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Is it? How do you know that? It’s very presumptuous of you. I could be having the worst time ever, and usually am.

“Good Morning” has to be the most pointless piece of small talk going. The more cheerfully said, the more irritating it is. I don’t get why Neurotypicals feel the need to speak just for the sake of speaking. One person says “Good Morning” and the recipient repeats “Good Morning”. What purpose does that serve?

It’s even worse when a stranger says it to you as you pass them.

Clearly people say it just because they feel obligated to say it, that it’s the polite thing to do. I just like to keep myself to myself, and attract no attention, yet here people are stressing me out by making me engage in conversation, if that’s what you can call two words.

Sometimes they add “How are you?” to the end of the “Good Morning”. I know, and you know, that they don’t actually want to know how you are, so again, why feign interest?

If I’m feeling particularly grouchy, I’ll sometimes stop and start a conversation with the greetee if they ask how I am, and tell them of all my problems. That tends to stop them from ever saying it to me again.

I once worked with a girl who every morning would bounce into the office full of life at 8am. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone more happy clappy than Gemma. She would almost sing “Good Morning” before immediately launching into 101 questions. “Did you have a good weekend?”, “What did you do last night”, “Did you see such and such on the TV?”.

God she did my head in. Eventually I had to tell her that I didn’t do conversation until 9am just to stop the endless onslaught. I’ve no idea how she ended up being a good friend, when I took that attitude with her, but she did.

The last relationship I was in was a long distance one, so we relied on messaging and phone calls. She always expected the first message of the day to be “Good Morning” and if it wasn’t would grumble. So most days I remembered to type it out, but I really didn’t see the point. I’d rather have launched straight into conversation. It’s such a pointless filler.

Yes I know that all of the above makes me appear to be rude, but honestly, it really stresses me out when people engage me in this pleasantry. I don’t know why, but it just does. The stress starts when I’m walking towards someone, knowing that they are likely to say it. So I will sometimes divert my path, or put my phone to my ear as though on a call, just to avoid a simple “Good morning”.

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Since being diagnosed I have been able to look back on my life and recognise that I have had meltdowns throughout, but they were minor in comparison to one specific episode, which to me was my first “proper” meltdown. It was certainly the most violent, and was a turning point in my life.

I was 40 when I had my first meltdown, although I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time, as I’d yet to be diagnosed as being on the spectrum.

It took place on New Year’s Eve 2013.

I remember it very vividly.

My partner at the time, Maria, ran her own business and as we lay in bed that morning she reminded me that I had promised to go into her office and put her servers onto an Uninterruptible Power Supply, as there had been issues with the power to the building.

I really didn’t want to do it, as it was New Year’s Eve and I didn’t want to be doing any kind of work, so there was tension as we spoke. She pointed out that she’d been asking me to do it all week, and that the blackouts were causing work to be lost.

When she mentioned blackouts I argued back that she’d never mentioned blackouts to me. She was adamant that she had. I pointed out that she had told me that the power kept dipping, which is a brownout not a blackout, but she insisted that the two were the same thing.

Now at this point the reader familiar with Asperger’s will probably recognise what was going on in my head, the issue of getting hung up on the very precise definition and usage of words.

So an argument ensued, and voices got louder and louder on both sides, with me repeatedly insisting that a brownout was not the same as a blackout (it is not!) and she was insisting that I was just being awkward on purpose and knew exactly what she meant (I didn’t!).

The next thing I remember is that I’d jumped out of bed and stood there repeatedly slapping my forehead hard. At this point we were in a full blown argument, and she said a few more hurtful things, probably to do with the fact that I was now out of control.

I remember feeling so frustrated that I was being blamed for her not knowing the difference between a blackout and a brownout, and that it had lead to an argument.

The next thing that I remember was falling to the floor and repeatedly banging my head between the wall and the wooden bed-frame. There is about 18 inches between the two, and I was ping-ponging my head very hard between them. I did this with such force that it split the bed-frame.

Whilst I was doing this I was also screaming, shouting and crying. Eventually the head banging stopped and sobbing ensued. I just lay there motionless for quite a while. I’ve no idea for how long, I guess about 15 minutes.

My behaviour stopped the argument dead, but Maria had no compassion. She thought that I was having a childish temper tantrum and had no sympathy. I can’t remember what she said, but it would have been angry and cutting.

It made it worse that the commotion had attracted the attention of our 12 year old daughter who witnessed the entire episode.

They left the house, and went to the cinema without me, which upset me as it was our NYE tradition. When she got back she told me that the relationship was over, that I had to move out, but she’d give me a few weeks to find somewhere to live.

What had happened scared them both, and she didn’t want our daughter to be in an environment where I would do something like that. Which is understandable.

It scared me too. I had no idea what had just happened to me. I had no control. I didn’t want to be banging my head into the wall, but I couldn’t stop it. And when I eventually did stop, I had no energy; I felt exhausted.

