So I was going to write about something, but then the dash on here has been updated or something and it’s slightly thrown me off… Does anyone else find this? Websites, or apps or just things, update and change and the differences seem huge and totally throw you for a few days?

Well I do. I feel like a warning on this would’ve been appreciated.

Anyway. I spy with my little eye, someone who appears to also be Aspergic….

Probably not something you might often think about, not something I often pick up on. But very occasionally I meet people, or see people on the telly and a little voice in my head thinks “hello” then I wonder if they are aware of things. Growing up in a household where my twin has obviously had certain issues it can occasionally seem obvious to me when someone else presents these symptoms. I don’t often find it so obvious with myself but with my brother and with certain people I’ve met in my life I’ll notice similarities and it gets me thinking.

For example, my parents enjoy watching Doc Martin (obviously I’m far too hipster to enjoy anything like that *snorts*) the title character appears to be quite socially withdrawn, finds it difficult to interact with others or connect with his wife and child and in many ways appears to have several of the aspects of aspergers syndrome. In many ways this can make him seem off-putting but yet he also manages to be quite endearing due to his uniqueness. He’s obviously someone who has achieved and continues to be well respected within the town that he resides.

Now obviously he’s not a real person, but if you take the time to do a swift google search you can find lists of people who have also had the disorder. It’s been speculated as to whether Alan Turing, the man who cracked the enigma code was aspie. Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton are also thought to have been on the spectrum.  Paralympian Jessica Jane Applegate is known to have aspergers, she’s also won gold and broke the world record for the 200m freestyle event in swimming. Britain’s Got Talent runner up Susan Boyle is aspergic and also a Grammy award winning singer. Heather Kuzmich from Americas Next Top Model is also a known aspie.

So from one search on google I can flag up these people, not all of whom I’ve heard of, not all of whom I’m particularly interested in apart from the fact they all have aspergers in common. So what I guess I’m saying is that at some point growing up I’ve had role models. Either people that I knew or knew of who I thought have done quite well and could emulate.

Growing up gay I think I must’ve googled or looked up to many different queer woman over my time. I’ve spent a while getting fixated on one person before moving off to another person. I would imagine how they’d managed to get over whatever hurdles they encountered and would wonder how on earth I would get over mine (coming out for me was quite a hard thing, but it happened and I’m alive so it’s all good). In some way this helped me, knowing that there were people out there who were similar to me and had gone through similar experiences and could give some sort of advice on things that I might encounter or whatever. LGBT representation in the media is getting better slowly and I’m certain that will have a positive effect on young people, in the years since I originally came out things have been noticeably better and I’m glad for it (although this might just be me getting more fabulous as I age, like a nice wine… who knows).

I’d like to believe that kids who grew up knowing they had aspergers had someone else they could look up to in a similar way and I’m not too certain that they do. Although I have found these people online I’m unsure as to if others would consider doing that or whether they would feel like there’s anyone that they’d be particularly connected to or something. That makes me quite sad, like, although obviously there aren’t an enormous amount of people effected by this proportionally within the population. Surely there are more people with the disorder than we think.

In suppose my point being here would be that I hope in the future there would be more support available for those with the disorder. For example, it has only come to my attention that I would be aspie in the last year due to a friend of mine who works with aspie students. However, I’m 23 and have gone through the schooling system with an aspergic twin brother. Surely at some point I should’ve been flagged up as a possible risk? I would assume that kids would get tested for autism at some point in school but they aren’t, I also only found out that I had dyslexia and dyspraxia at 18. I find that quite shocking that these learning impairments hadn’t been noticed. I’ve also found that although I realise as a student I have been entitled to extra time in exams and things but the emotional side of discovering unknown disabilities was never really discussed and i  was left feeling a bit broken apart after that with no sort of sense of who I really was after that, like I didn’t know myself properly nor what I was capable of.

So I dunno, I guess I just hope in the future there’d be more available for younger people so they know they’re not alone in this and they’re not just going to be left feeling like that. Because it isn’t nice and no one deserves that really.

Gosh how preachy….. I’ll have to not do that next time

Do you ever feel like you’re developmentally behind people? Like there’s some secret that other people know about that allows them to appear to function better than you most of the time? I do… I look around at all these people that appear to have things relatively well held together and wonder how? How on Earth is it that people can do an array of amazing things (that I could only dream of) and not manage to completely fuck it up (like I would).

