Dyssocial Butterfly

I haven't posted in here for quite a while.

Thats because I "came out" on my main journal goddess_amy .

I don't really have a need to keep a seperate journal anymore, so go friend me over there if you want to keep reading.

I don't have a very good rig for playing First Life. My monitor is tiny, the speakers are low quality producing fuzzy sound, the cpu can't handle the input so the whole game is laggy. The keys are worn off on the keyboard and some of them have to be pressed hard. There is no mouse. Plus the enviroment in here is so noisy, the tv is always on and the radio too. The sunshine shines on the screen so I can barely see. It's so distracting! Not to mention all you other players insist on using video or voice chat which your fancy systems can handle just fine but are almost unusable on mine.

So whats your setup like for playing First Life? I'm guessing you've got a powerful machine which renders the world in real time, a professional sound setup with multiple speakers for 3d audio, a quiet room to play in. Do you have a VR headset and gloves so you are immersed in the game world and can interact with it directly?

Here's a song which perfectly describes how I felt when I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome:

Isolation from The Mighty Boosh

All the things I'll never see
All the things I'll never be
All there is that's left for me
Is here in this eternity
Of isolation

The cavalcade, the jamboree
Of life I thought was meant for me
I never dreamed that it would be
Replaced by this eternity
Of isolation.

All the things I'll never see
All the things I'll never be
All my hopes are memory
All there is that's left for me
Is isolation.


I still feel this way. The song has been stuck in my head all day and making me feel a little sad. So now I am going to lie here in my bed and listen to it on repeat and cry and eat chocolate.

Something happened and now I'm in a familiar place of feeling like I'm stuck between two ways of living and not being happy but unable to choose either one of them.

The incident wasn't much, but it reminded me of the fact that people don't get on well with me (or I don't get on well with people) and I'm not so good at social stuff. It's not like I forget this, I'm Aspie 100% of the time and aware of it, but most of the time it kinda fades into the background and doesn't hurt. It's just part of being me.

But when I am reminded of it, it hurts and always puts me into this frame of mind. If I'm around people at the time, I withdraw and go into shutdown. This is why often tiny things that anyone else would laugh off can cause such huge and lasting effects on me.

As for the two ways of livings, one is to be social and live in the NT world, have friends who care about me, go out, etc etc, something I'm not even sure if I'm capable of or would enjoy. The other course is to withdraw into my own head, spend my days playing computer games or working on my latest obsession. I would be happy doing this, but it wouldn't be living in the real world. My sensible side prevents me from wasting too much time on unproductive activities. Plus where would I get money/food from?

I have a part of me which desires each one. Scary, adventuours social life with emotional ups and down vs a safe secure life in my bedroom with a stable but rather low mood.

I don't even know how to choose or to start living it, even if I could choose one.

(Maybe it's not a binary choice? Are there other options I am not seeing?)

I seem to have a new obsession with a particular store. It's an importer/wholesale and they sell bulk lots of beads and jewelry findings really cheap, and they list things for a dollar on eBay.

Everyday I check out their $1 starting bid items and bid on them. Only a couple of dollars on each auction usually and I usually get outbid at the end which is OK.

But I've just won the same lot of 2,000 beads for the third time now...

On the bright side, they're local and close to my parent's place so they drive me there to pick stuff up which means no shipping fees. And bidding at $2-$3 isn't going to send me broke anytime soon.

OTOH, I have now have 6,000 beads the same (they're big one too, not tiny seed beads).

It's really hit home over the past few days how much I rely on hair to recognise people.

A girl in another department so I don't see her that often but enough to recognise her and know her name, changed her hair colour from blonde to brown. It took me a few times of seeing her to work out that she wasn't a new employee, but was an old person from that department. And it's only now after racking my head for five minutes that I could recall her name.

Another guy that comes over to our area frequently had his hair styled differently. I recognised him from his glasses but he looked completely different to me.

I approached one of my good friends who I've known for like 8 years from behind and he looked different. He was sitting at a computer and I was trying to edge around to get a better look at him to see why. After seeing his face properly it took me a few minutes to work out he was clean shaven. To me, it seemed the whole shape of his face had changed.

