Struggles

God has blessed me with the ability to put words down on paper (or the metaphorical paper of the computer screen). I am most able to relate to people through this medium.

God has also blessed me with musical ability and I can also relate to people through this medium.

But when it comes to in-person face to face relationships, I have significant struggles.

I don't operate very well in real time. I'm not articulate with my emotions as they happen--it's only in retrospect that I can figure them out, and by then it's often too late--the conversation is over.

I also don't let very many people get truly close to me, in part because I don't know how to take down the wall between myself and others. There have been times in my life that I have tried to express my feelings in real time and the reactions of other people tell me that I have somehow done it wrong. These times happened before I understood that I have AS and so I didn't know that I was dealing with a deficit that needed some form of compensation. Those times were painful and mysterious.

It has sometimes taken me years to understand some things. For instance, I had a male friend when I was in eighth and ninth grades (I was in junior high school). He was a year ahead of me, so during my ninth grade, he was in high school. I had skipped a grade, so I was actually two years younger than him.

During my years of junior high school, I really enjoyed being around him. We would do projects together and would walk miles and miles exploring the city, going to the library, etc. This was not girlfriend/boyfriend type stuff--it was just being friends and enjoying the same types of things.

Everything changed when I got to tenth grade, high school. All of a sudden, so it seemed to me, he wanted something different from me. To me he seemed angry that I wasn't in the same emotional/developmental spot he was in. Now I see it as two immature people--he had changed, so he expected me to change. Yet it would be another year before I even went into puberty.

I was confused and at the same time, I didn't even know how to put my confusion into words. I didn't know what he wanted and didn't understand why he felt angry at me. In fact, it was maybe twenty years before I really understood that he had reached a developmental milestone in his life and didn't realize that I was really far behind him.

I reacted badly, in that I didn't know what to do and I ended that friendship. I know that he was hurt by that and I felt badly about that, but I didn't want a boyfriend (I knew that was a piece of what was going on but I truly didn't understand what it meant to be a girlfriend). I felt all alone because I had no idea how to put into words what was going on. I just knew that he spoke to me differently and I didn't like that and I didn't understand what was happening. I am putting this in words now, but at the time, it was a nonverbal experience of pain for me. Even if an adult had come along and asked me what was going on, I would not have been able to talk about it because to put something in words, I have to be a little further away from it than I was at that time.

Unfortunately, this would be a pattern in my life--that I would have friendships and relationships that would melt down in inexplicable (to me) ways. If I tried to explain what was going on with me, the words weren't right in some odd way. Whatever I said didn't seem adequate to express what was happening with me and rather than trying to work through things, I would get out of the friendship or relationship.

I'm now older with more experience and self-awareness. My struggles with other people continue--one friend I have is not sure why I'm not closer to her than I am and I also struggle with another friend because aspects of my life have changed and I don't know how to talk with her about that.

In writing about the experience of Asperger Syndrome, I want to celebrate the strengths it brings me--and I get a lot of enjoyment out of those things. But at the same time, I have significant limitations and those are painful for me and also for the people around me. Yet I don't have a strong ability to prevent that pain or to cope with relationships that are complex.