Sunday 15 January 2012

One more thing, please.

Please don't talk over me when I'm speaking.
Please take breaks in your speeches to me to allow me to respond.
Please don't tell me what to do, or how I should think.
Especially don't tell me how I should feel.

Please don't assume how I think or feel.
Please don't assume that you know what's happened to me.
Please ask me if you're unsure, I'll be as honest as I can.
Please don't assume that you know the right answer.
For that matter, don't tell me that I assume I'm right. I rarely do.
Please don't tell me that something will certainly help me - you're not me, so what works for you or for other people with Asperger's won't necessarily work for me.

Please don't compare me to other people. I'm myself.

Please don't assume that I don't want to talk to you.
Please don't force me to start talking to you or to somebody else, either.
I might not talk often, but please listen to me when I do.

Please understand that I don't always understand you.
Please understand that I do want to, though. More than anything.

Saturday 14 January 2012

Hating my condition today

I think that this is going to be a difficult one to write, so please bear with me if my words don't come out quite right.

I hate this condition. Today I hate having Asperger's, I really do. Most days I'm not fully aware that it's there, but some days like today it seems to take over. And I cannot stand it.

On Saturdays I never really know what to do. I don't have anywhere to be, but since my housemates are in I feel antisocial if I spend the whole day in my room. I never know what my housemates are doing, though, unlike on weekdays when I have a rough idea of when they'll be in the house, and what they'll do when they get back after work/uni. Sometimes we're in the same room and I don't know what to say or do - earlier I stood in the corner of the kitchen drinking glass after glass of water, feeling unable to go back to my room (leaving when another person's still in the room is hard for me, it seems too rude to just get up and leave) yet having nothing relevant to say to my housemate who was there at the time. I'm sure that can't have been wholly comfortable for her either - I was aware of that at the time - but didn't know what to do. Sometimes I've ended up drawing on the blackboard in our house for this same reason, or rearranging the magnetic words on the fridge. I don't have the words to explain this at the time, though, and I try to avoid bringing up what happened earlier in the day when I'm more able to talk - I think that might be more cowardice on my part than anything.

Another reason why I hate having Asperger's: talking is still a major issue for me at times. I can have conversations - if the other person initiates it. I cannot start conversations except with a certain few people (I can think of only 3 off the top of my head), or if there's something going on at the time that I feel needs to be discussed (e.g. I can manage "Hi, how are you?", "How's your week been?", "How was the play you've just come back from watching?" and similar phrases, but have trouble knowing other conversation starters). If the other person initiates a conversation and I reply, then they reply to that and so forth, then conversations are fine. Thankfully most of my friends are talkative, so this mostly works. However, with some people they rarely start conversations, or otherwise will say little to my replies, and the conversation dies. It troubles me a lot, and I don't feel able to keep a conversation going otherwise. That's happened a few times this week. When it happens with one particular person, this really saddens me: they probably feel quite frustrated with me, and I wouldn't wholly blame them.

Another reason why I hate my condition. When I was a child, if you weren't brave enough to ask to join in an activity, then you had to wait until you were invited. I'm still like this: when a bunch of people are doing something (e.g. singing, playing games etc), I don't know if they'd accept me joining in. Even with people I know, it still feels uncomfortable to just join in, yet asking seems a bit foolish too. Sometimes I just end up stuck, wanting to join in but not knowing how and in the end standing there awkwardly. Tonight when this happened with a piano/singing session, I stayed for a while, also feeling unable to retreat to my room since there were still people around (I've already discussed this in this blog post) - in the end I did leave as quietly as I could (I was then invited to join in with my violin, but felt too out of sorts at that point to say yes), curled up on my bed and cried softly while staring at the patterns on the wardrobe. After about ten minutes of staring at the wardrobe and then at the bedframe, I calmed down enough to get off the bed, read for a bit, then come to the computer. I'm still feeling a bit low, and frustrated with myself for not managing social situations well.

