502 words about me.

Hello, I am Dooshka.

Born in 1953, it did not dawn on me that I might have an ASD until I saw the film Mercury Rising 50 years later - though coping with the overwhelming tide of life on planet Earth had been an ordeal virtually from the outset. Largely thanks to my devoted partner, Helen, whom I met in 2007, a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome followed in 2012. I still believe there may be many people beneath whose mental health problems lurks an undiagnosed ASD.

I emerged from my first twenty years with an absorbing love of classical music, a prize for having won an international essay competition and my sanity just about intact. Most of the following fifteen years were spent submerged beneath the stupor of Ativan, which reduced life to mere robotic existence but at least made it possible for me to keep in work. Eventually, I managed to release myself from drug dependency, aided by the task of compiling a stamp catalogue called Collect Fungi on Stamps which Stanley Gibbons published in 1991. That year, I also joined my present employer, where I would later discover an exceptional ability to build management information databases.

So what have I learned after 60+ years? I think I am still the same anxious, fearful, hyper-vigilant person I always was; I am still locked into the bubble of the immediate present, disconnected from both my personal past and an imagined future. There is still an empty space in me where autobiographical memory and much of what it truly means to be human should reside; I still rely on patterns and routines to navigate my way through the day; my fragile sense of self still largely depends on what I happen to be doing at this moment; I still easily get lost, disorientated and confused; I still struggle to cope. But overlaying all this is, I believe, greater self-understanding. And through desperate times, I have discovered the quiet place within, which does not change no matter who I am - the inner sanctuary where I can pray and listen for the still, small voice that is not my own. Undoubtedly, the greatest blessing in my life is Helen, who arrived at a time when after several failures, I doubted I had the wherewithal ever to sustain a meaningful relationship. Above all, I affirm the truth of a Loving God, whose infinite understanding, peace and consolation I experience whenever I behold the stars or the beauty of the natural world.

I may forever be a stranger in a foreign land. I may never be able to decode the complex, unspoken language of feeling and emotion that seems to bind ‘neurotypical’ human beings and give them strength and comfort in one another. Yet between the markers of birth and death, I still believe that any human being, no matter what their deficiencies, can make a positive difference to the lives of those around them and in so doing, justify and make holy their own existence.