  I believe I have an explanation.   As a child I had to decide how to interact with people.  I observed that people often treated me differently, and I observed that I felt there was something different about me.  I presumed there was a causal relationship of the latter to the former: that people treated me differently because I seemed different.  I wanted that to change, so I tried to figure people out.  I observed that people wanted things and that b...

My therapist once said to me that he wondered why autism hadn't evolved away.  He reasoned that it must have some Darwinian benefit.  I believe he was talking about ASD on an experiential level.  There is some evidence that whatever genes are involved in autism are also involved in increased iron absorption, which is particularly beneficial during cell growth.  Having cells that absorb iron better might be a benefit worth the risk of developing autism, but that isn't what psychoanalysts want to work with.  So what benefits of autism do I experience consciously? It's hard to say.  Autism is like a small glitch in a single component in an electrical system that causes seemingly unrelated glitches to pervade the system at large.  It's difficult enough identifying all the subtle problems that come with my ASD.  If there are benefits, they're whispers in a storm.  And autism isn't all I am.  It's no mean feat to identify which aspects of my...

Being asocial, I am not motivated to socialize.  Being autistic, as is my specific experience of autism, I am socially inept.  I am, to the detriment of my interpersonal communication skills, disproportionately more analytical than emotive.  Dispassion is often unwelcome in the interpersonal world, even when it is appropriate.  I'm uncomfortable with passion because it is unreliable.  What passion I do have is inclined toward neutral description, so it little seems like passion at all.  This is a portrait of disability.  I am narrow and reticent.  This certainly isn't conducive to lucrative success in the arts.  Because I fail to connect when I do attempt to interact, I escape the notice of people who might help me in my profession.  Furthermore, my art is very analytical, being especially inclined toward philosophical explorations of nihility.  The emotion it contains may seem sterile or cold.  So I may fail to connect on ...

I'm experiencing the world directly.  Others seems to be experiencing it through a screen.  Communicating and performing rituals are different endeavors, but too often they are not separate.  Language works best for communication when it's utilitarian.  Posturing confuses language, adding layers of code that obscure meaning.  This is the screen: a preoccupation with attitude presented symbolically, suggesting rather than saying.  This isn't an aspect of language that evolved naturally, like syntax.  Polite indirectness arises from something other than a need to communicate ideas and is imposed on language out of what I presume is a fear of each other. What if everyone said exactly what they were thinking?  Would there be more strife and unhappiness?  Is it necessary to protect ourselves and others from insufferable truths that we engage in polite obfuscation?  This seems counterproductive, but then I am largely outside the common human...

I have great trouble decoding hints, implicit meanings, and rhetorical questions.  Such great trouble in fact that it appreciably affects my ability to communicate well.  Nonetheless, I understand the concept of indirect language.  I know that people don't always say exactly what they mean.  What I don't often know is why or how to tell when they might be doing so.  I am only well equipped to handle the very clear, the glaringly obvious.  When communicating with me anything less than directness is a bad gamble. I'm continually surprised by how often people hide what they mean behind little language puzzles.  One can find people hiding even when there's no need to hide.  It seems to me that directness is perceived by many as rude, even on the smallest scale and in situations in which nothing is at stake. Obfuscation becomes second nature.  I will try to understand even when there's no hope that I will.  I've had to learn to ask for cl...

Symbolism isn't important to me.  This can cause problems.  To many, symbolism is of great importance.  If I say that I'm not interested in participating in ritual symbolism, said people can interpret that as a round rejection - or even as scorn.  Many it seems are wired to look for symbols everywhere no matter what.  They can hardly be blamed.  Symbols permeate human interaction.  Even language as a system is symbolic.  But I'm not wired that way.  I am wired for the explicit. I can interpret some symbols as easily as anyone else can.  Others, often common ones, confuse me.  And I frequently become confused about whether someone is employing symbolism or not.  When thus confused I make no decision in any direction.  I abandon the investigation.  Even when I understand symbolism, symbols only obscure meaning. I don't know why people want to obscure meaning.  So I assume they do so for nefarious reasons. ...

Recently I announced to both sides of my family that I would not be visiting on holidays anymore.  There was little response.  I made this decision for a few reasons. First: because I have a particular neurodevelopmental disorder, and because of the way it is expressed in me, I can't experience any motivation to socialize.  This may be difficult to understand.  Most people don't even know it's possible to have a persistent defecit, or even a lack, of desire to interact with others.  You can't see the problem, and you've never experienced it, so how do you know that it's real?  There is available plenty of clinical research about asociality, but instead of talking about that let's talk about phobias.  If someone says they have a phobia of balloons, there are two main kinds of response they might get.  The first is understanding.  The second is harassment.  An understanding person will believe someone when they say in all honesty that...

I need help in every aspect of my life.  It took my a very long time to realize just how much help I need.  Left to my own devices I have very little independent agency.  Outside of my creative endeavors I am not naturally inclined toward action.  I am absentminded to a fault, though I do remember to take care of myself.  I forget about chores, dates, and rent.  I cannot support others. On my own, I'm capable of trying to do things.  But I usually opt not to.  I can't see ways forward in the world.  When it's not clear what I should do, and when I can find no clarification of such, I do nothing.  I'm comfortable doing nothing.  Trying to act with no guidance causes me severe anxiety.  When pressed or judged I retreat.  I am comfortable retreating.  Being that the world is hopelessly confusing to me I rely heavily on the safety of inaction - the only safety I know.  Forced to leave my zones of safety I experienc...

When I was a child I broke my wrist.  Another child who was there when it happened said to me that a broken wrist was no big deal.  That when he broke his wrist at football practice he just shook it off.  With this he grabbed my arm and shook it, causing, predictably, extreme pain.  Why did he do this?  He was wrong about some things.  He was wrong about what was happening at football practice.  It could be that he interpreted any wrist pain of certain intensity as being indicative of a broken wrist and therefore believed without thinking that he was capable of repairing a broken bone by shaking it.  He had apparently misdiagnosed me, but he had done so in a very specific way.  He looked at what had happened to him and imagined that the same thing must be happening to me, but where did he get the certainty of this that allowed him to grab my broken wrist and cause me agony? He was young and inexperienced, yes.  But I have seen adults m...