It took me about six hours to write the "hello" because it seemed so excessive, like royal icing on a fruit cake - the contents are rich enough without all the sugary faff of smalltalk on top.
Anyway.
I was recently diagnosed with ASD as an adult after relationship troubles. Now I am told that my worldview is not to be relied on in emotional matters and I am left with my internal voice telling me x about a situation and my internalised voice telling my that x is probably false. This has meant that if I feel hurt in a situation now I no longer know if my hurt is justified, and any counterclaim that it is just my ASD is irresistable. I don't even know if what I have just written has any merit as an emotional standpoint.
I do realise that I have the emotional maturity of a 16-18 year old; I make those kind of mistakes and am that sort of reckless. This is problematic because my (a) ASD is as it were subject to an inverse square law: it manifests itself at noticeable levels only at relatively great proximity (b) I am quite successful, first as a professional, now as an author (c) I have the Peter Pan quality i.e. not only do I look quite good for my age but I pursue my interests with a childlike joy which I can see is infectious from afar. This means that I seem to attract people, but what is frightening is I don't see it until things have gone too far and then I become a rabbit in the headlights.
This is the thing that makes it difficult to explain to people who say "but you're normal". Yes, I can do most things well if not excellently, but if you get beyond the usual social barriers (that I lack) then I am as misleadable as a child. My therapist has basically advised me not to be alone with anyone I do not absolutely trust.
Whereas before I adopted the philosophy of ploughing headlong into the present, having concluded that everyone else seems to waste time that could be spent adding to the beauty of the world, I am now starting my notional GCSE on "human emotional needs and communication". I must say I was astonished to learn that people speak with their eyes - I have started trying to look at them now (but it's very hard).
What I have also come to understand better is how my emotions fit into this equation. I have never in my mind been an emotionless robot (tautology I know) but it seems I come across that way unless I am discuss my interest. I always told myself that if people knew how much I truly felt they would understand, but the revelation would be too terrible for them. A kind of mystical exceptionalism; is it that I feel more than an NT could possibly bear, or do they bear the same emotional quantity with ease? Across the spectrum of so-called meltdowns I have not had many that I would have quaified as more than vicious anger, but the one or two extrema have been singular. Either way, I can see how I deal with my anxiety and where I physically lock it into my body, how I can release it and manage it, and how I can develop techniques for controlled release that allow tentative examination of emotional states for what they are (rather than the binary placid-volcano which has to date characterised me).
I am hoping that this subjective practice could inform and be informed by the objectivity of human relations in which I engage myself, but as I said at the very beginning I am placed in a position in which doubt has become hyperbolic: how can I learn if my hypotheses about emotional situations are wrong a priori? This seems to place me in the position of being utterly reliant on another, being criticised for this reliance, only to be criticised when I strike out on my own. I think I would feel better if a third party umpire - a counsellor - were involved at this stage just to assure me that some of my standpoints are indeed daft (or not). At the moment I do not have sufficient first principles even from which to work.
That fire inside of me - and I know that this fire is even there when it has consumed the me I think I am - drives my best work. I love this image of the Seraphim as self-consuming balls of flame closest to the light; I can get this close when I write sometimes though it is exhausting. Yet I also realise how much this flame I stoke draws oxygen from those around me and how determinately I suck emotional life from the closest.
I am trying to reciprocate now, but every effort of donation is like cutting flesh. Every moment of "being there for someone" I willingly give but it means opening up that which I have spent my life burying deep, baring the raw wound of my existence to the salt of tears.
Let them cleanse and heal.
