Reciprocate or cooperate?

I am currently writing a book.  This is a collaboration with my son who's just turned eleven.  It's the most recent in a long series of collaborations with him on a number of different projects - most of them, unplanned.  For years, he has drawn fantastical beasts and regaled me with tales from an imaginary world.  We have a sketchbook where he draws his scenes and beasts, and I work on them in pen adding detail and lifting them from the paper with texture, shading and contrast.  I enjoy this process, but could never provide the initial ideas - I am creative, but not imaginative in the true sense. It is he who is the true creator. I am pleased that people enjoy the pictures, and I am particularly taken with their reaction to the level of detail.  I find repetition calming, and the process of filling a page with tiny orderly lines and dots, the antithesis of the difficult, time consuming and agonizingly boring task that most assume it to be.  My answer to the ubiquitous "How long did that take???!!" is "Not long enough".  My eye sees only error and perfection, efficiency and inefficiency, pattern and interruption. 

We follow the same division of work when we are writing:  He provides the story, the characters and the descriptions and ideas, and I impose order through structure and vocabulary, and style through visualisation and detailed description. It is a true and equal Partnership, with both parties cooperating and each providing something the other cannot (yet - I know he will learn).  Reciprocation happens naturally as part of the process of collaboration.

It occurred to me that similar "Partnerships" have been forged throughout my working life, in lieu of friendships, that are much more difficult and complicated to navigate... As someone with such a woeful record in friendship, I am, I realised, actually pretty good at forming partnerships.  I am a Designer:  A problem solver.  To do my best work, I need a problem (the bigger, and more complex, the better).  In the absence of such stimulation, I can be 'peripheral' like a machine waiting, dormant, in standby mode, for input.   This is poor fodder for friendships that require regular maintenance and reciprocation.  My strengths in this regard are welcomed in a crisis, but not in the everyday.

I find very few people easy to get on with.  Those, whose company I do enjoy, are either very similar to me (statistically, very unlikely) or the complete opposite to me (very empathetic). Working, as I did for many years, in Environmental Consultancy was perfect for me - giving me access to the to difficult IT and data problems I desired, the highly technical minds of the scientists and engineers and the immensely empathetic personalities of the environmental experts and ecologists, and I worked successfully on myriad projects from around the globe.

I recently asked my husband to take the standard tests (available online) that are used as part of the assessment process in diagnosing ASDs; The Autistic Quotient (AQ), Empathetic Quotient (EQ) and the Systemising Quotient (SQ) tests.  I filled in the same tests (there are different versions available) to provide some context.  Our scores were telling:
SQ: His score was 37 out of a possible 80, mine was 60
EQ: His score was 58 out of a possible 80, mine was 7
AQ: His score was 13 out of a possible 50, mine was 47

This certainly fits the pattern of 'exactly the same or completely different'.  Although it appears my criteria for a successful partner is easier to find in professional circles, it makes me immensely grateful for those relationships (like my marriage) that are found and forged elsewhere...

Fitting a square peg into a round hole is possible, 

but it helps to have the brightest minds in NASA working on it.

Losing my Sparkle

I listened recently to an abridged reading of Chris Packham's 'Fingers in the Sparkle Jar' (I will read the full text soon) and was mesmerised and deeply affected  to hear another voice that has experienced life in a similar way to me... One that has responded with similar vigor and been hurt in similar fashion. To hear the question: "Were you a happy child?" answered with such passion and certainty: "O course not! How can any child be happy?" struck such a chord, as did his descriptions of the intensity, detail and clarity with which he sees and experiences things.

We Aspies can live isolated lives, so I sometimes forget that there are others like me out there.  It makes me swell with pride when I witness an individual surprising everyone and holding misconceptions up to the light...  Showing  people that they don't quite fit in that snug pigeonhole to which they were consigned....  Turning out to be more complex than just that familiar face.

It soon became apparent that there was much here with which I identified.  As I listened, Chris began to explain his motivation - his constant drive to be better, learn more... to 'win' as he calls it.  I am very aware that, in lieu of the companionship, support and kindness that comes with friendship, I tend to try to impress people with my hard work, commitment, knowledge - anything that I can achieve with purely intellectual or physical effort.  I never try to 'wrong-foot' people, but it's easy to do just that, simply by being enthusiastic, eloquent and capable: How can somebody with all 'this' be this sad, this isolated, this exhausted?  It doesn't make sense to most NTs, but it couldn't be more familiar to me.

