The Opposite of Normal - Andrew Boggan (readnow .txt) 📗

The Opposite of Normal
“What we perceive, may not always hold true”


By
Andrew Boggan


Throughout all the struggles in my life to be apart of society’s norm – I would personally like to dedicate this book to the following people
• Kay and Paul – my loving and supporting parents
• Kathrine – My sister
• Noel – My brother
• Mark Ashby
• Mark Jeffrey
• Caitlin Henning


A very special thank you to these people for making me believe that I have the power to be proud of having Asperger’s Syndrome


I heard once that the population of the world currently sits at 6,602,224,175 people. Out of that number, I wonder how many people think they didn’t actually belong to this world, or that perhaps their existence came from another force other than the human race. The answer would probably be a high number of people in this world that would actually think that, but really how many people in this world spent their entire life trying figure out why they were put on this planet and for what reasons.

Everyday I walk down the mall in the middle of my city. Each morning it’s a sea of people, all in a mad rush to get to work. Occasionally I like to sit at the top of the mall and watch people pass by as they race off to work chatting away on their mobile phones and answering pagers. I’ve seen a wide variety of people from all sorts of physical types such as skinny people, obese people, people in wheelchairs and even drunk people looking for another place to serve alcohol. Physically the people I see seem to look the same, they all have eyes, ears, a nose, arms and legs but from those observations I have to stop and think, and ask myself what’s really below the surface of their skin.

I don’t think I’m that different to the other people rushing past me; I have two eyes, ears, a nose, arms, legs and a heartbeat. Okay so physically I probably the look same, but underneath that, there’s a different kind of person, more than what the passers by would think. There’s a big difference between them and me. They belong on planet earth and I’ve been thrown into an ocean of people and not able to swim to shore.

I’m Asperger’s, and while I sit in the mall watching the passers by go to work, through the slightest glance nobody would be able to tell what makes me different. Sure I might look the same as them, or look similar to you but I act differently to most people, I act different to you, I possess obscure habits and I perceive the world to be a very different place. Sometimes the world seems to know your every fear and whatever it takes for fate to throw those fears in front of you she’ll do it. Sometimes I see the world as a breath of wind where I’m the lost leaf being flown about to different places that aren’t within my control, and sometimes the world is just the centre of my inner peace and harmony.

As I sit here now, like I do almost every morning with my soy latte and a cigarette, the people I see rushing to work each possess a quality to turn this world into a place of fear, anxiety, a mentally catastrophic nightmare or realign the world to be a beacon of hope. With each new day arises a new hurdle to cross. The qualities of these people will shine through as the day progresses and I can only sit and wait to see how I will perceive the world today.


Chapter 1


“The Rainstorm – come walk with me”


THE RAINSTORM – COME WALK WITH ME

I want to take you on an incredible journey. I want to take you into the mind of somebody with Asperger’s Syndrome and show you how we perceive the world.

In my mind, living with Asperger’s Syndrome is sometimes like walking through a rainstorm. It can be heavy with intense pressure while the dark grey clouds fill you with a deep sense of alienation from the world and other times, it can be the most comforting and wholesome experience. Sometimes every rain drop that falls from the sky represents a symbol of my many emotions that I quite often experience. The emotions fall from the sky with no control and sometimes, when my emotions are heavy, they tend to flood my mental state of mind often drowning me out. There are times when I can swim through the flood, and then are times when I drown not being able to swim to shore.

When I tell people I have Asperger’s Syndrome, usually I always get the same response “Oh I didn’t know you had anything, you seem perfectly normal to me”. Well, what’s perfectly normal I ask myself and why is it always human nature to take someone at face value? If you see a disabled person in a wheelchair or deaf person wearing a hearing implant, you automatically know that something is different and you have to be sensitive to their needs. Whereas people with Asperger’s Syndrome, don’t automatically give away signs that we are different and therefore people immediately take as at face value, make their own judgments and assumptions and then isolate us.

Perhaps life would be easier for us Aspies if we were to always hold a sign or wear a shirt that said “Careful, autistic person straight head”. Sounds good to make people aware even before they cast their own judgment on us, but that kind of sign immediately separates us from the majority and all chances of being integrated into society like everyone else is shot.

