An Aspie's Guide to Growing Up

This is the last serious one, at least for a while. I promise. I prefer to get all these out in one go, like a band-aid. Trust me, we'll all be better for it afterwards. I'll throw in a joke or two somewhere, I'm sure.

Growing up is hard to do, as the songs say. And your parents. And just about everyone else, too. And you know what, like any good cliche, it's right. Still, like school, debts, cancer and Christians, it's just one of those inescapable facts of life. Sadly, no one really teaches us how to grow up, it's just expected that we will. Our parents coddle us, wrap us in protective blankets and hide us from the world, all the while telling horror stories of the big bad world out there, then seeming so shocked when we run out into it head first and split our skulls open. Schools are to busy being the tightly wound bureaucratic mini-government uni-recruitment centres that they are to teach you anything useful. And friends, well, friends are probably the most useful, in a "throw them in the deep end and hope they can swim" kind of way. But still, growing up happens. Painfully, and with more road bumps and pot holes than the Bruce Highway.

Let me tell you a little story. Recently, I made contact again with my ex-girlfriend. No, I'm not going to tell you about her. No, I'm not even going to tell you about us. While I have no issue abusing my privacy, I have no right to abuse hers. Suffice it to say, things didn't end well and we both took the childish approach of ignoring the problem and hoping it went away. And for her, at least, it worked. But me, I grew tired of the childish games. See, I was a man now. I'd moved out of home, I'd bucked the system, stood up to The Man. I had a new job, a bright new outlook, and enough pent-up sexual frustration to justify about damned near anything. Problem was, I'd gone and deleted her number from my phone. Though, thankfully, I had yet to delete a single message from my inbox. Call me sentimental. Long story short, we met up. It was a little awkward, but there was no screaming, no fighting. Somehow, in our time apart, we'd both grown up. The shit she'd been through in that time, well, a lesser person would have just curled up and died. And here I was, acting all superior, playing the good guy. She held up a mirror, unintentionally, and I saw a petulant little child staring angrily back at me, cigarette in his mouth and one hand down his pants. See, I'm one of those people that need a real big wake up call. That's one of the reasons I fell in love with her. She dealt almost exclusively in the massive reality calls. So ever since then, I've been trying to actually, properly grow up. Things have fallen silent between us since, I think we both know there's nothing left there. But there's a sense of closure in my heart now, and I no longer have to try to hide myself every time I see her. It's a small town and there's only so many cars to duck behind.

All that's all well and good, but fuck me if growing up isn't a bitch. There are times when I just downright hate it. I want to curl up in a ball and wish it all away. I hate paying rent, I hate paying more and more each week for fuel, I hate not getting to shop some weeks cause I just don't have the money. I hate washing, I hate ironing, I hate having to share a house with two other people, I hate how it's changed my relationships. Fuck, I just hate the damned change. And then I stand up, I think of my ex, and I punch myself in the face and pull myself together. I make my breakfast, take a teaspoon or two of cement, and harden the fuck up. I'm no longer the person who cries myself to sleep at night, I no longer need a strong mother figure to hide behind, and to hold me up, and to have wild crazy person sex with. I need to believe I'm different now. Independent. Strong. Even when all evidence screams to the contrary, I need to believe. Growing up is my religion, and the unattainable manhood is my God.

And that's it, that's all I have to say about that. I did my best, I threw in a joke or two, hopefully enough to lighten the mood a little. This is not a bummer trip, or a fish for sympathy. Just another peek behind the curtain. And sadly, it's late and I can't think of anything more witty, so I'm going to end this TS Elliot style: not with a bang, but a whimper.

An Aspie's Guide to Morality

Morality is a funny old beast, and certainly not something that's easy to summarize. I'd like to use an example from a House episode I just watched to help make some interesting points. First, the moral dilemma. An 18 year old kid has to raise his 11 year old sister and 8 year old brother after their parents die. It is revealed he has a genetic disorder that has destroyed his immune system, leaving him unable to care for the kids. His only hope is a bone marrow transplant from his younger brother, which he refuses to have on the grounds that his brother isn't old enough to make an informed decision. However, House with his trademark wisdom convinces the kid to admit he's only refusing the surgery because he's sick of dealing with the kids. Foreman rags on the kid for abandoning his siblings and says the kid is going to regret his decision for the rest of his life. There are two moral dilemmas here. The first is the most obvious, keep the kids and raise them, or pussy out. Then there is the second, less obvious. Is keeping the kids really best for them? Would they be better with the child services, or with their under-paid, over-worked brother? As with the best moral dilemmas, there really isn't a best answer. It depends whether you value biology and family, over taking a chance that the kids might be better off being raised by strangers. Personally, I think the kid made the right choice. Personally, I've never really been one for biological connections. I've been brought up to rely on and enjoy the traditional family aesthetics, but this is something that's been taught to me, not something that I was born with. Not only that, but the kid is barely making enough to support himself, let alone two others. Yes, it might sound selfish, but why should someone have to throw away everything because of some random bad hand dealt to them by fate? They often saying doing good is hard but personally rewarding, whilst doing "evil" is easy and fiscally rewarding, but makes you unable to sleep at night. But at the end of the day, morals is an imaginary construct. It is something taught or learnt, it is not a biological imperative. We are not born with a moral compass, or an understanding of right and wrong. It's why crime exists, why people can murder and rape and send others to war for stupid, made-up reasons like invisible weapons or non-existent overly-racist omnipotent sentient beings. Our morals come from our friends, or family. They come from our teachers and bosses. But at the end of the day, somewhere at the very beginning, the concept of right and wrong, of absolute good and evil was invented but a single individual. So perhaps the oldest, most controversial moral decision is - is it morally correct for one person to decide what is right and wrong for everyone? Huh, I guess I've stumbled onto one of those impossible questions. Well, this whole article has just gone nowhere. I've written myself into a black hole. There's no escape.

