I have been blessed in the past few years to have discovered a new way of seeing my future. Growing up as a child with Asperger Syndrome, I lived very much inside my own mind, seldom making any sort of meaningful contact with the world outside. I never saw the importance in things which other people take so much for granted. Neurotypical people are able to see the relationships between themselves and those around them, but that was something which I missed out on. If I was aware enough to notice that there were other people in my vicinity, I usually felt like Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, an alien from a far-off world stumbling and bumbling around, always saying or doing or feeling the wrong thing. My reality took place in my mind, and in the books which I read to feed it. The "real world" was a hazy, undefined place, filled with things which I had no way of comprehending.
As unconnected as I was, and unable to understand what was important to other human beings, there were many concepts which were completely foreign to me. Empathy and compassion for other people seemed to have been left out of my make-up, although I seemed to be able to read the thoughts and feelings of animals with little effort. The consequences attached to one's actions were inconceivable. Things like numbers, formulas, and patterns were unintelligible to me
Foremost among the things which didn't fit into my mind or my life was time. Every moment was now, and later was a meaningless concept. I was here, now. Or I was here, then - my mind and thus, my self, spent a lot of time in the past. If I could read about it or imagine it or fantasize about it, it was real. But I could never connect with the future of my self, of my real life.
Coming from a broken, dysfunctional family does not help to ground someone like me in the reality of the world around them. When everyone around you is focussed on their own pain and angst, there is little energy or attention left for a child who doesn't seek to be noticed, but rather prefers to remain unseen and unconnected. But these circumstances left me woefully unprepared to build a Real Life, in the Real World.
As I grew old enough to take care of myself, and moved out of my parents' home, I slid through the small cracks in life which opened for me, never aware enough to question where I was going or where I would end up. I slid past the opportunity of getting a college education, and into a crevasse called Getting Whatever Job I Could Pretend To Do Well Enough. Pitiful positions in retail shops, for the most part, were all that I could manage. Those jobs kept a roof over my head - barely - and food on the table. The gods were watching out for me, though, or I had a really good store of karma inside me, because I always managed to have the books which were my life's blood. I never realized that there was more to life than my mind, my books, and my animals. I was blissfully ignorant of the Future.
Suddenly, at the age of forty-something, I lifted my head out of my book and discovered that there was more to life than the mind in which I played and wandered and remembered the world's past. There was a future looming, and dreams which I could grasp, and there were other people out there! All of these years I had been developing at my own pace, and I was finally fully formed and ready to move out into the world.
I have started my journey on the education path, learning how to earn a real living at long last. Better late than never! But considering how many years it took me to grow to the point where getting an education was feasible, I am in no hurry to "complete" it. There is so much I want to learn and to experience, and so many wonderful people I want to share this joy with! Most people put four years, or eight, or ten into completing their formal education. I want to keep playing this marvelous game for fifteen, twenty, twenty-five! Now that I've finally reached this point, I want to absorb every delicious morsel I can lay my hands on. I don't ever want it to end.
And one of the best things about it is my opportunity to share it with others, with those people whom I could never connect with or understand. I've finally got it! I know who they are, what they feel, where they want to go. I am one with them at last! And I never want to lose my connection again. Not everyone feels disjointed as I did, the child with Asperger Syndrome. But I know now that everyone feels a little disconnected, a little lost, a little helpless when facing this huge world. I've been there, and maybe I can help somehow.
It all comes down to discovering who you really are, and what really matters in life. It all comes down to taking the risk, and admitting to your failings. It all comes down to being courageous, and not letting life beat you down. It comes down to being alive, and finding joy, and feeling hopeful, and knowing that you can do whatever you need to do.
It comes down to being yourself, and being brave.
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