I’m 23, right, so I know that I’m not really supposed to have everything together… but saying that I would hope that I felt like less of a mess. I don’t really know which direction I’m supposed to be going in at the moment and it’s really worrying me.

I finished my MSc course last week and I know that I have a 3 month intern ship at a local zoo that’s arranged until December, initially this was so that I could gain the experience I would’ve needed in order to become a zoo keeper. Only now, I’m not really sure that would be what I wanted to achieve. I’d applied for it before I commenced my Masters and now it feels a bit like this is going to be a time-keeping exercise to attempt to gain the experience that I would potentially need in the future.

I know it’s also easy to see what I’ve achieved. I have a Bachelors degree and now (if I haven’t tragically failed by giving in a thesis that is so horrifying it burns the retinas clean off my project manager), have completed a Masters course. That’s doing pretty well, I’ve also managed to hold down the same job of working in a busy Witherspoon’s for longer than a year. You know, I could’ve been sacked within seconds (I still don’t really understand why my kitchen manager thought the interview went well, I spent most of it trying to get her to laugh cos I was shitting myself).

But there’s still a part of me who feels left behind, both socially and within whatever definition my career’s supposed to fit in. I can speak to many of my friends and peers from my Uni class of 2015. Many of them have moved on to study an MSc such as myself, some of them went on to study PhD’s. Some of them have jobs in the field, for example Kefalonia (sorry to Jess for being the example),others are working within an ecology project in London. I have friends currently studying Veterinary medicine, others who have graduated this year from Veterinary medicine and are now in Australia for work experience. Some people left the field completely and have found their footing elsewhere. I’m proud of my friends for achieving so many things, it’s amazing that I know so many talented people.

However there’s no denying that I wish I knew what was next for me, that I could share in the knowledge that I had enough experience to gain a job in the field that I wish to be involved in. But I can’t really, which leaves me in the present moment feeling rather direction less.  I’ve also had quite a few people telling me I should try my hand at teaching….

My main fear with that would be going back into university yet again for an aim that I may be horrific at. I fear not having the patience for children and eventually screaming at one who was particularly “difficult” (read: a little shit), I wouldn’t want to lose my cool over something. Having said that I also fear being harassed by children, as some people know, I was outed in my final year of high school as gay and had a bit of a hard time after that. Although it’s been a long time since this happened I can’t really imagine working within a secondary school without being taunted by the young reprobates that occupy classrooms. Despite knowing that being bothered by a child is probably a silly thing to feel, my fear is certain wounds simply aren’t healed enough to put myself through that.

Although I won’t lie….. I’d probably be all right at teaching

So all of this really just leaves me confused, as I see people that I’ve known for a long time start what I imagine will be long and varied careers whilst I feel like I’m in need of starting my own but I’m floundering at where I even begin looking. Where I come from the majority of jobs in the area are for factory work, drivers or in the catering industry. The best option there is to stay put really.

I suppose I feel a bit behind in my love life also, recently I look around and many people that I know are coupled up, some with children, some in long-term relationships. Some are even getting married and moving to Canada (you know who you are). It makes me feel a bit behind in that respect also if I tell the truth. I mean gosh, update on life my brother’s bagged himself a girlfriend! It’s lovely but strange at the same time. I thought one of the main points in being a socially driven species was to be around people, hopefully of your own age, but a lot of the time I find myself alone and wondering what to do about it.

I could make excuses and suggest that the area that I live in is rural enough for it to be hard for me to construct reliable relationships and that close friendships would always be hard to come by. I could suggest all manner of reasons as to why I, despite knowing a fairly large amount of people both within my local area and beyond (thanks to uni) still manage to feel pretty lonely. But I think really a lot of it is on me. Either I’m not friendly enough, don’t really know who to reach out to enough or maybe I just didn’t manage to fly the nest at the right time (sorry for continuously returning, I’m just pretty much broke). The end result is pretty much; people seem to be able to create a circle of friends around them that they know they can talk to about things that trouble them… but I don’t really have that. I talk to Bernard about stuff that bothers me, but it’s unfair to ask one person to help you so I’m stuck feeling like I’m behind people socially as well as generally.

I know not much of this is really about aspergers, I think it’s just who I am as a person. But yeah… I dunno. I doubt I’m the only person in the world who feels like this but today things just seem pretty bleak if I’m honest.

So its been a while….

Usually I’d be apologising profusely hoping for an acknowledgement that I’m still an alright person from somebody. However today I’ve decided to accept the fact that I’ve needed the time to fall apart and wonder how I was going to put myself back together.

