Thanks to Amanda Tendler, I’ve learnt this week that instead of telling people that I’m happily somewhere on the spectrum, or that I just have SPD, I can now officially call myself an Aspie. I’m part of the club! Even though I’m very social and I don’t actually exhibit any negative traits like having a meltdown despite the fact that they’re still present.
I can’t speak for anyone else but myself or on what having Asperger’s is like (how do you properly speak on what a state of being is like when you’re perpetually in it?) so I’ll just write ten points on what now looking back are all the signs of me being an Aspie.
1. Growing up I used to cry very easily.
I cried whenever I was overwhelmed by people not understanding something I thought was simple to understand, whenever I was ganged up on and asked, “What’s wrong?” repeatedly when I was just going about my day normally, and whenever I sincerely put myself in someone else’s shoes emotionally when they’re in pain.
I think I learnt how to subconsciously control this sign of me having a meltdown because I grew up in poor gang-filled environments where signs of weakness were hazardous to my health. Now all that’s apparent when I’m truly overwhelmed is that my eyes get incredibly glassy and I then consciously realize that I’m holding back tears. A weird consequence of my learnt control is that if you give me a minute I can easily make myself cry on cue.
And everyone I know says that I walk around a lot. And I mean, a lot. Even more so when I’m stressed, in the zone and flowing, or deeply thinking on an issue.
2. Boredom is absolute torture for me.
A lot of my teachers tried to put me into Advanced Placement classes growing up, but the few times their plans were successful I learnt that those classes were some of the most boring of places to be in and I then did everything I could to never be in them again. I purposely got a lot of test questions wrong growing up in my desire to avoid boredom and boring people. Strangely, I even got them wrong to avoid boredom from myself.
See, although I love learning with a passion, my love of knowledge is derived from a place of always having fun and of always finding something novel to learn about from the world. Almost everyone I knew in AP classes was a lot more boring as a person than the rowdy kids. Boredom is literal torture for me, I’m by all means a daredevil compared to the common person.
To further illustrate how tortuous boredom is for me, a big reason why I dropped out of college (outside of having to take care of a mother with schizophrenia) is that when I took a class I literally read the required textbooks front-to-back and I augmented my studying by reading books on the nuanced topics that the textbooks couldn’t seriously go into detail about for brevity’s sake, all in the first month of classes.
When you study for absolute fun like I do coming to classes after the first month is like being strapped to a chair and slowly tormented. I quickly learnt that in order for me to pass most of my classes I had to mandatorily sit through hours of professors talking about things I already knew of. This is a big no-no for me. I can’t count how many times I showed up for a class only for the tests when I was allowed, finished the tests in record time, then only showed up on the next day of testing and so forth. One of the best looks on a professor’s face is derision the first time you finish a test in record time without having hardly shown up for classes, and then growing amazement when they repeatedly say that you got the highest mark again everytime they hand the results back to you on the next day of tests.
I’ve also noticed that my desperate need for fun and then for avoiding boredom leads to a lot of “proactiveness and then laziness” on my part. I do a lot of projects in my spare time just because.
For example, this year I thought that it would be fun to write a dark fantasy novel since I finally thought of a story that captures everything and that I haven’t ever read about. But while world-building and putting all the puzzle pieces together I realized my story could only be properly told through 11 books’ worth of pages. After joyfully getting lost in my very detailed notes for months on end and drafting the first two books in the series, mentally I’ve now completed my story and continuing on is excruciating. Writing’s no longer fun when it’s fleshing out something I’ve already solved.
3. I’m hypersensitive.
Especially to sounds, light, taste, human touch, and patterns.
- Sounds-wise, I used to be a dancer. Catching music’s rhythm is as easy as breathing to me at this point and I’ve received a ton of accolades because of my musicality. Good music is a daily spiritual experience. But funnily enough, I dance best to songs I’m just hearing for the first time due to boredom rearing its head again. Besides music, I’ve learnt throughout life that if I hear a sound that’s barely noticeable then no one else can actually hear it. I live my life presuming that everyone around me is living life with the volume turned way down. I also don’t understand how people get any work done in coffee shops, even libraries were too audibly distracting for me to ever properly study in during school. And oddly, if I’m rewatching a movie for the umpteenth time I find that muting it makes me enjoy it more.
- Light-wise, nighttime is my favourite time of the day to be outside because I’m not being bombarded visually. And I’ve never seen anything wrong with working completely in the dark for hours at a time, most times I prefer it.
- Taste-wise, I recently realized that my eating habits are strange thanks to someone commenting on them. In essence, I waver between two extremes. When it comes to everyday rushed eating (whenever I have no time to truly savour the food I’m eating) I like eating things a lot of people would call bland. I eat fries without ketchup or salt. And pasta, rice, beans, eggs, &c. without added ingredients or seasoning. But when I have the time of day to properly savour what I’m eating I always go all out, all the ingredients of a dish must be perfectly balanced and interesting. And I don’t really consume sugar because most times it’s a gross bombardement of my senses. A lot of people think I’m strange because I don’t eat donuts anymore, and because water is my favourite beverage of choice.
- Human touch-wise, I don’t really touch people. Even when I like them or I’ve known them for years. Touching people for me is something I have to do very consciously, and to my mind someone touching me is pretty much the same as them seeing me naked. That doesn’t mean that I hate being touched or being naked for that matter, it’s just very personal to my senses. I actually set a guideline for myself as a teenager that I had to hug everyone I met for a year instead of shaking their hand just so that I’d be more accustomed to touching people.
