Pay Attention!

Apparently goldfish have such a short attention span that by the time they’ve made a circuit of their bowl (all of thirty seconds) they’ve forgotten that they’ve been there before.

Sounds vaguely familiar. Having ADHD is probably quite similar to being a goldfish, I imagine. I’d just rather it were something a little more dynamic and exciting - like the speed of a cheetah, the eyesight of an eagle, or the agility of a snow leopard. Having the attention span of a goldfish is rather lacking on the pizzazz front, don’t you think? A bit like having the body odour of a skunk.

Actually this is not quite an accurate description. Skunks don’t have body odour, per se. What they have is the faculty for secreting a foul-smelling odour to deter predators: which, on second thoughts, sounds like it could come in really handy, in lieu of a talent for martial arts with which to pummel them to death (the predators, I mean, not the skunks). However, I do foresee a slight problem with this ingenious idea – the autistic inability to determine who are the predators, which could lead to living in a permanent state of ponginess. But it’s one way of keeping the general population at bay, thereby minimising the potential for mind-bogglingly confusing interaction. Could be a bit of an extreme solution, though.

Goldfish apparently also have a very brief short-term memory of three months (though to a goldfish this could possibly equate to something like half a lifetime). This concerns me gravely, as I find myself worryingly identifying once again with these dynamos of the marine world: having, as I do, a short-term memory that appears to contain more holes than a meshless sieve. It also leads me to wonder how people have worked this out about goldfish when, as far as I am aware (and my knowledge is extensive – er, not!), they cannot communicate. Or perhaps those little bubbles that come out of their mouths are speech bubbles? Whatever the case may be, I’d say it’s much like a neurotypical attempting to work out what an autistic is trying to convey, and vice-versa.

Confusingly for me I also have the long-term memory of an elephant. This perhaps explains why my short term memory is not so good – the goldfish in me gets trampled to death by the pachyderm, as it blindly blunders about randomly sucking up facts to keep locked up in its trunk. Or make that trunks, since I’m seemingly in the possession of not just one trunk-load of information, but a complete bloody battalion. In which case you’ve got to wonder whether I’m in the possession of not just one elephant’s memory but a whole gargantuan parade.

Whatever the case may be, I do wish sometimes that they’d just bugger off ‘cos they don’t half make a lot of noise about it. And another thing – I wish someone would take the lead up there and get some order going. It’s like a random duck-shoot - I never know what I’m going to target next. But then I don’t think elephants are really designed to use shotguns, are they, so it’s no wonder I keep getting blasted in the process.

Only The Lonely...

... want to be alone, it seems, according to some people. They appear to have some difficulty in making the distinction between being alone and being lonely. The minute they find out that you live alone, or spend a great proportion of your time by yourself, there is a tendency to jump to the conclusion that you must, therefore, be lonely – probably because they imagine that they would be, in the same circumstances.

And it’s no good denying that this is the case, and launching yourself into a long explanation as to why you choose to live a solitary life, and how happy you are with your situation. This will simply be taken as evidence of just how unhappy you are: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” as Shakespeare put it.

Of course, just because he said it, or, rather, set it down irreversibly on paper, does not make it true. But try convincing my brain, which encases words in blocks of concrete the minute they are set adrift into the cosmos.

Nor should you ever utter the fatal words “I can’t, but I would if I could”, cos this automatically implies that you feel left out, sitting on the outside looking in, like an orphan child longingly watching families together, and wishing they could be part of one of their own.

It’s a totally inappropriate statement which suggests a feeling of deprivation, a state of being which doesn’t exist except in my mind when I drift away from my true nature and allow myself to entertain the ideas that other people have put in my head. How, in the name of arse, do I know that I would if I could when I never have been able to, nor shown any great desire to do so? The only time I feel deprived is when I’ve been told that that’s how I should feel.

Then, of course, there’s the inferiority complex theory. I’ve come across this frequently as a consequence of spending a lot of time in recovery circles, mostly going round in circles. And no, a recovery circle is not a round rubber thing that you throw over your head to save you from drowning.

This theory is usually applied to people who view themselves as loners - the ones who feel themselves to be on the outside of society, not worthy enough to join in. Alcoholics are often in that group because of the shame and guilt associated with their illness. And, as an alcoholic, I of course got clumped in, and wholeheartedly embraced the idea that this was the reason for my preference for my own company. What else could it be? Unbeknown to me I was just doing the autistic thing, and copying. Didn’t know it at the time, but I do now.

And what I know now is that, contrary to all the recovery talk on the subject that I learned, I actually do like being on my own. In fact, it’s the only way that I can live and be happy, and not end up gibbering like an idiot at the end of the day due to overexposure to the world outside and its over-stimulating influence. You only have to look at what happens to me when I let the world out there into my life via the web, to know that there’s gonna be a catastrophe when I have to meet it head-on, in the flesh. As the Boy Scouts say, “Be prepared.”! Unfortunately, I can’t ever be prepared enough to deal with what’s out there.

Why do people think that there’s something wrong with you when you prefer to spend most of your time in your own company, doing things that you enjoy, rather than doing something that we are told that we are supposed to enjoy? It’s as if people expect that, just because you happen to be human, you must have an innate desire to socialise. They also appear to expect that it’s an intrinsic skill that everyone has, and that the only reason I don’t do it is because I am being a bloody-minded, anti-social, miserable grump, and I could if I just tried hard enough.

