Organising my chaos...

My fish died and last night, I cried.

This is not an excerpt from one of Dr Seuss' great tales but rather, a part of my life which has spilt out onto this blog for the first time since the end of my GCSEs. It was not so much the concept of death or the end of Stripey's life which caused my emotions to pour out of my eyes (he had been swimming sideways in a darkened tank in the months prior to it and he didn't deserve to live in pain). For me it was the end of continuity, the end of a constant in my life and a reminder of how I've clung so desperately onto what I am not anymore. I'm going to discuss my autism in a way I haven't done before. Not because I feel pressured or because I want to be a case study, statistic or be evoking emotion from both of my readers. I'm doing it because I don't want to live closeted by how I feel and I want there to be a greater understanding of how I work and operate and why I can be so contrasting behaviourally to many others.

As journalistic structures go, this article is likely to be mismanaged - each paragraph cutting into one another without letting my point and argument develop through this piece. For once, I'm okay with that, because this article will not have a defining opinion or point as any other would. Since I'm not discussing a topic, but rather myself I don't particularly need you to opine or judge me. However, I want you to maybe better understand where I come from and why I am who I am.

Let's go...

Happiness wise, I think I peaked when I was about 6 years old. What I mean by that is that it was a time when I was content with my daily structure and understanding of the world. Every day, I would go to my infant school, a place I was familiar and comfortable with. Every day before and after school, I would be in wraparound until 5:30pm when my mum would come and take me home. School and education has never been an issue for me in that I've had a good understanding of what has been required of me in most lessons and I am usually able to meet the standards and expectations of my teachers. Then, every other weekend, I would go to my dad's where we would play games and talk about our world's since we had no television to do that for us and no fruit-based phones to take up our brain power.

I didn't learn of my Asperger's until I was 10. I remember the exact moment, I was watching a Sky Sports News report on Michael Laudrup's Swansea City press conference ahead of a match on the weekend before my mum came in, sat down, told me who I was, what that meant, reminded me of her presence for me, and then left me in the living room with my pink milk and a Dane's murmuring tones. In recent years my knowledge has slowly grown of Asperger's and looking back now, I understand how I became attached to the status quo.

A key feature of Asperger's is the willingness to do repetitive activities, I am a creature of habit to this day and I despise change of any sort. Things which I identify with my 6 year old self tend to be items or concepts I cling on to, compared to say distant family members. They are things which as a child I became familiar with and assumed would be the same forever. Examples include the Chris Moyles breakfast show, my dad being unmarried, the house not being renovated or redecorated at any point, people like Stephen Hawking and David Attenborough forever staying alive as national icons and James Alexander Gordon reading the classified football results. And Stripey living with me throughout my childhood at least. Having had him for over 10 years, he has become part of my furniture, except he has never needed upholstering or replacing or even removed from the corner of my bedroom. Tanks change, yet he was omnipresent. The list of things above aren't exclusive however they give an inclination of what I can become attached to through tradition and precedent.

Everyday I was at nursery, I always did the same 9 piece wooden Fireman Sam jigsaw in the afternoon. I remember my mum asking me once why I didn't do something else and my answer was  that it was what I did in the afternoon. Similarly, in the kids club at my junior school, I always sat in the same seat on the far side of the dinner table next to the radiator for our afternoon snack. Everyday at secondary school, I always ate Pasta from the canteen, having found it on the first day of school in year 7 and been unwilling to risk anything else for the following 5 years. Even continuing on to sixth form this year, I've started spending all of my free periods sitting at the same computer, irrespective of whether I necessarily need to use it - even writing part of this article sat at this said computer. The more observant reader amongst you, though I doubt this somewhat, will have noticed that in my previous articles I refer to the concept of 'continuity and change'. the idea that 'in an ever-changing world, we need something to cling onto'. Maybe now, you're starting to see where this attitude comes from.