I was brought up to be as normal as I could be. The thing is, while this meant that I can live independently and on the whole manage my life well, it hurts a lot when I can't do something. It's as though by pushing boundaries, it's more frustrating when I find barriers that I can't cross. I try and I try, but while things do improve, they're never at the level of 'normal' people. And this saddens and frustrates me to no end.

Part of me wants to go back downstairs and rejoin the others. On the other hand, that involves being in a social situation, and I'm not sure I can manage that right now without feeling out of place - and that wouldn't be fair on them either, if they see me being uncomfortable. I hate days like today. They're thankfully nowhere near as frequent as when I was younger, but still. I want to be normal.

Tuesday 10 January 2012

Katawa Shoujo

Yesterday I finished playing Katawa Shoujo. It's a visual novel set in a school primarily for students with physical disabilities or health conditions: it has amazing storylines, music that makes me cry, and really well-developed characters. Initially I saw the page for it on TV Tropes and thought that it sounded cliched: then I played the beta, and realised just how good it is. The full release came out last Wednesday, and I finished the game with all of its endings on Monday afternoon.

Anyway, other than rhapsodising about a really well-made game (it's free to download, I really do recommend it), I felt while playing that at least two of the characters have Aspie traits, even though it's not stated in-game. So I thought I'd write about them here.

The first character is Rin Tezuka. One of the students, she's a painter who has no arms, whose thought processes seem to make no sense to the protagonist. She gets to the point when trying to get information, at other times she seems to ramble on about seemingly-unconnected thoughts that make sense to her. At one point she goes into her hallmate's room to follow a cloud, seemingly undistracted by what her hallmate's doing at the time. She prefers to eat lunch alone or with one particular friend Emi (plus the protagonist, if you follow her route) and at one point when lots of people ask her questions, she breaks down and is unable to respond. Further along her story, you learn about her insecurities about herself and how she pushes herself with what she feels she ought to be doing, and how she's bothered by how she can't be normal.

The second is Yuuko. She's the school's librarian, who often chats to the protagonist (whose name is Hisao, by the way - he's in the school because he has arrhythmia). She tries very hard to adhere to her job roles as librarian and waitress in a local teahouse, and panics about them fairly often. She is nervous around people, and claims to not be good with words. She speaks her mind, then stumbles and worries about what she's said. However, she is good at listening to Hisao's problems, and tells him stark truths that help him see things more clearly.

When playing, I thought that Rin and Yuuko seemed like they'd certainly have Aspie traits, if not actually having Asperger's - the developers haven't confirmed or denied this, then again they've been a bit vague about some of the characters' non-physical conditions.

I feel like writing more on Katawa Shoujo, but am not sure what to write that won't spoil the endings.

I started out aiming to follow the character Lilly's route (she's my favourite character, a kind-hearted girl who's blind), but ended up on Emi's route instead (she's a runner whose legs were amputated prior to the story - she uses prosthetics). After Emi's route (each route took me about 5 hours to get all of the possible endings), I played through Lilly's, which was absolutely beautiful and left me really moved. Then I played through Hanako's route (Lilly's best friend, who's emotionally and physically scarred as a result of a severe house fire) - the scene for her bad ending took me so by surprise that I literally jumped, and her good ending brought me to tears yet again. Then I played through Rin's route, that made me think about the possibility of her being Aspie (in the beta I hadn't really considered that, then again the playthrough time of the beta is about an hour and a half per route). Finally I played through Shizune's route: I didn't much like her in the beta, so I left her route for last (she's deaf-mute, and imposes her will on others quite forcefully as head of the student council) - I appreciated her more as a character, but still don't really like her. Still, that's subjective. I'd order my favourite characters like this: Lilly - Rin - Hanako - Emi - Shizune. Admittedly I wasn't that fond of Emi before the game's full release, but grew to really like her as her story went on.

It's free to download, so I really recommend playing it. It's far better than I could describe.