Monday, November 12, 2007
Monday, Nov. 12 2007
Asperger’s Syndrome and food. Okay, we all know what food is. But Asperger’s? Hmmmmm.
![If you want to know the diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s -- here is a good LINK. Anyhow, someone I once told said they were sorry for my “disease.” It’s not a disease. It’s a creative jumble of the brain and sensory organs. It can’t be “cured.” It can be “managed” with certain dietary restrictions. And a lot of it can be “masked” as the person grows older because much of it is simply a delayed-learning process of sensory cues. As a toddler -- my symptoms were acute: lining up toys for hours, banging my head against a couch or wall repeatedly, running into large objects and going immediately to bed (even if it was 10 in the morning) when a
baby-sitter would come over, or a stranger. As a kindergarten
child in California, I was placed in a combo class which
included retarded and disabled children. I’ll always
remember staring at them across the room at their table
and wondering why I wasn’t
at their table. Those were the kids I could relate to and felt
comfortable with. I knew I belonged with them.
As a first grader, my teacher Miss Havaland, put a film on
for the class. She turned off the lights. My head and stomach
became immediately sick and I felt like I would pass out. She had
me go lay down. To this day, cinemas or watching TV or movies with
other people gives me a stomachache and a headache. If you have AS,
you may know what I’m talking about. I also loved the blue sky as a child.
Still do. One of my earliest memories is going on a field trip as a 4-year-old
to the firestation and looking up and seeing the blue, California sky.
As a teen, I could not make eye contact until I was
in college. I obsessed with baseball. I memorized (daily)
the batting averages for my obsessed-upon team as well
as ERA’s. Line-ups. Placements of teams in the American
League. My father had season tickets for our hometown
major league team and so my favorite thing in the world
would be to get there two to three hours early and meditate
on batting practice and then watch the game (ALONE - otherwise,
it wasn’t as fun) and keep mental track of balls, strikes, foul balls,
you name it. Of course I rarely got to go ALONE but I learned how to
eventually block other people out of my peripheral. My entire mind
revolved around this obsession. I scrap-booked it. I became it. I couldn’t
talk to people easily either at school or church, outside of my interest in
baseball --- which most were not interested in so I either wouldn’t talk at all
or do another very common A.S. trait --- say something logically following or preceding the conversation on the third or fourth level but something that most people would not see the connection to it unless it was explained to them. And so they just thought I would blurt out unmeaningful stuff here or there and so I got the reputation of being “spacey” and an “air-head” which always made me laugh inside because I assumed that I could beat most of the people who called me “spacey” in an I.Q. test or any other ‘study-and-learn’ test you would give to us. But such is life for an A.S. person. I was placed in the high-I.Q. class in school with around 8 others whom I felt pretty comfortable around. We were a sight, for sure. But none of us minded so much. I was the odd-one in the group, though, because I was a cheerleader whilst most others were known as geeks/nerds. I was jealous of them because they were labeled more correctly than I was. For me, it was always a constant tension because I had the looks and athleticism of a cheerleader but that is where the similarities stopped. However, in clique-world, USA, the only social events or lunch-table circles I would get invited to were the cheerleadery-type-ones. I always wished the geeks/nerds would ask me to play chess or something else instead. But I was too young and immature to go over and ask them myself.
I would enter piano lessons, sit down and not say a word nor look at my teacher. She would ask me questions and I would stare straight ahead. She would tell my mom that she thought I didn’t like her but it wasn’t true. I liked her very much. I just didn’t know how to do the one-on-one thing yet. After work (I worked at a local amusement park for a summer) I would go and ride the two spinning rides in the Park over and over and over again. I truly believed there was no greater happiness than when I was spinning on those two rides.
In high school, I rarely attended social events. I couldn’t understand them. But since I was on the dance squad and cheerleading squad (A.S. people can often manipulate repetitive patterns such as dance easily) --- I would get invited. I remember one time I decided to go to McDonalds at night with a group. My heart raced a million miles per hour four hours AFTER the event. It was too much to process, to understand, to enjoy. So I didn’t do that again. It wasn’t my idea of fun.
Until I learned about Asperger’s Syndrome around 15 years ago, I would get really depressed about my differences. I would cry and tell Brian that I didn’t understand what was wrong with me. I always managed to say the wrong thing and why-oh-why did people think I was “spacey?” Brian knew me for who I was and for the longest time, he has been my only real relationship. Holidays are especially the hardest because that is the time when so many social activities go on and they would exhaust me in trying to understand why, how. To this day, I still hate holidays. I’m having a birthday on Friday and Brian is going out of town and I probably won’t celebrate it. But that’s how I prefer it. There is also so much FOOD involved with holidays and people with A.S. usually find food offensive. I do. It has too many textures. Too many flavors. For the past 2 years, it has gotten to such a level that I get a stomachache just sitting through dinner each night. Brian and I talked last night and decided that one way to combat this might be that I stick with my diet of rice, eggs, avocados, beans, chicken, plain tuna and onions --- and eat it alone --- and then my evenings won’t be so shot because I usually have to spend an hour or so recouping from “dinner.”
I’ve gone on a lot today. But that is also a very common A.S. trait. I’ve also posted photos of myself in the shirt my parents bought me for my birthday from the States (Steve Troxel brought it over last week - thanks, Steve!) but it’s also a very common A.S. trait to be self-absorbed (oh, gee.) Which is one reason why I think Africa is so good for me because it forces me to focus on other people and I know that’s what God wants us to do with our lives so I think He purposefully put me here knowing that I needed an added urge to focus on others and in Africa --- you really can’t help but focusing on others . . . there is so much neediness around you. Being in Africa, though, isn’t a common end-result of life for Aspies. Most end up as professors, specialists in medicine, computer technicians or actors (only around 10% of Aspies are girls and I didn’t get the computer or blood-science obsession . . . so if I had my way, I would have ended up as an actor.) But have Your own way, Lord . . . la, la, dee, dah. Anyhow, it does make a bit of sense for me to be here because I have an inner drive to defend and/or see God rescue the disadvantaged ---- like those with HIV/AIDS or the poor or anyone who is misunderstood and stereotyped [i.e. “Africans.] I guess because I understand them. I understand that they are real people that the world just doesn’t “get” and that the world “labels” as whatever they want to in order for the world to feel okay and move on rather than taking the time and effort to understand them. And so the world ignores them. They become invisible.
They die by the millions while the world eats out at the Olive Garden.
So in that sense - yes, it makes sense for me to be here.
I’m here, for now. No more closets. Maybe I’ll post more on Asperger’s later . . . .](40877C74-54BC-4AD0-B734-193EE2DB6468_files/shapeimage_5.png)
