I was browsing the archives of bearing blog the other day, and I found a post that I cannot for the life of me recall how to find again (she’s been writing a long time!), or I would link to the actual post itself. However, I cannot. In it, she writes about how she is pretty sure that she has Asperger’s syndrome or something on the autism spectrum disorder; she also links to one of those online assessment tools that can give you a numeric estimate of your “Asperger’s quotient”. (Of course, this is no substitute for an actual diagnosis, but can probably be a decent indication of whether more investigation is needed.)
At any rate, she discusses how having this “label” to apply to herself is a bit of a relief to her, inasmuch as it helps her in her interactions with other people. She gives an example of a good friend asking her to watch her children on short notice, and how her instinct is to say no because she holds rigidly to her previously decided-upon schedule (being upset at the schedule being messed with is apparently one of the hallmarks of such a “disorder”). In the end, she works through her reasons for having the instinct to say no to her friend, and decides they are not valid, and says yes. (See, this is why I wish I could find the actual post and link, I am probably getting something wrong.) ANYWAY, long story short (too late), she is grateful that she can ascribe some of her social awkwardness to something organic and inherent, but that she can work on through awareness.
It has been suggested to me by a well-meaning individual that I too have some variant of Asperger’s syndrome. I am shy, I don’t always especially enjoy social situations, and I do prefer to know what’s going to happen rather than being wildly spontaneous. However, I have spent a great deal of time looking into autism spectrum disorders, curious whether I do in fact fall under that umbrella.
I don’t. I have brought this up with therapists, who have laughed and said, “Heh heh heh, NOPE.” I’ve also taken every online assessment tool I can find and I come up stone-cold average in all but one of them (and that one had questions almost entirely about liking to spend time alone, which I do, because I am an INTROVERT). Yes, I do have some of the markers, but with the exception of the introversion, only mildly and some I don’t have AT ALL (like a propensity for ordering things — I have the opposite of that).
So I have to come to the inescapable conclusion: I am just selfish. I don’t like my schedule messed with because it is MY SCHEDULE, not because of some unusual wiring in my brain. I like to be by myself because I am an introvert and alone time recharges me. BUT I do like time with friends and sometimes I love parties, even!
This is somewhat sobering, I suppose; I think that the well-meaning individual who suggested this diagnosis for me was perhaps being a little more charitable than I deserve. I need to work on being a nicer person, not to work around something that makes me a little different. (Well, there are a lot of things that make me a little different, but not this particular thing.) Well, life is a practice (kind of like yoga! everything comes back to yoga these days), and I will never attain the full expression of perfect selflessness in my time, but I can keep making incremental progress. (One millimeter is a huge achievement!) So that is what I will try to do.
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p.s. I don’t have strep. I have some sort of variation of a canker sore, and I have all sorts of topical rinses to apply to it. It should get better in five to seven days; if not, it needs to be cultured (for what, I am not sure, hope I won’t find out).
