Diary of a Middle-Aged Aspergian

Category: Uncategorized

Supersaturation

Living with Asperger’s Syndrome is often like that high school chemistry experiment where you create a super-saturated solution by heating water and dissolving in more salt than you could at room temperature. When the mixture cools, the salt miraculously remains in solution but if you add even the smallest amount of salt to the mixture once cooled, all of the salt drops out of suspension. When you’re on the Autism Spectrum and barely holding things together, having someone randomly throw something extra at you can be all it takes for everything to fall apart.

It’s taken me years to understand this. I’ve often wondered why major things can roll off me while the smallest thing can make me collapse. Recently I’ve developed a hypothesis that it’s about sensory input. Each event that happens, each question that’s posed to me, each task that I’m asked to complete, every communication that I have to respond to, adds to the daily load I’m constantly juggling. It’s like playing a game of human Whack-a-Mole, except in this case the moles sometimes jump out of their holes and run around the arcade. The overhead of processing all these things can be truly overwhelming on the best of days (see my previous posts about why I’m often ready for bed by 9:00 pm.)

So adding that extra pinch of salt to the supersaturated mixture causes everything to fall out of solution… I drop all my spoons. Curiously, it’s often not something significant that does it–more likely, it’s something small and otherwise innocuous. Perhaps it’s because those are the things I look at and think, “I’m so overloaded, and now I have to answer this of all things???” And then it goes downhill quickly from there. What appears to be anger (hey, it’s Asperger’s, everything appears to be anger) is actually a strong sense of defeat, of being put upon when already running around the stage spinning plates on sticks (my other favorite analogy for this.)

Right now I’d love to offer up some nugget of wisdom, some brilliant solution to share with others. But I have none. Because I’ve had too many stimuli thrown at me in the past few days, and now all the salt is crystalizing and settling to the bottom of the flask. So that’s where I’m at. Good night and good luck.

Sharing an intimate moment

After a long, stressful day Erica and I held each other for a moment this evening before going to sleep. She turned her head slightly and her hair brushed against my face. I tried not to react to the simultaneous itching, tickling, and burning in my nose and cheeks, but she could feel my body tense as my spine shivered. After a moment I couldn’t help but pull away and rub my face vigorously to erase the sensory overload.

“Baby, I’m so sorry,” she said.

I responded, “It’s not you at all love, it just tells me how tired I am.” After a difficult day, there’s nothing better than holding–and being held by–the person you love. How I wish it was easier to actually do that. Such can be life with Asperger’s.

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