ABOUT ME

Autism and Asperger Syndrome

Part of my makeup that's directly connected to my interest in miniature painting: I'm not quite right in the head. Literally.

A few years ago, after a lifetime of shy, compulsive, withdrawn, morbid, creative, loner, overachiever, space cadet, I was finally diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. Asperger's is a neurological condition which falls within the autism disorder spectrum. Some doctors classify it as 'high-functioning autism.' Girls tend to go undiagnosed because they have better language skills and learn to blend in more easily than autistic boys. If you've ever seen me go blank in the middle of a class, or twitch and make odd noises to myself, or put in earplugs during dinner...well, now you know why.

How does this translate in real life?

I have weird problems with sensory and spatial perception. Noises that other people can't hear give me headaches or make me nauseous. I run into walls, knock things over, and couldn't dance or hit a baseball to save my life. Jazz music agitates me. Too many conversations in one room, if I'm unable to tune it out, will send me into an anxiety attack, crying or hyperventilating. The chronic pain that has plagued me since I was fifteen, I suspect, is not an independent disorder, but connected to this whole neurological traffic jam.

I notice details and patterns in odd ways. As a kid I couldn't read a clock. Nobody pointed out to me the simple counting-minutes principle, and so until fourth grade (as I now realize) I told minutes as a memorized pattern, much in the same way an illiterate person will recognize words. On the other hand, it wasn't until I was out of college that I comprehended: not everyone has to read every bit of print that falls within her field of vision. People can actually just not register words. This was a shock. That Discovery Channel show, 'How Things Are Made'? Best show ever. I easily get derailed speculating what went into making some object that catches my gaze.

Social interaction is a conscious process, and a pleasant evening with friends can exhaust me just as much as a meeting with a hostile acquaintance. As long as I can remember, I've had to remind myself to look people in the eye while speaking...and I still have conversations with a point over someone's left shoulder. I have to prepare what to say in situations ranging from party small talk to buying new shoes. When someone catches me with questions or comments I wasn't expecting, I freeze up.

Others are hard to read, and I give off abnormal cues myself. (In a very real way, every culture is a foreign culture to me.) I don't realize someone was hitting on me until a third party points it out, and the person I'm speaking with may see me as defensive or snobbish when I thought I was friendly and polite. It's hardest for me to interact with 'normal' women. I may adore corsets and petticoats (provided they're not pink or sparkly), but my brain processes things in a more typically masculine fashion. That, and my interest in subjects usually considered macabre or icky by girls, means that most of my activities are male-dominated.

Miniature painting allows me to channel usefully much of the hypercritical attention to detail. It's a help, not a hindrance. Getting absorbed in a project to the exclusion of all normal life doesn't hurt anything. And since my social and professional circles are made up of geeks--bright and creative people, many of whom have their own oddities and disorders--I don't feel abnormal, or even stand out all that much. Perhaps this is why I've worked at mini painting longer and more successfully than any other single pursuit in my life.