Sunday 10 July 2011

FractalCurves' Story

This is FractalCurves' Story from her blog: http://fractalcurves.livejournal.com/27475.html She gave me permission to post her story here. It's worth reading as it's informative and really truthful. Thank you, FractalCurves!

"My Journey

For 18 years of my life, I was a quiet, shy, and withdrawn person. I did not know myself. I did not know what I wanted. I went through life blindly. I followed the rules and was afraid to make a move outside of these rules. Something was always missing and I did not know what it was. One thing I knew was that I wanted to succeed, but something in my mind told me that the form of success I wanted was unreachable. My own passions conflicted with my vision of success, and I had no clue how to bring the two together. Most of my interests have revolved around languages – Ukranian, French, Chinese. However, after trying to fit in socially and failing countless times, I have began to research nerd/geek culture and tried to take on their interests, which are commonly recognized as math, sciences and computers. Consequently, I tried to tear myself apart from my language interests and concentrate on the stereotypically nerdy interests. I desperately wanted to find an identity; also, I found myself attracted to these nerdy interests due to their rule-bound nature. But, for some reason, I happen to be gifted at more creative facets; writing and, to a lesser extent, visual art and music have always been my fortes. Since my parents have drilled into me that going into these creative professions will not bring me success and I will just end up being a starving artist, I have tried to move myself away from these things as much as possible. I still have, however, continued to write as much as I could, because writing more would help me improve my quality of writing, which would help me do well in school. Thus, writing is my only talent that I saw as being beneficial for me in the future.

I always took on people’s identities. I wanted to become different people because I never knew who I really was. I’ve constantly felt the need to merge into someone else’s identity around other people because I wanted to gauge people’s reactions to me through my knowledge of how other people have reacted to people who had specific characteristics. Since I could not properly pick up how people reacted to each other in real life, I could only learn about them by reading books about teenagers. Since books contained only very stereotypical portrayals of people, I wanted to become a stereotype myself to make people’s reactions to me more predictable. Now, I realize that I was nothing like the girls I’ve read about from these books, no matter how hard I’ve tried to dress and behave in that specific manner. I wish I knew about myself from the start so that I could have managed my life much better, without having other people who barely knew me direct my life. Including my parents… Who still barely know me.

Perhaps I could have ended up being a talented musician had I gone into music, or a talented visual artist had I gone into art. My writing talent was not that great in the beginning. Right now, my music and visual art talents have faded. After having been offered a bite of mainstream education in these two domains, I have grown to despise them. I have not painted or played piano for years, but I still cannot live without writing. I cannot express myself verbally to even a nearly equal extent as I can express myself in writing.

I still wonder why I have ever tried to fit in. Perhaps I just forgot how wonderful the world of books and imagination can be. Perhaps it is the result of demands of teamwork and cooperation that schooling put on me. I wanted to have more control over what was going on around me. When I saw other kids telling more to each other than they ever have to me, I wanted to change myself and be more like them so that I could be more in tune with my surroundings. It never worked, in addition to the rowdiness of social situations exhausting me to the extent where I just wanted to hide. So I did, skipping a month of my grade 8 school year. I have then read How to Make Friends and Influence People, a book by several of the rules of which I still abide today. Right after having read the book, I have started applying some of its rules way too excessively. For example, the book says that people like it when you mimic them in something. I then actually openly told one girl in my Grade 10 science class in my yearbook comment for her that she has amazing social skills and I would like to be like her. She just laughed at it, and I felt horrible. Of course, I was hoping that she could accept me into her social circle (she was very popular) but she never did. Much later, when I have finally have gathered the courage to take the fact that I have Asperger’s seriously, I decided to join a social skills group at a local autism organization. That was it… I was going to finally learn how to be able to fit in and to be social. However, after completing it, I have realized that the social world is much more complex than I’ve ever taken it to be.