So I had to figure out what had just happened to me. Through some skilful Googling I came across autism and Asperger’s. As someone had joked a few months earlier that I might be autistic I focused on this. The more I read about Asperger’s the more I identified with what I was reading. It kind of made sense of a lot of my life.

So I took one of the online AQ tests and scored a high 42.

I did read around other conditions too, but Asperger’s was the only condition that matched. I made an appointment with my doctor and that was the start of my journey into unravelling the first 40 years of my life.

Following on from that first meltdown, I’ve only had 2 more “major” episodes, and a few minor, but I’ll write about those some other time.

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Today I arranged with my 17 year old daughter, who doesn’t live with me, to pick her up at 2pm and we’d go walk the dogs for an hour at a local nature reserve.

Just as I was getting into the car at 3 minutes to 2 (she doesn’t live far away) she called and asked if I could drop her off at a friends as she’d been invited out to lunch.

Not one mention of our earlier arrangement.

It really bugs me when people do this. Why make arrangements and then change them last minute? It’s as though my feelings don’t matter. Daughter is very good at this. But I guess hanging out with her mates is more preferable than hanging out with her 46 year old dad. I get that, and don’t mind.

It’s just the last minute change of plans that gets to me.

To make things worse she then called her mum from the car and told her that I would be picking her up later. This was before even asking me. A big assumption was made there that I’d be able to do that with no consideration to the fact that I might have plans.

I’d imagine that this would bug most people, but for me it leads to the same reaction each and every time. I end up being moody, and I have a go at the other person, in a nasty way, but then a minute later I’m nice as pie and agree to their change in plan.

I don’t mean to do this, and I think that those close to me have got use to this reaction now, but I really can’t help it. It’s as though my body language and volume of voice are on autopilot, reacting seconds before my brain has time to process the situation.

For years it caused a great many arguments with Maria. She’d call and ask if I fancied the 3 of us going out for dinner that evening, and I’d have a go at her because I’d already prepared a meal the night before and now it was going to waste. A few minutes later I’d call back and say it was a great idea, and we could have the meal I’d made the following night.

I don’t know why I do it, I just do.

Got to go pick daughter up now!

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I work for one of the world’s largest online technology companies as a Web Application Developer.

When I was researching Aspergers I came across this logo online and decided to use it as my avatar on the company’s internal bug tracking system.

A few months later my manager took me to one side and asked me to stop using it as someone within the company had complained that it was offensive.

As I was playing with their ball I complied and chose a different avatar.

However, the company dress policy doesn’t prevent staff from wearing pin badges, so I purchased the image as a badge and have been wearing it to work for the past 4 years just to stick two fingers up to whom ever it was that made the complaint.

You can buy one here https://www.zazzle.co.uk/asperger_king_button-145642560160442614

I’m not affiliated with Zazzle in any way. Just a happy customer.

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It’s almost 5 years since was diagnosed with Asperger’s, aged 41. Since then I’ve been on one hell of a roller-coaster of a ride, and during that time I’ve discovered that all the weird difficult people in my life are in fact normal, and that I’m the weird difficult one. It’s certainly been one hell of a journey, as annoying people would say.

One thing that I’ve discovered about myself is that I really can’t communicate in real time. That’s where the majority of my problems stem from.

What I have learned is that I am OK at expressing myself in writing. That’s great, but you can’t go through your life asking people to wait whilst you write a letter to them, when you’re stood face to face with them.

But that did help me when I was sent to live with my uncle for a year, when my partner of the time, Maria, could no longer cope with me. And again when she moved back to her mum’s for a couple of weeks.

I was able to write down how I felt in letters to her. I’d write, read, and re-write and never gave her most of them. Eventually I’d come up with something that truly reflected what I wanted to say and give the letter to her. From that she was able to understand me, and things were resolved.

But relationships require real-time communication, and eventually ours broke down for the third and final time in 2018.

I wasn’t looking to meet someone following our separation, but someone found me pretty much straight away. But this only lasted for 6 months, and came to an end 6 weeks ago when I had a full on autistic meltdown.

So that’s autism 2 – relationships 0.

So I’ve decided to do what I’ve been meaning to do since getting my diagnosis, and I’ve started a blog.

The primary purpose of the blog is for me to try to understand myself. As I said, I learn a great deal from writing letters when things go wrong, so hopefully this will be just as therapeutic to me, now that I’ve no one to write letters to.

I’ll also post about normal day to day stuff that probably has little or nothing to do with my autism. I’m going to be frank and honest, with no topic off limits, so for that reason some names may be changed to protect the innocent.

Whether or not any of what I post will be of interest to anyone I know not. But over the past few years I’ve been into schools to give talks about autism to parents and teachers, and also to people in the youth organisation that I’m actively involved in, and people are always entertained. So hopefully some of what I write will be of interest.