Discovery 1 - Realisation

"I'm more settled in myself and take better care of myself. I'm more forgiving of myself". Yes I agree with this. Altho no formal diagnosis now I am aware, I don't chew myself up about things so much while it's happening. I'm learning to try to be in the present moment more during interactions even if they are not going too well! This is a process but I'm practising!

I see myself more as David in A.I.   Young, naive, trusting and lost.  Facing a complicated world when all I want is simplicity.

'Bladerunner' feels so much to me like the division (if that's the right word) between perceptions of being an ND in a world of NTs.  When I think about the way autistic geniuses have been persecuted in a world that they've served for the benefit of all mankind it makes me want to cry.

In terms of Bladerunner I think I identify with J.F Sebastien in a way - an outsider who doesn't fit with the humans or the replicants. But also moved by the 'Tears in the Rain' scene/speech... Roy Batty revealed to be as (more) human than Deckard and the sense that in destroying something they don't understand / can't accept for what it is they are making the world poorer...

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.

I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

Time to die.

Lotus said:

When I found out I was an Aspie, it felt like something had been kept from me. My past life before that realisation now feels like the implanted memories of someone else's life. How could I not know what I was? Since then I have researched, mused, puzzled & cross-referenced and it's starting to become clearer. 

Yes, I'm the same.  Since my diagnosis, it's like I've become a different person.  I'm more settled in myself and take better care of myself.  I'm more forgiving of myself.  I've also allowed my true autistic self to take control.  This has had the dual effect of making me feel different in another way, though.  I now can't help but to see the world as 'me' and 'them', meaning NTs.  I'm a human being like everyone else, I know.  But I just feel apart, like I was born with a different set of equipment needed to pass myself off as anything other than odd.  I like my 'oddity'.  But a part of me would still like to feel included, and I can't help but say that my autism has taken that away from me.  I suppose it's an inevitable part of any diagnosis like this.  It colours the way you look at the world forever afterwards.

Or am I? I won’t know unless someone tells me!

I’ve always felt different. Like I was in an invisible box filled with vacuum. Not even sound could get out. What I was hearing and seeing I realise now was distorted by the box. Cue the song “I want to break free!” 

I thought decades ago that a psychiatrist could help me, like they did on tv and films. How naive! We didn’t even seem to speak the same language! 

I acquired other people’s characteristics, like a patchwork quilter making a bedspread. Didn’t really know what I was at all. 

Met another young girl who was very friendly with me who said she had been judged as autistic. I just said “Don’t worry about it. You seem ok to me.” That was back in 1970s. Didn’t realise we were actually both in the same invisible box!

Then gradually one or two other people joined us in that box. It became a room. It was no longer just an empty vacuum. And it had a door. 

Now, I understand. Sort of worked it out decades ago, but got laughed at. My diagnosis just confirms I am not crazy. 

I think that the diagnosis has confirmed what I always knew but tried so hard to hide.  In that respect I feel more like the main character in Gattaca, having to hide my true nature in order to make a living.  The trouble was that this went so far that I was also hiding things from myself, or at least forcing them down just so's I could continue.  

The point of realisation - issues in the next generation that held a mirror to my fake world.  

When i read "feels like theres a conversation gene missing". My heart jumped and i wanted to cry.  That was the moment it all fell into place.

Yep same. I used to feel like some sort of 'nature' experiment like David Attenborough would at some point come out and explain my behaviour like I was a wild animal in a documentary. I now know some of us are just wired a bit differently, in fact some of us will go on to do brilliant things or make major discoveries, maybe we are the start of an evolution of a bigger stronger more intelligent species?

Not me but we have to start somewhere.

When I was diagnosed things became simpler. I understood that Asperger's is me. It's a name for what I am dealing with.

My realisation arguably was watching 'Blade runner'. The scene when they point that device at her iris.

It was before I ever heard of any SEN, conditions or autism. I was totally blank on that. But when I watched that movie it deeply affected me. It touched me very personally. I realised that I was like her, hidden in plain sight, human but somehow people find all sort of devices to find me, to track me down and to target me with bullying, harassment, abuse. Somehow there is no way to hide. They have the device to detect me. They just find me as if they were hunting me.

OMG I can so relate to this! Yep I'm an alien and nobody has told me! Everybody just thinks I'm mad weird whatever....

Now I know I am different and was never meant to be anything other, I'm beginning to think its almost Ok, not quite but almost..

I'm beginning to care a little less, taken me nearly 50 years but its happening.

Thanks for posting this, its really thought provoking.

The communication thing, well maybe I just need to accept that yes its a problem and always will be but surround myself with people who don't care.