Well, I’ve tried hard enough – for most of my life I’ve been trying, and it hasn’t got any easier. Nor has it turned into a joyous activity that I anticipate with a frisson of excitement every time I have to contemplate doing it. More on a par with having to go to the dentist to have all your teeth removed. Without anaesthetic.

"Let Us Play"

It has been known for me to run screaming as far away in the opposite direction as I can get on hearing the words, “Lisa, go and play.” Okay, so this is a slight exaggeration: I don’t think I’ve ever actually run away from the dreaded activity (though I could just have misplaced the memory), but I have stuck like a limpet to the nearest wall (or person) furthest away from where all the action is taking place; or insisted on doing something else entirely – like housework. Yes, give me a wet cloth and a vacuum cleaner in favour of the alarming array of ‘play things’ this world has to offer, and I’ll be as happy as an undertaker in the middle of an epidemic.

So, who in their right mind would view, with such stomach-churning apprehension, the spectre of play as being on a par with a visit from one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (five if you count Kaos in Terry Pratchett’s version)? Why, little ol’ me, and my little ol’ autistic self, of course.

Now I’m sure there are loads of non-autistics out there who would read what I’ve written and say that they know what I mean ‘cos they feel, or have felt, that way too. They’re often part of the ‘rediscovering your inner child’ brigade, and they talk about having lost or had squashed their ability to play and be creative in the drive to be grown-up and responsible, and to achieve. I know something about this stuff: I was once part of it (a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...), and I got completely lost in it (it’s a VERY BIG galaxy!)

That’s not what I am talking about, though it may sound the same. That stuff is learnt, and behavioural. There’s nothing learnt in my reaction to play: it seems it’s all in the wiring (though I could be proven wrong on that point sometime in the future, as I progress on my journey of discovery to find out what makes me tick – probably an alarm clock mechanism, the way I go off at frequent intervals).

Were it simply learnt, and the result of a repressed play-instinct, I’d surely have unlearnt it by now ‘cos I’ve been wholeheartedly encouraged to express my creativity, and play, for the last fourteen years. It hasn’t made a great deal of difference. You’d have thought I was being forced to learn algebra, the way I have reacted – as if the effort was equivalent to having to wade through treacle whilst wearing lead-lined boots, and carrying an elephant.

And that, I have to say, is how it does feel a lot of the time. It’s like I have to gear myself up to use the part of my brain that doesn’t appear to work so well. I feel as if I have to find the magic password to log in (which can take what seems like aeons), only then to discover that my access to it is restricted anyway.

My idea of play is to come on the computer and read ebooks, or go surfing the web (“trawling”, as I prefer to describe my random, unauthorised, mind-numbing wanderings around anything and everything I can think of to look at, when I head off on one of my wilful, disruptive, over-stimulatory, compulsive excursions, which my ego views as ‘breaks from the stifling confinement of my daily plan.’ Yeah, right. Some break!

By the time I’ve finished (or, rather more aptly, by the time it’s finished with me, ‘cos I’m certainly not in control, much as I like to think I am) my mind is numb, my arse is numb, my right arm is numb from constant mouse-clicking, and my vocal chords also appear to have become numbed because I can hardly string two words together to form a coherent sentence.

As a child it seems I used to “play at” things, a form of copying which appears to mimic play, but was restricted by my limited imagination. So my favourite game in junior school was playing at ‘Charlie’s Angels’ (the original tv series version), and I would ALWAYS have to be the same character, Kelly Garrett. She was my favourite, so I couldn’t be anyone else. Why would I want to be?

And why would anyone want to play at anything else once you’d found a game that you liked? But apparently, according to my non-autistic friend, that’s what she and her friends would do, and what the general neurotypical child does – they make up different games every time they play. I’m completely baffled as to where they get their ideas from – obviously some place in their heads that either doesn’t exist or is hard to reach in mine. If I try to stretch my imagination it feels like I’m having a brain haemorrhage - and I can’t afford to lose anything else from up there!

I liked things that required clear guidelines and rules (at least then I knew what I was breaking when I would inevitably break them!), so I loved sports, and board games. They suited not only my imagination (or lack thereof), but also my competitive streak – less of a streak, and more of a great, gushing river. Ask me to spontaneously play and I’d look at you as if you’d asked me to spontaneously combust. I’d have more chance doing the latter, and probably more fun trying.

I play now by doing things like art and crafts. I’ve recently discovered that I seemingly have a talent for painting, which I love doing: though you wouldn’t think it if you saw what I have to go through to get started on a painting!

I bought an artist’s set that contained a load of watercolour paints, and other goodies, and some ‘proper’ watercolour brushes and paper: and then, in true autistic fashion (at least in true autistic Lisa fashion) I wouldn’t touch them, other than to open the box and admire them, and wish that I could use them. I have since used them, and I now have the fruits of my work adorning the walls of my home, which I am so pleased about. I look at my paintings and can’t believe that I did them, which is half the problem when it comes to me contemplating the next project: I doubt that I can do it again. But so far I’ve been proven wrong each time, and I just have to go through that whole process of pushing through the ‘stuckness’. It’s a bugger, though. Talk about being a tortured artist!

The ironic thing about all of this is that the one thing I have no problem playing with is words, and yet they’re the foundation of communication, and the bane of my life when it comes to having to use them to interact with other people. Go figure that one out if you can. One of God’s little ironic twists, methinks.