How it all began

My name is Emma. I have Aspergers Syndrome.

This is not something many people outside my closest family and circle of friend know, but I thought it was time to come out and write about it, in a day to day diary form of how to cope, and more than cope, in life with a highly functioning autistic syndrome. It would be nice to have some fellow travellers on this road, but before we get started, lets beguin at the beguin:

The early years:
Looking back to where it all began, there were tell tale signs from the start. Knowing what we know now, its hard to phantom that the little girl that was me was not ”named and tagged” with AS very early. But what we know now was not know, and in my family being intelligent, verbal and more than a tad eccentric was the norm, not the exeption.

That said, from the very start of my life I have know, and have been told, that ”Emma is not like other children”.

I was clearly bright, overly bright. This was accentuated by my inclination to chose a subject that interested me and learn EVERYTHING there was to learn about that subject, followed by a near obsessive need to teach all my peers and the adults around me everything I knew. When I say teach... well, ”lecture” might come closer to the truth.

The times I broke into the conversations my parents had when entertaining friends were countless. More often than not I’d be using words far to complex and advanced for my age, holding little lectures in a voice which was consistently much too loud about whatever subject I felt the need to share my knowledge about at the time. I had no boundaries and limitations, least of all of the appropriatness of a small child barging in on the adult conversations. Also I had no ability to learn that there were such limitations, despite being told countless times.

Long before any of us knew that this is a common name for AS children, I was known as a ”little professor”. I vividly recall the many times my parents with mingled despair and pride spoke of my unusually advanced use of language, both in vocabulary and form, expressing myself (loudly) as a learned adult at the age of five was the source of both embarrasment and pride in equal measures to them, it seems. To me too, I realize in hindsight.

Outside of the extreme agility of my mind, there was not much agility in me. To put it bluntly, I was (and am) painfully clumsy. My mother enlisted me in ballet class to help me develop my fine motor skills, but after a few sessions I was asked to leave. Says it all, really :) It takes skill to flunk out of a play-dancing class for 4-5 year olds. Since then I have learned to live with constant bruises. One would have thought that at my age (38) I would have learned where the door posts are and that they are usually HARD? Walking into them is simply not a good idea! =)

As already mentioned, I spoke too loud. Much too loud. I had no boundaries, no limitations, despite my mother and fathers best efforts to distill them in me. I would strike up conversations with strangers in the street, sometimes to my mothers’ even greater distress, with homeless people. To me, there was no difference between that homeless man and my mothers friends. In conversation I would stand to close, in your face, and be completely unable to read even the most obvious non-verbal hints of how my behaviour affected people.

Disturbed sleep patterns... aah, yes. I have had insomnia since I was 3 years old, coupled with disruped sleep, sleepwalking and anxiety related unwakeble nightmares. During my entire childhood and adolesence I would frequently wake my family by sitting in bed screaming my lungs out, or sleepwalking doing the same, and nothing would wake me up. This, fortunately, is one of the symptoms that have abated with time, although the insomnia is still there. These days all that remain is a deep rooted fear of falling asleep, and a feeling that my body operates on a different day rythm. It seems the Far Side doesn’t have a 24 hour cycle.

As a child I played with the idea that I came from another world, one with 29 or 30 hour cycles. 20 hours awake, 9 hours sleep. Thats the rythm that fits me. But that doesn’t fit our society, as it is with most thing that fits me...

Other early signs: I took, and unless I try very hard i still take, everything said to me at face value. To this day it is very easy for someone I trust to trick me into believing the most incredulous lies, in stark contrast with the sharp logic thaty penetrates all other aspects of my thought processes.

A favourite anectode on the subject was the time about 10 years back when an ex boyfriend of mine had yet again tricked me into believing something, just for laughs (his laughs). He shook his head, smiled at me and said ”Ah, Emma... Emma... Did you know they took the word ”gullible” out of the dictionary?”
Too which I responded with a deep thought, a sharp frown and the words ”But WHY? That is such a USEFUL word!”

That will still make my friends and family laugh, and me too – but it does put the finger on one of the ways that I am simply not ”like other children”, despite the fact that my childhood now is far behind me.

T.B.C.