I write this whilst Stripey's being buried in the garden.  I can't envisage him rotting in the nation's sewers. I asked my mum to keep the tank until after Christmas. 'New Year, new drawers' I murmur. I can imagine my dear mother jumping for joy internally as this is quite a step forward when it comes to my bedroom. This is worthy of a paragraph on its own.

I have slept on 2 beds at home in my life. The first was a baby's cot. The second and to date only other is a cabin bed which I have slept in for around 13 years. The cabin bed is too small for me now and I know I have outgrown it, but such is the way of my attachments, that it has remained next to my windowsill all this time. Diagonally opposite from where I rest my frequently weary head, are shelves. These shelves have not been properly ordered, filtered or cleared out in over 5 years. Christmas and Birthday presents which I would love to put up on my wall have instead sat furled up or remained in their packaging whilst books are not placed and ordered but rather piled on top of each other. This is chaos theory at its finest, and even I am not certain of where everything is in that finite amount of space. Much as I would like a serious relationship in the future, I'm brutally aware that this is a barrier for the foreseeable future. If the concept of me sleeping in an 8yr old's bed in a room of disorganised shelves, drawers with animal handles and a cardboard chair of soft toys which are there for nostalgia's sake rather than any genuine comfort isn't enough to understand then it should be compared to our spare bedroom. Larger and adjacent to mine, it has been vacant for years and currently houses my sixth form uniform, a small tiered desk in the corner and a box of towels. It has been available for me to move into for several years yet each time I have firmly declined stating I'm happy in my current room. That much is true, even if it transcends the realms of practicality and common sense.

Socialisation has never been easy and the reason I feel that I was at my happiest at age 6 was partly due to my ignorance of the wider world and because I never had to transition from a school before, excluding nursery. Being different from most people, due to the way I spoke, thought of and interacted with people, I was bullied the first couple of years of junior school and I have no shame in admitting that I felt most comfortable around the teachers at the time, yet I am eternally grateful for those friends who were there and did speak to me. Those people who formed their own judgements of me when I spoke to them rather than judge what they saw of me in my general behaviour. I am thankful for them all and I am still friends with many of them now. I have never been one for mass social circles anyway but rather prefer smaller circles of closer friendship.

My mind can be considered a disorganised, chaotic world of sentimental messes piled into each other. In contrast to Sheldon Cooper's rationale and reason over emotional bonds, my reason is my emotional bonds, the concept that if life stayed the same and continued to operate as it always has in the past then all will be well and the same in the future.

But this is me, and this is my Asperger's. And I wouldn't change a thing.

If I wasn't Aspergic, I wouldn't know or care about the history of Zimbabwean politics, how miscellaneous European countries are struggling to cope with the rise of populism when forming governments, or what makes a country happy. If it wasn't for my Aspergers, I wouldn't have been as absorbent of knowledge in school, or as impassioned about my sports (I'm still working to convince my dad to parkrun with me on Christmas morning). Aspergers is not my label, my identity, or who I am, but my secret weapon. My powers, strengths and capabilities which have made me into who I am today and who I will be in the future are all aided and influenced by my autism. And that is something I am proud of. There is a reason in my biography on this blog that I say that my Aspergers doesn't really matter to me. It is because it is a contributing factor to who I am, but I am not defined by it. I prefer to consider myself a maverick - independently minded and driven by how I want to live my life, even if it is chaotic, impractical and odd. After all, normal life is hardly organised and practical all the time!

I've read this through and hope you're maybe better informed of who I am as a person. Stripey is now resting in our raised flower bed, no longer pained by his damaged fin and swimming sidewards. I know it's not the last time I'll have to deal with the loss of a piece of furniture in my life as our beloved 23 year old cat - deaf, blind and senile - will be put to a better place next year. I know that when this happens, I will bemoan the loss of another continual presence before reminding myself of why I feel like this and preparing myself for the future. Charlie Fink once eloquently hummed that 'what you don't have now will come back again'. That much is true.

FACT of the IPOT: Hans Asperger was discovered after his death to have sent handicapped children to be put down by the Nazis. A terrifying thought, but not one which should influence our perceptions of who we are. A name badge never gets below the skin.