Especially during the past year, my interest in self-advocacy and autism has developed to the point where it has become my way of existing. When I am torn away from it, even for a short while, I begin to feel like I am suffocating. My speaking ability begins to falter and I can no longer remember the meanings of things, as well as losing other abilites I possess which were not natural for me to begin with. I may come across as someone very different compared to 2 years ago, 1 year ago, or even several months ago. Perhaps that is due to me having developed more fluent speech with practice. I don’t try to fit in anymore, though, in the least, because everyone around me knows that I have ASD and expects me to act like me, not like a fake person. Despite this, I still struggle with self-identity. I am changeable, like any other human being; my moods change, the structure of my life changes, my interests may slightly change over time. While that is natural, it makes it difficult for me to try to categorize some of my characteristics in order to make sense of them. I have had a fleeting interest in the Myers-Briggs type indicator less than two years ago, which has consequently led me to question whether I am an introvert or an extrovert. I have since then discovered an intricate interconnection between autism and introversion, which made me question the validity of applying the Myers-Briggs to people on the spectrum in general.

My life is probably the biggest paradox. On one hand, I am perhaps one of the least socially skilled people you would ever meet. Put me with a group of average people and I will most likely shut down, not being able to utter a single word. With some people, though, I have the ability to become extremely talkative. If only I knew how to take that talkativeness and employ it with the groups of people around whom I shut down, I would be much happier. But I still haven’t figured out what has sparked some of the best conversations I have ever had. Somehow, they just happen and when they do, I get lost in them without any awareness of the passage of time. I savour these moments just as much as I savour quality time spent alone writing or reading. That is when people call me very social and very articulate. In these situations, I transform, becoming a different person who is almost… normal. On other words, people don’t recognize anything overly strange about me. That’s what I mean by normal.

Most of the time, though, I am a wreck. I aspire to be perfect, to make the needs of every situation met, to express myself as well as I feasibly can. All my meltdowns, all my struggles, all my mistakes are to be kept to myself as much as possible. Because, most of the time, there is only one right way, while there are hundreds of wrong ways. This means that I can predict the outcome of a situation that is successful with much greater certainty than a situation that is unsuccessful. The most clear example of that which I can think of right now is schooling and career.

As a high school student, you:
1)      Can either work hard and get very high grades in school
2)      Can do average in school
3)      Can fail and drop out of school

What happens next? If:
1)
-           You will be able to get into any/almost any university you can apply to
-           You may get a paid scholarship for a university
-           You may get awards for one or more subjects
-           If something happens to you and you miss an assignment, you will not fail a course and your mark in that course will at least remain decent
-           You can at least guarantee that the teachers will have a better disposition toward you because they know that you are dedicated to your work
Losses: none

2)        
-           You may be accepted to some universities
-           You may have to go to college instead
-           You may fail a course if something happens to you and you miss an assignment
-           The teachers may treat you okay, but they may also treat you badly for whatever reason (eg. they are not satisfied because you often cannot process what is being said in class)
-           You may get some scholarship
Losses: Not getting into the university you have dreamed of yourself getting into, possibly going to college and getting a lower-tier job

3)
-           You may be accepted into a college
-           You may find a job
-           You may try finding self-employment, but that may not work out either in providing you with sufficient income
-           You may have to live with your parents/relatives for the rest of your life and you don’t know when your parents/relatives might pass away; lack of independence creates a cloud of uncertainty hanging over your life

Losses: Anything, including losing your life if you end up starving on the streets.

As you can see, there is MUCH more uncertainty that comes with NOT being successful than there is with being successful. That is why I have always taken my education seriously.

I might continue this later… Will stop for now.


I have written this just to provide you with more insight into who I am. Writing things like this also helps me clarify my own thoughts. I hope this might help someone else who is having difficulty figuring themselves out. From my experience, most people are clueless about what they want, not understanding why they are doing certain things that bounce back to them and hurt them in the long run."

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