Monologuing

It is the time for words.

When the time for words comes, if I start to speak the words come. They come without challenge; not hiding away, not mixed up in each other's places. When it's the time for words, the word finding challenges aren't there. The challenges of speaking a different word than I was thinking, gone. The sitting there thinking in translation, trying to find the right words for my thoughts, not happening. No, during the times for words, the words just come cleanly and easily.

How easy spoken word is varies. Sometimes, I find myself delayed so much I can't say what I need to meaningfully. Sometimes, words won't form in my mouth, no matter what I do. Usually, I'm aware of how little I'm saying compared to what I'm thinking, and unable to find ways to add more.

But in these times, thoughts translate easily, and spoken word is no harder than typed. In these times, speech isn't limited to the small percentage of what makes it through multiple layers of nets, catching thoughts struggling to get through, but too complex for what words are willing to share.

These times I have a thought, and a need to share it. Maybe a statement about how my day has been. Maybe something interesting I have read.

And when I share it the floodgates open. The words are easy; the thoughts flow! So many ideas, so many words, so many things I want to say! One thing leads to another, and another, and another! They all combine to a great story of how things are.

The words keep coming. So I keep sharing. I lose track of time. And these are things I want you to know!

Until, its been too long, and its bothering you. You're making that clear. And I'm not being able to shut it off.

I stop, and I feel this overwhelming pressure. Just one more thing. It's important! And after giving in a few times, I resolve to stop giving in, so as to be good to you.

Wrongness imbues my body. Pressure from my bones to my skin. My body doesn't like this idea.

A fight, breaking out inside me. Self-control is a struggle against an overwhelming feeling of wrong. I cry out in the pain my body is causing to itself. There's a monster in my body and it's me.

Eventually it calms. I retreat to my safe spot. The words lost again, I'm hidden away under my blanket. Quiet has fallen.

Passing (or How Little They See)

I walk down the hallway, my hand running across the lockers, across the walls. It keeps me here. It shows me where I am. It keeps me balanced and makes me understand what hallway I'm in and when I need to turn.

I go to the room. The bell shrieks. I freeze up. I forget what I'm doing and where I am. All that I know is the noise. It's too much. I don't know how to move my arms to cover my ears. I don't know how to soothe myself. I just know how to exist, frozen, in space and in time.

I come back. I go back where I was. I continue on, talking about whatever was going on. Had they changed topics? Probably not. Usually its me teaching something. I just keep going. I explain it well. I tell them what is going on. I teach myself that when the bell goes, I need to tell them to leave even if they don't want to go to class. Eventually I remember that. It takes a while to stop teaching and tell them to leave, but not too long.

I have my math. I go back to it. I have how people are doing. That I keep track of. Why they aren't doing well. How can I improve their educations. What aren't they getting and how do these pieces fit together. I keep track of it always. I'm always fitting the pieces together.

They don't notice. They see someone teaching math. They don't notice the person always taking care of their body in order to have any clue what is going on. They don't notice the lack of anything off topic.

Then someone says hi, and I don't reply. They repeat it multiple times. I eventually process that there is someone there talking to me. A bit later I process I should reply. Um, what do I say, I don't know. Too much going on. All my processes on surviving. Not on these things. I try to redirect because its necessary. Enough gets through. I wave. I'm pretty sure that was the right thing to do. Words were to hard but gestures I could force through. I think she got annoyed first. My emotion sense of voices are saying "negative".

I keep going. I have to swap places I'm working. Does everything else get to stay the same? Yes, good. I forget some things in the shuffle. Got most of it. Piece it together. Managed to make it not a big deal that I forgot pencils by loaning out my pen repetitively. All the things I have to think about to manage to swap are so many. But its not so many that I can't teach my students, just that its a bit more awkward and we're a bit slower. We make it through the day.

Because I swapped places I'm expected to get my students here somehow. How do I do that? I ask. I'm told there's the phone to the office or something. I don't understand. I look at my list and have names and locations. I ask what to say. She explains something about asking for locations and students and I don't understand what to say. I try to get it clarified but its still confusing. She moves onto something else. I do everything I can to make it easier to do our work, but run out of things to prepare. I need my students. I go over and pick up the phone. I say hello. There's someone there. What do I say. I don't know. I'm confused. I try to ask the person in the room again, and I still can't figure out what's meant. I try to explain what I need and it doesn't make sense. I try again. It still doesn't work. I directly say what it is I need to tell them, that I have students in rooms and I need them here and I don't know how to get them here. They ask for what rooms and what students, I tell them, and get my students. Now I can do my work. I know how to work with students. Not how to do these phone things these are weird and complicated.

I go back to the hallways, flapping my hands, running them along the walls. I re-orient myself here. Make myself understand what is going on. Then back to my students. Teaching them makes sense, if I only I can get through the rest of the day.