- Patterns-wise, I’m great at solving puzzles and mysteries, catching plagiarism, hypocrisy, incongruity, &c.. Most fields of science generally insist on a modest need for pattern recognition so I’ve always been somewhat good at “science.” And almost everyone I’ve worked for has said I should have been a detective or data miner.
- I might be hypersensitive to smells as well but I’ve had a stuffy nose my whole life so I’ll never know.
4. I’m a nonconformist, and not by choice.
Fitting in is something I have to very consciously do. My nickname amongst my friends is “E.T.” and it has been since I was a teenager. I even took the Vulcan salute as my symbol before I knew what it was, and way before it was ever an emoji. It took me a very long time to realize that everyone around me isn’t strenuously keeping themselves always in line with what others are doing.
5. I’m very straightforward and blunt.
I grew up moving around a lot in dangerous neighbourhoods while poor and I spent my childhood social-development stages dealing with the repercussions of the Rwandan Genocide, so socially I’m hyperaware of others and of their actions and reactions towards me, and thus of how my bluntness comes across. I always try to build a friendly rapport with whomever I’m being straightforward with before I finally stop holding my tongue and I’m actually straightforward. But a lot of outsiders listening in on my conversations have said that I sound rude even though the person I’m specifically talking to knows what I mean by my bluntness and never certainly took it as such.
A lot of my friends come to me whenever they need an honest opinion about something, and a lot of them say that I talk to people I don’t know like I’ve known them for years. Like being a nonconformist, I am straightforward and not by choice. This is who I am.
6. I feel guilt profoundly, and shame hardly at all.
I didn’t realize until recently that this was a common trait of people with Asperger’s. I always thought I was more in touch with my emotions than most guys because I was raised around and by women. But I guess I have lost count of the number of times my eldest sister has said that I honestly need to stop feeling guilty about something.
7. I love learning. More than anything else, even sex.
Most people aren’t wild but virtuous, so sex with most people really isn’t interesting mentally. In fact, to say that most people are boring and that their virtues change as quickly as their moods is much truer. Anyways, back to the point; I love learning, more than anything else, even sex because people are usually boring.
I was the kid always with a heavy backpack full of books in school. I took apart old TVs, radios, and locks to study them (I had an ever-expanding collection of nuts and bolts as a kid). I read scientific papers, screenplays, and terms of agreements for fun. And I read three entire libraries (two medium-sized libraries, one small-sized library, and a portion of a large-sized library) to completion as a teenager before I moved on to digital media. The one and only thing I haven’t ever been without for the past six years is my iPad-mini I bought solely for the purpose of reading.
My friends now accept that I’ll shun a beautiful woman hitting on me while focused or lost in thought only to later regret it, and that I’ll blurt out random facts spontaneously. They have a saying for this, “Sigh, there goes Arsène again.”
And some of my doctors are astounded by the fact that I keep up with scientific studies as a layman. I’ve had two doctors’ appointments become fun and run over-schedule because the doctors and I were just kicking it and discussing new findings. But I’m also a bane sometimes since I keep digital records of my blood-work from the past couple of years on my iPad-mini, alongside DNA results, digitized X-Ray scans, &c.. I think a big reason why I’m so good at being social even though I’m an Aspie is because the topics that genuinely interest me all have something to do with being human (neurology, physiology, biochemistry, anthropology, psychology, sexology, mythology, theology, history, and poetry).
I passed the point of having read over a couple thousand books, and having watched over a thousand movies and hundreds of anime and shows years ago.
8. I don’t see anything wrong with being completely alone.
Don’t get me wrong, I like people and being social but growing up when focusing on a subject that interested me I locked myself in my room for weeks at a time without seeing anything wrong with it. I’ve also happily been in the jungles of Thailand for weeks with hardly any human interaction outside of acquiring food from the markets.
I like people, but being with people isn’t something I desperately need in my life like it is for almost everyone else on this planet. My eldest sister keeps asking me if I’ll ever get married and I don’t honestly know how to answer her, “Uhmm, someone has to stand me first sis.” Maybe I should start focusing on dating other Aspies now that I know I’ve always been part of the club, haven’t tried that.
9. I’m logically connected to the world, rather than emotionally.
By this I mean that I’ve had a lot of people in my life call me detached and heartless when they genuinely try to be close to me. I’ve been told close friends of mine have died while working and continued working perfectly. And relationships have always been a minefield for me, because even when it comes to lovers and friends I’m logically attached to them not emotionally.
If people stop interesting me logically and I feel like I know everything about them my mind becomes unbearably bored. I wish I could change this about myself a lot, telling someone that I truly care about them doesn’t come across as sincere when I keep disappearing on them for weeks at a time. Nevermind the fact that in the first couple of weeks of knowing them I was so immersed with them to the point of them always needing a break from me.
10. And finally, as a teenager I tattooed my entire right arm to look like it’s bio-mechanical in the style of alien-tech.
Due to my hypersensitivity to life and patterns, my never-ending and most times all-consuming search for new and novel information, and my simultaneous hyperawareness of emotions and deep-rooted detachment; I’ve always felt part human, part machine, and part alien, like a cyborg from another planet born in wartime. Who knows, maybe I came here for the music.
