A La Aspie

Being face blind means not being able to differentiate between or remember faces. I am not entirely face blind but if I had to guess at a percentage, probably 80-90%. That means that I am able to recognize people sometimes, given certain situations. People who are completely face blind don’t recognize faces at all.

There are lots of great sites about face blindness so I won’t seek to educate you on the actual condition. However, here are some tidbits from my world of face blindness.

It occurred to me, out of the blue, yesterday that if I had to pick my roommate, who I have known for about a month and have lives with for two weeks, out of a line of guys, the only thing I could remember about him was his hair. There is truly no record of what his face looks like and it just caught me off guard to…

crossposted to my Asperger’s blog on Trusera.com

“Ethan’s mom!”, someone yelled from behind me.
(This is a title I’m quite accustomed to. “Oh, YOU’RE Ethan’s mom?”)
I turned to find one of Ethan’s teachers flagging me down. Yay!
“Hi!” I said, as cheerfully as possible.
Him: “Hi. I wanted to tell you what he did today.”
Me: “Of course! Why else would you flag me down from across the school by yelling, at a dead run?”
Him: “We were talking about planets today. I’m not sure any of the other kids heard or understood but Ethan asked me if there was a planet named after my anus.”

There was a brief pause while I scrambled to decide what to do. Should I laugh because damn, that’s funny or should I nod in serious agreement that it was a horrible thing to say? Could I nod in serious agreement without laughing?

I tried. I failed. I laughed. The teacher laughed to…

Crossposted to Trusera

It was bound to happen at some point. That time when ‘looking autistic’ is unavoidable. He was playing. He picked up the cat’s squirt bottle and sprayed me from across the room. Just one squirt and BAM… I was melting down. I curled up in a ball on the couch, rocking and wincing. I was trying, trying not to cry. I could FEEL it happening. I knew that every muscle of my body was tensing, cringing, wanting to fold in upon it’s self. In retrospect, it’s like some sort of horrible slow motion.

It was just a squirt of water. Wet sensations make me queasy. Sudden, unexpected things are jarring. Things flying at me, even if only water, are sudden and unexpected. Especially when it’s water.

I melted down. For me, melting down is tears, rocking and crumpling up in a little ball. I can imagine that is quite…

I took Ethan out for dinner last night. I sunk into the booth, exhausted. He was cranky… hungry. We wolfed down the appetizer and waited for dinner - then he said it. “The night the thing happened with Ryan”. That’s what we call it, round these parts. In passing… because we haven’t really talked about it.

I asked him how much he remembered and he rattled off the entire story. I was quiet. I asked him if it made him feel afraid. He said no. I said it made me afraid… and I started to cry. Out of nowhere. Just all of this fear, hiding behind corners that I didn’t know were there.

Fear of him…. AND… fear of being without him. Not in an emotional sense, mind you. But in a really, really practical sense. I remember in counseling, my counselor asked me what I was most afraid of…

(Crossposted to Trusera)

As if the word ‘dating’ isn’t enough to strike fear into the heart of any sane, relationship-seeking individual, add to the mix not being able to read or decipher this person at all and feeling horribly uncomfortable meeting new people. Considering the prospect is much like reliving one of those dreams where you get to school only to realize that you forgot to get dressed before you got there. Or that you got dresed but as you got closer to school, your clothes were disappearing, one piece at a time and you could not figure out where they were going, nor could you stop the inexorable liesurely stroll toward the school house. Or maybe that was just mine.

Of all of the human interaction scenarios, the one called ‘dating, is by far, the most painful. The process of selectively speaking to, interacting with and potentially becoming intimate with…

I watched Ethan through the smoky glass separating the waiting room from the classroom where his group social skills session was meeting. I stood next to the burly father of another boy who was commenting on the activity the instructor was leading the kids through. In the glass, I saw the reflection of a younger girl with short hair come up behind us as if to watch. When she couldn’t see over our shoulders, her hands began flapping wildly. This was a more severely impaired autistic girl. The man next to me moved away from the glass quickly and wordlessly. The girl’s relief was almost palpable as she took his space.

She was about 15 years old with short cropped wavy brown hair and round cheeks. She wore a sweat suit. Probably because the tags and fabric of other clothes bother her. Her energy was almost manic. She stood there,…

This post would be really well accompanied by photos. But since my current camera is CRAP and it is not likely that I will get the one on my wishlist in this lifetime, I will have to describe and you will need to put on your imagination caps.

We have a really big den/family area. It has a kitchen on one end with a white tile bar separating it from the living area. Ryan and I have desks and computers and stuff at the other end of the living area… that left a kind of big open space in the middle. My altar space is on one side of the big open space and my spiritual cabinet storage thingy is on the other side of the big empty space and so it was natural that I would use that space in between for my spiritual pursuits. Meditation, calming, channeling and what…

I guess this is what we call role playing an example. I’ve often asked “how do you concisely explain AS to an NT?” Here is an example snip of conversation for my own future reference and for the reference of other aspies.

Person: “I think that communication is key to your role and maybe we just need to try a little bit harder.”
Me: “I think this goes further than just personality, unfortunately. Neurologically, I don’t pick up on social cues the way others do and I am unable to accurately mimic all social cues to provide satisfactory social input for a neurotypical. All of the tiny nuances of behavior on a social level are all concious actions for me. It is difficult for me sometimes to mimic all the time perfectly… it takes a lot… and sometimes I just fall short.”
Person: “It’s hard for me to believe that everything you do is faking…

I’ve expressed my frustration before at being able to compensate well enough to pass as ‘normal’ for the most part. Unless you watch me closely or have lots of contact with me, you probably won’t notice that I force eye contact or stand and move a little oddly or that my responses are canned. You probably won’t catch one of my ‘bad moments’ when I don’t have the energy to compensate. It’s frustrating to compensate well because it takes so much energy to do - and because people assume that just because I pass pretty well as normal that I must BE normal and capable of everything they are and they disregard the whole DISABILITY thing - or that it must not be so difficult to compensate. Well it IS difficult to compensate and I’m NOT capable of the same social interaction as everyone else. It physically IS NOT POSSIBLE.

So…

Someone commented on my dragonfly bracelet this weekend. I told her my totem is a dragonfly. She said her’s too. She said her logo for her business is a dragonfly. I thought about it.. yeah.. I remembered that. I thought this morning - a day later, that my logo for my business is also a dragonfly. That seems a natural thing to say during that conversation… but it didn’t even occur to me to say it. It would have been a conversation extender. Oh, your logo is a dragonfly? Logo for what kind of business? Oh how neat. We have more in common. But I didn’t. It didn’t even occur to me.

That happens often to me. I think of something later that I should have said in the moment… but didn’t because my brain wasn’t there yet. Not just the run of the mill ‘doh.. I said something stupid’… I…