Shit.

An Aspie's Guide To Writing

Despite it's inherent therapeutic nature, writing and Asperger's don't get along all that well. The rules and regulations of writing - grammar and spelling, for example - are not the problem. The biggest problem, at least for myself, even more so than metaphor, symbolism and figures of speech is dialogue and character interaction. When I write it's often how I'd like to see the world; the characters are of exaggerated versions of myself or those I know. Still, I often fear my lack of social skill leaves my characters quite cold and alienating, or worse - stereotypical. With no true knowledge or experience to fall back on, I can only write what feels right to me; my own vision of the world. It's why I often write in a fantasy setting, where a certain level of strangeness can be forgoven. It's also why I enjoy sticking close to, or even perverting genre conventions. It gives me the safety of a strong set of rules and guidelines, but allows me then the freedom to put my own unique perspective or spin on it. Crime and mystery, procedural drama and especially old style noire are particular favourites of mine. My own writing style is more akin to sitcom writing. I'll first come up with a strong group of characters and then create a bullet points list of plot elements to put them in and then allow the characters to connect the dots. This not only allows strong characterisation throughout, but allows the story to grow in unexpected ways. And if it surprises me, then surely it will surprise the reader. I'll keep this short as I'm writing on my iPhone and even this much has taken forever. I'll leave you with a philosophical, t-shirt ready sound bite: I collected my thoughts like butterflies and pinned them to a board But in the end, they were little more than spaghetti on the wall - a waste of good food and one hell of a mess Peace. Consider yourself Aspergified:)

An Aspie's Guide to Planning for the Future

Don't do it. Seriously, it's completely bogus. Life is made up of a series of interconnected, random events of chaos and order, ordained over by Fate, or Destiny, or God or whatever, so what say do we have? I didn't plan on buying a new phone this week, but I still have to buy one. We cannot possibly factor every hypothetical into our lives, so why bother? Is it not easier simply to let life take it's course, hanging on for dear life and occasionally screaming "stop the world, I want to get off?" Sure, plan your career, budget your money, but don't look so surprised when everyone else isn't willing to live by your preordained plan.

Surely there's a simple option I'm missing, you must be thinking. Have a Plan B, or a Plan C even. And when they fail? If I so chose, my head can come up with a plan, then generate about twenty contingencies for every hypothetical it could come up with. But I've wasted the time planning when I could have been doing and chances are the opportunity has already passed me by. It is in the nature of the Aspergic, as with any person I'm sure, to fear the unknown, to fear change. We fear what we can't control, what we can't define and fit into our little boxes and labels we've created for the world. Work is good, learning is good, sex is fun but too much is bad. Or is that chocolate? We divide and justify and collect everything into it's right place, until something knew comes along and messes up the whole system. It's why people like me don't fit in. We're not easily categorized. We can't be summed up or explained. We're liquid, shifting constantly from one state to the next, desperately trying to fit in and instead making ourselves more of an outcast with each moment. We are like the future, we are the unknown and so we are feared. And so I have come to treat the future as I do any new thing, with a bizarre mix of fear and respect. I have broken out of the vicious cycle of fretting endlessly over every decision until it resolves itself, vanishes or someone else makes it. Instead, I jump head first in, screaming like a girl and hoping the jump isn't as far as it looks. Then I agonize endlessly over it. It's yet to backfire on me, it has lead to many changes in my life this year. A new house, a new job, an old friend. It's hardly a cure, I'm simply ignoring my feelings and avoiding the issue as always, but in a slightly (I hope) more healthy way this time.

Now when I explode, would someone kindly bundle up what you can of me in a container and then cremate me inside a gorgeous grand piano? If that's not all too much to ask. Sayonara, readers. Until next time, consider yourself Aspergified.