I'm watching the tv show Roswell. Just saw the first episode of season two and am trouble telling who people are because all their hair styles have changed. It's bad because one of the main characters now has the same hair do as a guy from another tv show and my brain keeps trying to read him as the other character.

I have huge trouble telling people apart if they have similar hair. In high school there were two girls in my year with longish blond hair. Their faces were completely different, but it still took me about 6 months to learn to tell them apart. At work there are two guys with dark hair in the same department. One has long hair and one has short hair. It still took me a good few months to learn to tell them apart and remember which name went with which person (I use a mnemonic).

Most of the time in real life it's not a huge issue because hair grows slowly and I can use context to tell who people are. But when hair changes dramatically, yeah I can't tell who people are.

I'm a visualiser. It comes easily. I only wish I could paint or draw the imagery to share what I see.

Last night I stayed up very late reading stories from the Tears in Heaven universe, a crossover between The Tomorrow People, Stargate SG1 and Highlander. Mostly focusing on the Kevin/Alex stories.

Usually I feel sad after reading romantic or slashy stories but last night for the first time in like ever, I felt OK with being single and OK being who I am.

I haven't been in a relationship and I don't think I ever will be. Often I think about it, and while knowing it's true and accepting it, I still felt sad or upset. But last night I really felt fine with it. No regrets, no sense of unfairness, just "this is me and relationships aren't for people like me".

It was a dusty pink feeling.

It's still with me. I read on my (other lj's) f'list about a co-worker who's just met someone and the great time she had with him, and I didn't feel sad or jealous. Instead I truly felt happy for her.

Thank you darthanne

It amuses me that since being diagnosed with AS (Asperger's Syndrome), I've gotten a rating of AS (Above Standard) in every performance review at work. I obviously work at an AS level :D

My team leader said she'd like to work one to one with me with some stuff she learnt in her manager's course about different personality types. Which I eventually figured out was a nice way of saying we're going to teach you to get along with your co-workers.

I like my team leader.

Following on from the last post. It's more than just not having friends though. Because of my social disability I can't network or find out information from people, which I feel considerably reduces my options in life.

In the documentary there was a guy who had found a house to squat in via talking to people, a guy who got an apprenticeship as a jockey, two girls who were married, a guy who was secretary for 5 different clubs at uni!, a casual labourer.... I wouldn't know how to do go about doing any of those things!

It's like there's unlimited options and paths to take in life and interactions with people, but I'm limited to a tiny tiny subset. I see other people doing other things and wonder how they managed to do it. Sometimes people try some of the other interactions with me, which leaves me feeling confused and not knowing how to react or what to do.

Back when you're a kid, anything seems possible because you don't know any better. People are generally nice and understanding and welcoming of questions and willing to help you because you're a child. And it's OK if you say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing because you're a child and don't know any better.

I wish I was a kid again.

I just finished watching 21 UP. How full of hope and promise those people seemed at 21!

I feel like I have achieved nothing for the past few years, as if I haven't really been living. Socially/personal development-y wise I mean. (Not that I feel like I've done much in any other arena but for some reason people seem impressed that I'm paying off a mortgage or that I'm studying while working etc.)

The past few years have seen my circle of contacts dwindle. I haven't made any new "friends". I haven't had any meaningful conversations. I even only go out every couple of months (thats including parties, work events outside office hours, meeting up with someone, seeing a movie etc etc). I don't even participate online very much.

I'm stagnating, no worse than that, my social sphere is diminishing. Not that there was very much to begin with.

and I simply don't know how to expand it. I don't know how to have conversations. I don't know how to talk to people. I don't know how to make a friend. I can't even tell if someone wants to be friends or if I'm boring someone senseless.

I think too since my diagnosis with Asperger's, I've stopped trying. There's a reason for my social difficulties and to try to be otherwise is going against my nature.

All I want in life, all I've ever wanted is a few good friends. Heck, I'd even settle for just one best (female) friend. Someone to hang out with. Someone to talk to. Someone who knows me and cares about me and wants to listen to me. Someone I know and care about and want to listen to.

But, that just doesn't seem possible for me.

I'm sitting here eating dahl (lentils) on rice and contemplating how much better the dish is if the rice is cold.

Come to think of it, when I was growing up my mum would always make soup in winter. And I would add frozen bread to it. It had to be frozen. Fresh bread just wouldn't do.

