White Wasn't White...

My Aunt can't smell. Not a thing... That means she also can't taste. One is impossibly linked to the other.... In the middle of winter a few years ago she slipped on a patch of ice and hit her head...She made a full recovery, except for one (well, two) things. Imagine that, you know that the fire is there, you can see it burning, but you can't smell the smoke.

That is what it's like to have Asperger's sometimes. You know what people are telling you, you see what they are doing, but you question everything. I feel like I have a certain amount of intuition, but it's more of an emotional sixth sense. I used to attribute it to the fact that I grew up in an extremely abusive household, I was walking on eggshells all the time because I never knew what kind of mood my mother or stepfather were going to be in, so I learned to decipher the air. I could feel the tension, or the ease. It could also happen the other way around, though.

There was a beautiful, clear day and I was sitting cross-legged on my bed. I may have been ten or eleven. I had a hand-me-down white eyelet bedspread that I just loved, and my bed was made just so. The world, MY world, was at peace for a second. Just then my stepfather flew into my room, smacked me open handed across the face and exited as quickly as he had entered. I didn't even have time to exhale before the blood started to run from my nose onto my gorgeous, white bedspread. There was never an explanation for the smack and I ended up having to dye the white to black. I never let me guard down again after that. Peace wasn't peace...White wasn't white.

Huge, Flying Red Flags...

I watched a movie this weekend called "Living Proof" about a wonderful Doctor that is working to find a cancer treatment that isn't poison...

The reason that this is valid to this entry is because during the movie there is a character played by Bernadette Peters that finds a lump in her breast and when her husband asks about it she says (in a very straightforward way) "It's cancer". Her husband says that she can't possibly know that, and she says that she does, and it is cancer.

That's how I felt about Asperger's. I knew....There was just something in my soul that knew.

I didn't want it to be true, but the more I researched about it, the more I realized that my quirks had less to do with my upbringing and everything to do with my neurology. My family wanted it to be just the opposite. Part of them, like J , just wouldn't believe it until it was diagnosed. I showed him checklists, symptoms, articles, journals.....You name it.

My mother told me that I am an Indigo Child....turning in to a Crystal Adult. Wow, hold me back on that one....

So, let's go through this one together.....I am going to reference the MedScape nurses's site for the symptoms and I will digress back to the good ole teen years.....

"failure to develop appropriate relationships, lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment or interests, lack of emotional reciprocity"

Me: I read somewhere that 80% of AS marriages fail....Hmmmm, I've been married how many times.... Quote from J "I think you're so smart that you don't know how to love." Thanks, Honey, way to make a girl feel good:)
Oh and FYI-I don't do anything spontaneously, it scares me:)

"apparently inflexible adherence to nonfunctional routines or rituals"

Me: I was in the Army for over 4 years and this would have been a good thing, except I worked in a hospital. I couldn't do the ever changing schedule and being called in day and night. I was always being referred to as "concrete" and "inflexible" by my supervisors.

It's funny, there's so much more, but even as I read through it, in another link, I get caught up in it and it gets depressing and I have to just try and ignore it.

I remember that as a child I used to rock on my bed when I would cry. The reason that I stopped was because someone said something to me about "retards" doing that...I knew enough to know that that was negative, so I forced myself to not do it anymore.

Some of the behaviors that would have been huge, waving red flags went unnoticed. Maybe it wouldn't have helped at all...