Aspergers

This entry started as another ‘rargh – nothing is going right, I’m screwing up my life’ entry.

I discovered I had Aspergers Syndrome about 6 years ago.

This came as something of a shock. Having been taught during my PGCE about working with kids with autism, aspergers and a variety of learning differences I suddenly doubted absolutely everything that was going on in my brain.

Looking at your life with the sudden knowledge that your brain is not neurotypical (and often thinking that it doesn’t work ‘properly’) is probably not good for anyone. When you’ve very deliberately tried to live outside of the norm, because you’ve perceived that norm as being bad, or wrong (Ramble on relationships anyone? Slight rant on the subject? Rant about love long-term readers?) then suddenly discovering there may well be a medical reason for that comes as a shock.

Or it did to me at anyrate. The Jellicle jokes that I’m someone who regards doctors as having this weird shamanic power over me. Occasionally I have been known not to admit I was sick until a doctor told me so.
(Me: What – this sneeze? Hayfever! Oh I have a temperature too? A little cold then!
Doctor: You have Glandular Fever again.
Me: I have Glandular Fever again.

Me: What – this ankle? A little strain! The doctor never even x-rayed it, yeah ok it hasn’t stopped hurting for weeks but I can still walk on it…so maybe it’s a sprain. Yes I know it’s still blue…it’s a worse sprain than I thought.
Doctor: You have broken your leg.
Me: I have broken my leg.
Doctor: It clearly happened about a month before you say you fell.
Me: It clearly happened about a month before I fell.)

I think this started because my parents weren’t big on letting me laze around indoors as a kid so until a doctor convinced them that I actually was suffering hayfever, allergies or whatever else I had they’d do the responsible parent thing and chuck their kid out into the sunshine to play in the itchy, itchy pollen. Of course as a teenager I totally abused having asthma to get out of doing things thus leaving me with the opinion I actually am lazy when I feel ill…

So having the medical profession (yes…all of them!) tell me I was aspergic? That my brain isn’t wired up ‘right’ (that’s what I heard ok!)…added to having made some serious mistakes relationship-wise…I’ve pretty much spent the last six years trying to negate the obviously wrong aspects of myself. I’d like to point out I haven’t got married but I have shut-up, I have tried to sell-out with disasterous results (did I mention I was unemployed again?) and spent some time really screwing up my life entirely deliberately. As clearly it was entirely the wrong life (Add into this some interesting medical problems and crazy hormones) and I was doing it wrong because clearly I was hurting absolutely everybody if I said or did anything at all. As a result I have been two-faced, nearly killed myself (by accident) and have no career. That really bothers me. The idea behind me being wrong originally was that I clearly wouldn’t have a career by going about the life I intended, doing the temp thing, doing the normal thing, that was supposed to end in at least a long-term job.

For all of you who have repeatedly said things like ‘you’re not acting like Mish’ (FJ, Princess I’m looking at you) yeah…good points.

The problem is I’ve got myself into a pretty big mess. My creative portfolio is absolutely minimal, my house is full of rubbish and currently my CV looks so random as to be unemployable. I’m also almost completely out of finances. I entirely deliberately put myself here. I didn’t need to but that’s what I did.

I’m fairly happy with the notion that Aspergers doesn’t mean I’m thinking about things wrong though.

So, let’s see what can be salvaged.

Edit: Having re-read this entry it sounds as if I’m saying that I’ve deliberately and systematically gone down the wrong routes for the past six years. I am not saying that, I’m saying that making mistakes and discovering I have Aspergers has led me to constantly question myself and believe more often than not that other people are more likely correct than myself.