Aspies For Freedom

I've found myself asking this question a lot lately to myself.

Let me start with an intro: Hello, I'm Joule (one unit of energy), from Louisville, KY, USA.  I'm 31 years old, and I teach computers and computer graphics to high schoolers, as well as run the network and am generally geek-of-all-trades there.

Actually, before this, I worked with special-needs students (elementary school), some of them were well into the "severe" end of the autism spectrum; non-verbal for the most part.  I actually found that I got along with them great, and kind of was able to get along with them better than most other adults.

Anyhow, I started thinking about this a lot when my boyfriend and I were in this jewelry shop.  He wanted to buy me something nice to wear out, and I found myself annoyed with all of it.  But I remember that shop, the way the noise echoed off the walls, and felt like someone crashing cymbals against each ear... physically painful.  I started edging toward the door, then I bolted out, stepped into an alley off the main street, and took a few minutes to just hyperventalate.  I told him I needed to sit down for a bit, someplace quiet, so I walked around to this empty lot and sat on the wall for... I dunno how long.  After that, he was concerned (he'd seen me shy away from big crowds, loud places, etc, but never saw me react like that.)  He wondered if I "might have a touch of Asperger's."  Though it never occured to me before, I started wondering it myself, which is why I am asking here, now.  

So, situations like that happen a lot.  I teach in a high school, and it can get pretty loud in there.  Also, I find that most of the kids annoy me, save for my few very focused, very interested students, whom I adore and do everything I can to help tap the creativity in.

But get me in loud places, overwhelming places, busy crazy places, and I start to get antsy.  I usually make my way for the door, asap, whether or not I got done there what I needed to.

Futhermore, I've always been /very/ odd in comparison to others my age.  Other girls wanted barbies, I wanted to build things with my dad.  Other girls wanted dresses, I wanted computers, and then I wanted dad to show me how they worked.  Other girls went on dates; I went to Mensa meetings.  What's more, I've always had a sense of alien-ness.  As a child, I entertained the notion that "the fae exchaged my body for a fairy baby, and my parents raised the wrong one." I quickly dismissed the notion when I noticed that I'm the spitting image of my dad.  But it didn't change the fact that I'd always felt like I wasn't "of the same world as everyone else" or sometimes, a bit more bluntly, "not from this planet."  

(Yeah, I don't -really- think that, but it's a clever way to imagine things, and to understand things.  I mean, it's possible - everything is possible - but I'm not going to suspend rationale, say, of considering things like Asperger's over alien-abductions or fairy-changeling hijinks.)

The sociability thing... I don't know... I actually can be hypersensitive to that, too... it's the part that I'm not sure about.  I sometimes think I'm too much into other peoples' heads, because I study them intently and see exactly what is going on with them.  I don't necessarily feel like I "connect" with them, or even -care- about what they are feeling, but I can read them like books.  Every nuance, every twitch of the lip, every shift of the body weight, they all tell things to me.  I find that I process the information quickly and can always tell what is what with the people around me - reading the "vibe." In a sense, it, too, is a defense mechanism against my social anxieties though - I actually studied psychology in college because I wanted to understand people better... and to this day, I find that I enjoy asking odd things of people and putting odd things before them that they react to, to see what they do. Constantly experimenting. The more I understand people, the more I know which situations I am accepted in, and which situations I am not, and when I must leave which unaccepted situations, so that I don't get my *** kicked for my loud, rude, mouth.

And I'm a truth-teller.  I can't understand often when people are lying to me - I trust by nature, but have learned, again, as a defense, to mistrust, and to watch for lies.  (Part of why I read so much, too.  I can catch someone in a lie because it conflicts with my own knowledge.)  I don't see a point to deceiving, because eventually truth will be known, and you are just delaying the inevitable.  

I've always found it hard to relate to most people, though.  The strange things they do, the things they pursue in their lives... they seem so unimportant.  Why is it that you have to get rich luxury foods, fur coats, and exotic locales for your sensual pleasures, when walking barefoot through a soft bed of grass is -awesomely good.-  Why do people lose their sense of joy?  Why is happiness so downed in  this world?  Why do people insist on making themselves so miserable and distorting who they really are, so that they can be an accepted part of society?  What good is t to live in that kind of lies and misery?

Forget 'em.  I'll sit here and paint, instead.  And then I do forget them.  Sometimes I forget to eat, even.  That's bad.

I'm so much my own person, so much different as I've felt in my life... and I've always wondered if there were other people like me out there?  The ones I've met are so few and far between, those I can actually truly feel as if I am communicating with.  (My boyfriend, and a very, very small handful of friends, all people as completely odd as me.)

I wonder if this, Asperger's, might not have a bit of self-knowledge for me by which I can better understand myself.