My diagnosis was about them being different, not me

I was diagnosed with both Asperger's Syndrome and Sensory Processing Disorder at age 22. They were a long time coming. The symptoms had been life long, I'd been coping with them on my own, and now I finally had been labeled. It wasn't being signaled out, being told, "you are so different, look, we need to give you a special name." No, truthfully, my diagnoses weren't about me being different than others, they were about others being different than me.

Some people are against diagnoses. They worry about labels for themselves. They worry about labels for others. They think that people will be told how different they are, and really in this society different is commonly viewed as lesser. The truth is, we are different either way, its a question of knowledge. Giving people more information won't make them anything they aren't. It will, help explain.

Some people I talk to, describe growing up knowing how different they are, knowing there's something odd about them, searching, wanting to know. They describe finding autism and this meaning they finally understanding their childhood. This wasn't me. I didn't know how different I was. But in both cases, knowledge can be helpful.

For me, like I said, it wasn't at all, about me being different, it was about others being different than me. By the time I was diagnosed I knew I was different, I even knew I was autistic, but I didn't understand it. Through the diagnostic process I learned a lot of what my impairments were; because they were things I assumed were true about everyone. Over a year later I'd be reading yet another book about sensory processing, and say "wait, that's not true about everyone?" and learn yet another way that I just have adapted, and have been coping. I assumed others were like me, rather than assuming I was different. I forced myself through things, but I didn't do it in a way that was taking care of myself, or that was allowing me to get much done, while others were developing anxieties. In both cases, we needed to stop, and learn how to do things properly.

I'd adapted a lot to the world on my own, by assuming it was what everyone was doing. It wasn't in a way that let me get nearly everything I should be getting done done. It wasn't in a way that lets me manage myself properly. So, when I realized this wasn't what other people did, and that there ways I could do things that allowed me to manage myself more properly; I needed to learn them. My own techniques were and are, a great resource. But now I'm learning about myself in ways that mean I don't need to manage making myself nauseous every time I shower.

The diagnoses told me they were different. It told me what I didn't know. It told me how I could learn. It gave me the opportunity to make things better by finding new solutions. It gave me the opportunity to figure out that not everybody has some of the limitations I assumed. Telling me I'm different, might not tell me where to go, but I had somewhere to go. I had a lot to learn. And I've learned a lot about myself. Comparisons aren't always bad. You just need to know what sorts of comparisons you are making, and to try to learn to make fewer assumptions in the process.

Now I deal with the assumptions being made about me, because of my diagnosis. They assume what I'm like, because of my label. This is why they don't like the diagnoses, I suppose. Because they don't like the assumptions. But I still think these assumptions are better, because now I know, and before I didn't know that I didn't know, and that makes a huge difference.

The cost of logic

This was discussed the other day with my counselor, and I realized, its probably something that people don't know as much about.

Sometimes, there are specific triggers, that hit my mind, and I lose the ability to process. This makes sense. It breaks my ability to process, because instead there's this other stuff taking over.

But, in particular, the idea of someone acting in a negative mood and telling me they're not, at the same time, breaks me. It takes all of what's going on in my head and crunches it up and says NO. And then I need to get as far away from people as possible.

Because, you see, what this is doing is saying that every bit of the things I've built up for how to understand people are WRONG. People are not trustworthy, and not only that, my brain's understanding of them isn't trustworthy. I can't trust my own sense of what's going on. Everything is wrong, and I can't understand it. I can't be near it until I have managed to sort it out, figure out what's true, and what's false, and piece it back together. Until people are people, and truth is truth, and lies are lies, and my sense of what's going on is trust worthy.

When I'm interacting with people, I'm not doing so intuitively. I'm analyzing it. I'm analyzing it all. So, when my analyzation has been broken, been told its wrong, I don't have intuition to fall back on. And that's what happens. The analyzing requires the ability to trust the analyzing. And when the analyzing has been told its its innately wrong, then how can I trust it? I need to reset it. To tell it, that no. It's correct.

And until that point, people are absolutely terrifying, because I have no sense of what they are doing, or why. Without my analyzing, I don't know what's going on, and without knowing, its scary. So I want to be as far away from people as I can. So I run, and I hide. Because they scare me because I don't know if they'll hurt me. I have no way to get reassurance they won't. Someone who is coming to hurt me, and someone who's coming to reassure me, and someone who's just being neutral are the same at that point. They're all to be avoided, to make sure to avoid the person who'd hurt me, whether they'd hurt me purposefully or by mistake.

And then, I rebuild, and I wait, until something else is too much. And it'll happen, because I can't just take everything. But when I break, its not just being frustrated, its more than that.