But yeah anyway, headspace?

If I’d been asked what mindfulness was two years ago I’d have been blifully unaware of its existence as I was busy listening to the constant whirring of the background chatter of my mind as it slowly and efficiency found new ways to tear itself apart. In many ways I don’t in any way believe that I would have been able to accept that occasionally sitting and allowing the voices to calm down is actually quite good for you.

Fast forward slightly to this time lastyear,  my grandad had just died and I was left dealing with a reality I didn’t know how to accept. A friend (anyone remember Bernard?) of mine had been telling me about Buddhism and the benefits of taking some time to meditate. She’d been to a festival up in the lake district that had been giving teachings and meditations, some of which were on death. It seemed a surprising coincidence. She suggested trying some of the practises out for myself, it might help me out? What did I have to lose?

I was still sceptical,  I mean it seemed so hippy and we’ll, I’m a scientist, what would people think?

I don’t know why I considered that, that’s a tad too invested a friend who’s going to give judgement on that, but hey, no one is more judgemental than yourself usually.

What does this have to do with aspergers? Admittedly not a huge amount if you think about initially, however if you really think about it you can see how meditation cn be really quite helpful (when you remember to commit to it). For a long time I’ve been plagued by obsessive negative  thoughts that run in circles. They vary from “you’re worthless” to “you’re stupid, special” and occasionally I can spend days were the main thought repeating over and over in my head is “things would be better for everyone if you were not here”. It’s very easy, I’m sure for someone who does not experience a barrage similar to that to suggest that you merely ” don’t think stuff like that”, however from experience that can seem entirely impossible especially when you’re in the midst of it.

You might question if that’s aspergers or depression? In many ways I don’t know, it can be shown that those with aspergers syndrome experience a higher incidence of depression than our neurotypical counterparts. We are also more likely to encounter obsessive routes of thinking. My brother, for example was very quiet when we were little but once he found his voice he would be asking questions non-stop throughout the day with little consideration to its suitability to the situation we were in. He was interested in space, star wars, tanks and history and would aborb all knowledge of these things as possible.

I on the  other hand, for whatever reason learnt to obsess over self criticism. I still do it, its hard to control. The past two weeks I’ve been bad for it. Hence the radio silence.

Which brings us back to headspace, or mindfulness, or whatever else you would like to consider it.

I’ve recently started the process of moving back home from Belfast (I’ve not managed to change my Facebook location, in the desperate need to cling to what little independence I have left…. It’s only a matter of time, we know how accurate Facebook is mine also suggests I’m married to one of my best friends). Whilst in Belfast I came across the manjushri centre, in that Bernard heavily suggested I go, but yeah… I’m the one that physically found it. After awkwardly popping my head round the corner to look up the stairs I come face to face with the nun that runs that centre, Chitta. Who explained they were currently on a weekend retreat, I then explained I had no idea what one of them is (I still don’t, sorry guys) but decided I’d go back when meditation classes were on to see how they went.

Which lead to me sat in an unfamiliar hall like space in the centre with Tammy, one of my Uni friends stifling giggles as we suggested “finding nirvana”. Although it seemed silly at the time slowly I kind of got the hang of it and started to get the feeling that maybe, just maybe I could stick at it.

Finally, we get to now. I recently got asked by Bernard if I fancied joining her for a couple of days at the same festival she went to last year (only, you know, this year) which I agreed to. For some reason I hadn’t expected so many people to be there, despite my presence being there during the quieter week. I’d (obviously) never been in a Buddhist temple before, I kind of wish I could sit in it alone for ten minutes or so. There’s a lot if things to look at, far more colourful than churches. But because of that you can’t take all the little things in when you want to see them. That’s how I felt. Sitting and (attempting) meditating with so many people you kind of realise how no one is really truly silent so whatever you manage is alright, even if you don’t quite get it because no one really does.

I suppose what this potentially tedious story has been about is the fact that I might have found something that kind of helps, if you’re spending that time following your breathing or simply trying not to be loud then you aren’t focussing on all of the flaws you think you have. For me that’s alright.

I don’t think I’ll be saying much else on this unless I get particularly overexcited, but yeah there’s a free ten day headspace website. Google it, it took me a while to consider it but it can help if you let it.

I’ve had to do this on a tablet as my computers unwell and getting fixed (which is awful timing with my thesis) so I’ll apologise as no doubt there’s going to be spelling mistakes I’ve missed here.

Take care xx