A look inside the head of the .NET Addict... for better or for worse

It has been suggested by more than one person close to me that I might have some kind of Autism... those with more knowledge of such things have suggested that one such syndrome that I might be afflicted with is Aspergers Syndrome. One might think of AS as getting a lot of the neuro-biological abnormalities of Autism but being spared the suffering of the wall that separates the real you from the outside world.

I have always been like this, for as long as I can remember. The difference between then and now is that back then, I thought it was normal. I thought every single person on the planet felt the way I did, thought the way I did. I didn't think I was abnormal, or broken, or freakish. Now I now better (or worse, depending on how you look at it). Thoughout my childhood I learned how to cope with my being "odd".  I was able to use a pretty good memory to basically watch how "normal" people acted in social situations and mimic their behavior. I feel like a fish out of water whenever I have to interact with anyone, especially large groups.

A short list of what I used to think of as my "freakishness":

• Sensitive to light - If the sun suddenly decided to stay behind clouds for the rest of my life, I'd be a happy man. Portland, Oregon was an awesome place to live, because it was cloudy so often. Institutional white light is enough to drive me mad. Give me a dimly lit (flickering orange candle light is best for me) room over white-light Dilbertville anyday.
• Sensitive to heat - 67 degrees with a light breeze is just about perfect. I get really cranky in anything hotter than that.
• Sensitive to noise - I just recently found out that most people can turn the noise of their environment into white noise naturally. For me, its always a collection of extremely distinct noises. I used to think it was cool that I could listen to a piece of music and be able to tell you exactly how many different instruments were playing... but when I'm in a restaurant...I don't hear the "mutter mutter mutter" white noise chat.. its all distinct noises and conversations, enough to short-circuit my brain and drive me freaking insane. "Rattle" noises such as when someone drops a pile of pencils on a table, or a pile of legos on the floor (my daughter's specialty) drive me bonkers... As do high-pitched tinny noises. I actually prefer eating on paper plates so that I don't have to hear the sound of the fork on a plate. How sad is that?
• Sensitive to touch - I've had mornings where I've gone through my entire closet before I found the right shirt and pants. If the shirt feels "wrong" , I can't wear it. There is an extremely long, bizarre list of criteria that each article of clothing must pass in the morning before I can put it on. The problem is that the same piece of clothing won't always pass or fail...so I do this crap every morning. I've had periods where I've literally spent 5 minutes pulling and tugging on my clothes until they sat "just right". If it weren't for the fact that I can hide my urges to be "freakish" until I'm alone in private, I think a lot more people would think I'm insane.
• Lack of emotional reciprocity - This one I pulled right out of the AS FAQ. When I was younger, I used to complain to my mother that I didn't "feel" any real emotions. Sure, I found things funny, and a lot of things pissed me off, but that was about my range. Up until I met my wife, I really had very few emotions - I survived by mimicking the outward expression of emotions that other people exhibited in my situation.
• Narrow set of interests. I used to think that I had so many interests that I couldn't keep them all straight. Then it dawned on me that I have a single, solitary, all-encompassing interest that rules my life - learning. While I love computers, and I have sub-interests within that, there are essentially two things in my life that can be considered my only true interests: learning and creating. I have spent my life building, creating, constructing...and learning. I've decided to learn foreign languages for the sole reason that I didn't know them yet...thats why I learn the technology that I learn... I get a euphoric endorphin rush from learning and conquering difficult subjects that drives me, pushes me - unfortunately to the exclusion of all else at times.
• Fidgets. Don't even get me started on this. Ever since I was a kid, I've had a need to twirl or twiddle something while thinking. I used to twirl pens and pencils all the time.. it soothed me, made it easier to concentrate.. I felt more creative while doing it.. like the act of fiddling with something occupied enough of my conscious mind to get rid of the endlessly pounding clutter and "noise" that annoys me all damn day long that I could finally think clearly... Its the same reason that I used to smoke when I was a teenager... 1) lighters were an extremely handy item that could be twirled and 2) the nicotine took the edge off and actually allowed me to focus my thought on 3-4 tasks instead of the usual 30-40 tasks I was thinking about.

Anyway..the list could go on and on. I'm not really sure why I'm blogging about this, since I don't normally like to talk about it... I tend to get along fairly well in most environments without most people thinking there's anything wrong with me above and beyond the normal eccentricities attributed to geeks and techno-enthusiasts. We're a pretty goofy lot, so I fit right in there and its easy to mask a lot of my other issues as geeky quirks.

I've spent the last 20 or so years unconsciously teaching myself coping mechanisms. However, for the past 20 years I have been angry. Have you ever gone into a room, and suddenly felt "wrong".. like your spider-sense was tingling..only instead of warning you of impending danger, you just had this unidentifiable, untraceable source of maddening frustration? You didn't know what it was, or why it was there...but it was there, constantly annoying you and pissing you off. Finally, I've discovered the source of those frustrations...and so instead of coping with them, and hiding the fact that I was irritated from people (people used to think I was just lazy - nobody knew that I disliked being in the sunlight), now I can finally work on addressing the reasons for my irritation - sights, sounds, sensations, smells, social situations, situations that require an emotional response... you name it.

The real issue I have with this whole thing is with diagnosis and treatment... I'm thinking that a lot of people in the computer industry find themselves in similar situations. I am firmly convinced that my obsession with learning, as well as all of my neuro-biological developmental abnormalities (Aspergers-like symptoms, for lack of a better description) are what makes me so good at what I do. So, even though I now possess enough self-awareness to realize that there is something different (I refuse to call it wrong) about me, I am reluctant to actually do something about it. I fear that if someone were to prescribe medication that made it so that sights, sounds, sensations, etc didn't bother me... that I would suddenly lose my insatiable thirst for knowledge, my ability to absorb that knowledge, and my desire to create something new and never-before-seen from that knowledge. In short, I feel that if I were treated for whatever it is I have, that I would cease to be me, and that's something I'm not willing to deal with.

For better or for worse,I am who I am, and even if I have to wear sunglasses and very specific clothing with specific materials and crank the air conditioning in the middle of fall and work in a dimly lit cave with peace and quiet and suffer through being socially inept, suffer through various twitches and tics, twirl pens, pencils and even my wedding ring (yeah, that's fallen on the floor a few times...*shudder*) ... I will continue to do that, because I value my creativity, and my ability to code, design, and produce new things more than I despise the side-effects of being "me".

tags: personal  

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