I also like eating (cooked) food cold, like not heating leftovers or eating spaghetti straight out of the tin. And I think seconds taste even better because the dish is lukewarm.

Maybe I have a thing against hot food... but it has to have cooled to the temperature - nuking food until it's lukewarm is just nasty.

Linky: Parents of children with distinct genetic mutations are seeking out others to form support networks.

Kinda cool that more widespread DNA testing is allowing parents who have children with the same mutations to hook up.

Once of the more interesting concepts mentioned in the article is that autism is an umbrella label and that with DNS testing people can be sorted into more precise groups depending on what specific mutations they have.

Autistic people are not all the same, and the article is suggesting that the differences could correlate to specific mutations in DNA. So one group of people who do X, Y and Z have mutation H while this other bunch which have A, B and C have mutation F. I don't know if thats a good thing or a bad thing, but it's interesting.

Sometimes things happen which upset me. I can't always tell at the time if this has happened, sometimes I will feel sad hours later and it'll take a long time to work out why, sometimes I will be irritated but it's only later I realise how much it affected me. In any case, it's pretty much impossible for me to say anything on the spot.

Today I realised that one of these things which I really really don't like (ok, I don't have much expressive language) is people talking about me while I am present.

Like if someone says to me "What are you on about?", because sometimes I do babble, I'd be a bit miffed but can take it in my stride and stop. But if someone says to someone else "What is she on about?" then it really hurts because it's like - I don't count as a person/ I'm not sentient/ I'm not capable of understanding. (Oh and BTW, the result will be that I will stop talking and withdraw because I'll have to be dealing with the things in my head instead of the outside world. I think thats termed a shutdown?)

Some of my most painful memories are simple things like this. The really bad memories which I don't like recalling and lead to tears.

I feel that there is so much that my disability/the Aspergers/lack of social skills is stopping me from doing.

It's frustrating sometimes (I can't run a business because I can't do the networking necessary for success) and sometimes it's saddening (I'm never going to be good at making friends). Other times it's depressing (I'm always going to be alone) and sometimes, just sometimes, it's amusing (I can put out the rubbish bins in my Hello Kitty pjs because I just don't care what the neighbours think).

On this day 1 year ago I was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome.

During the past year I have:
- Read a lot of books on the subject
- Changed jobs to one which is more suitable
- Had to re-orientate my self-image to include having a disability
- Gone out even less and been even less sociable
- Gone on a gluten and casein free diet
- Start taking a handful of vitamin pills every morning
- Started accepting myself, Aspegers and all.

Last year on this day, I took the day off work and my parents took me to a specialist clinic where I was diagnosed. Then we had sushi for lunch.

This year on this day, I got an award for employee of the month and spent the day in a super-long meeting trying to sort out a big new account.

My life makes more sense now. I am trying hard to work around^H with the Aspergers 'cause it ain't going away. Maybe one day I can even be grateful for it.

So, dyssocialbtrfly, your LiveJournal reveals...



You are... 0% unique and 29% herdlike (partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy tv). When it comes to friends you are lonely. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are wary of trusting strangers. Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is intellectual.

Your overall weirdness is: 40

(The average level of weirdness is: 28.
You are weirder than 81% of other LJers.)

Find out what your weirdness level is!

The other day when I tried to follow a stranger home is called echopraxia - "the involuntary repetition or imitation of the observed movements of another."

I heart wikipedia:
An aversion to loud music and naturally loud environments (such as clubs and bars) is typical behavior of a dyspraxic individual who suffers from auditory oversensitivity, while only being comfortable in unusually warm or cold environments is typical of a dyspraxic with temperature oversensitivity. This typically occurs if the dyspraxia is comorbid to an autistic spectrum disorder (PDD) such as autistic disorder or Asperger syndrome.

I like warm, silent, dark environments.

Found via a link civetmoon gave me, a quote from a page called Don't Mourn for Us:

It [autism] is pervasive; it colors every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion, and encounter, every aspect of existence. It is not possible to separate the autism from the person...

Yeah that pretty much sums it up.

I hate having Aspergers. And thats a problem because you can't separate me from the Aspergers. It's a part of me. And so that means I'm hating myself.

Not a day goes by that I don't wish I was normal or dead.