Being a little different
My brain is wired a little differently to the majority of the population, I hide it as much as I can and over the years I have got better and better at hiding it, but there is no getting away from it, my brain is wired a little oddly compare to a ‘regular’ person.
This is not a sympathy post. It is far from it – I do not want your sympathy, autism has given me a lot of advantages and has made me who I am today. I really quite like who I am too, so no sympathy please. I am happy.
What autism means in my case is a variety of things;
- I can, and often do, retreat from everyone around me, disappear into ‘my own world’, which despite what people may think, is far from ‘little’ in order to work things through.
- I lack empathy. Or perhaps more accurately, I lack intuitive empathy, I understand it and I use it, but it is not natural for me to use it or display it.
- I am stupidly good at some tasks and laughably bad at others.
- I have both infinite patience and zero patience. Very little in between.
- I used to struggle to read people pretty much all the time. Now I can read them deliberately.
- I can get incredibly emotional about some things and can be entirely cold about others.
- Being the centre of attention is torture.
- Big, Loud, Crowds disorient me.
- I have had quite the career in the computing industry.
- I can break exceptionally complex things into simple tasks in my head.
- Explaining some of this stuff is very difficult.
…and quite a few things that are often inconsistent to a casual observer.