Chris also talks about his decision not to take his life, at a time when this seemed the only option.  I was reminded that I have considered ways to "take a permanent rest from it" on several occasions through my life, and to hear another voice acknowledging the lure of just not trying any more... to give up... to lose... well.  On the occasions when I slipped into those really deep depressions, I would write lists of pros and cons for this decision as I did for any important decisions; looking at the available data, weighing the consequences.  I could never isolate the exact scenario, so the outcome was never certain... I could never be quite confident that everyone I knew would be better off without me.  I have come to believe that I have some worth over the years, mainly because I can't deny the continued presence of my incredibly patient and understanding husband, and my amazing little boy... I must be doing something right, as they say.

I am looking forward to reading the book in it's entirety, despite its uncomfortable content...

The natural world has always been a balm for me in difficult times, and I have an enduring love of birds, insects, marine life, dinosaurs, reptiles and much more.  I spend as much time as possible near the sea, its rocky, semi-deserted shores and the vast cloudy panoramas it offers.  I feel truly relaxed when staring at the life in a drop of pond water under a microscope or at the night sky through a telescope.  I marvel at the colours of a Rose Cockchafer's wing covers, sit, fascinated, by the actions of a wolf spider who has lost her egg-case...  This is the 'Sparkle Jar': These are the things that bring me joy, convince me to stay, these, and the opportunity to impart their beauty and importance to others, if I can.

Anxiety Rules (First posted 9th January 2016)

I worry about things a lot.  This can make me seem pessimistic and paranoid, but it is something I struggle to control.  It’s something that has been with me for as long as I can remember. Whenever I had an unsatisfactory exchange with a family member, another student, or teacher at school, (a misunderstanding, perhaps, or failure to notice and comment on a new haircut) I would worry for days, if not weeks about it, literally losing sleep over it, and it would often lead to my avoiding the person in question thereafter.  

Equally, if I had a pleasant and successful exchange, (a long conversation with someone who shared one of my interests, for instance) I would soon begin to worry about the potential for a misunderstanding (on my part) to bring about the end of a burgeoning friendship, leaving someone I cared about hurt and confused.  I am blessed with a singularly vivid imagination and the graphic nightmares that accompany this anxiety are cinematic in nature.  This anxiety, this self-doubt has never left me and still colours every exchange.

This fear is an issue that is well known among people with Asperger’s, and it can be crippling.  I am lucky in that I have people to help me to find the courage to keep trying: I have the support and understanding of my wonderful husband who’s outgoing personality continues to put opportunity after opportunity for socialising in my path.  I also have the added incentive to be a strong and confident role model for my son.

Decoding everyday exchanges in a purely intellectual way is extremely hard work and riddled with danger.  (This is the reason for my usual frown of concentration; putting on a smile is just another thing I have to remember.)  I work in a large school and have to tackle hundreds of such exchanges every day.  Granted, it is easier with children, as they are usually more honest, predictable and transparent in their exchanges than are adults. To engage at all, I have had to become a student of language myself (researching colloquialisms, idioms, turns of phrase, body language and the like.)  Unfortunately, I didn’t realise until after I had embarked on this course of action, that learning to ‘navigate’ creates a vicious circle of its own:  The better you cope, the less understanding people show when things go wrong.  The longer you can keep up; the more ‘normal’ you appear, the more likely that misunderstandings will be judged as willful or deliberately hurtful.   It is EXHAUSTING.  

The endlessly sophisticated and ingenious intricacy of human communication navigated intuitively by neuro-typicals is mind-boggling.  Most people can have no awareness of the sheer volume of observations, decisions, judgments made,  hints, clues, signals given in a matter of seconds during a casual chat.  It is an enormous barrier to understanding those of us who do not possess this intuition.   It was this realisation that led me think more about the handful of people that I can truthfully call ‘friends’, and appreciate the patience they show and efforts they make in merely putting up with me!  Not giving myself enough credit, you think…?  No.  I have no illusions about that. I am patently aware how different things might have been…

Anyone with Asperger’s will know about the ever-present companion to anxiety: Depression.  It is a constant battle not to give up the effort, close the door and surrender to self pity, exhaustion and the inevitable spiral into depression.  I have had many periods of deep, damaging depression in my life, and I am immensely proud and pleased that I have not had a major episode for the four years since my diagnosis.

I am sorry if this post seems to concentrate too much on the negative, but that is a necessity when you discuss feelings like fear, doubt, anxiety and depression.  They are an ever-present part of my reality.  Don’t worry! I will write another post shortly about some of the amazing gifts and joys that also share my everyday life.