People always seem to make many misconceptions about people with Asperger’s Syndrome. A number of people I’ve had dealings with assume those affected by the autistic spectrum disorder possess many inabilities such as extreme poor motor skills, clumsiness, poor speech or even a disfigured body posture, however that’s just the stereotype. Many people fail to realize that some of the world’s greatest people are affected by Asperger’s Syndrome. I was once told that Albert Einstein had the condition and apparently Stephen Spielberg and Sir Richard Branson have it too. Very uplifting to people affected by ASD.

Another misconception people make about those affected with Asperger’s is that they often prefer to be alone and away from the crowd and segregate themselves from friendship circles and social activities. For me personally this is certainly not the case. Nothing would please me more than to have a wide range of friends from diverse backgrounds and participate in a number of social activities. When I was in primary school I would watch all the other kids join in social activities in the classroom. I’d see their smiling faces and hear them crack jokes and enjoy each other’s company. To them it was pure nature but to me it was a foreign language.

Imagine arriving into a foreign country without having any knowledge of the local dialect, customs and local culture. In a situation like that it’s very simple to offend somebody because you lack that knowledge. For people with Asperger’s, this is an everyday occurrence even in our own culture. The art of socializing, cracking jokes, knowing when to speak and knowing what’s appropriate to say that relates to the relevant conversation at hand are all foreign queues that can sometimes never be taught no matter how hard you try to learn them. Although we go to make the effort to learn this foreign language, we are automatically excluded because we gave off the opinion that we are ignorant, tactless and anti-social. For me, it didn’t matter how hard I tried to learn these concepts, it never sank into my mind and I reached the point of deliberately not socializing with other kids at school because the challenge was always just too humiliating to bear. The worst part about it was to sit at the back of the classroom and talk to myself yearning to be apart of the group but you couldn’t be apart of that group because you simply didn’t fit in. Seeing the smiling facing of other kids having a good time in the classroom is like a permanent burn scare on your body. It constantly reminds you what happened and how it was out of your control.

Even now, in my adult life, this still proves to be a challenge, especially at work. When everyone finishes work on Friday afternoon and heads to the local pub for their knock off drinks, the invite never comes through to you because you haven’t built the kind of rapport with your coworkers that warrants an invite to the pub. I know in my job I often need to ask questions and a lot of the time it’s the same question, and no matter how many times you ask the look you get from the managers for asking a question can be too much to bear. Sometimes it’s easier for me to go head and perform a task, knowing quite well that I will make a mistake because asking “How do I” ends up to be too humiliating and an assumption is made that your incapable of performing the job.

When I walk into work each morning, I immediately fall into my very structured routine. I put my bag down, turn on the computer, open my files and head to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. As I walk from my desk to the kitchen I pass several people sitting at their desks. As much as I want to look at them in the eye and say good morning, my mind simply does not allow me to do it, then instantously, coworkers assume your anti social. If only they knew that I wanted to say good morning when I arrived. With each new work day comes a new approach on how to deal with everyone in the office. Some mornings I have to force myself to be social and attempt to join in on other conversations but knowing when to contribute is the hard part. There’s been several times when I’ve gone to contribute to a conversation and I tend to create a deafening silence and then the subject topic is changed. So your left with questions in your head such as “Did I say something that was inappropriate, did I cut somebody off from talking or was I talking down to them and not at them” What makes it worse is that your always alone when this happens and nobody is there to guide you into the right social queues. Usually I’ve always ended up embarrassing myself and then people creating the wrong opinion of me.

Other mornings when I walk in and follow my routine I choose to never say a word to anybody unless spoken too. I can be in a perfectly happy mood but coworkers then make assumptions that I never smile enough or that something is wrong, or perhaps I’m in a really bad mood and they avoid me all together. There’s a correct approach out there in how to deal with people in the office and after working full time for 10 years now, I’m still yet to find what that approach is.

When you’re left to your own devices at work, in some ways it feels like your being punished yet you have no