Feedback

I showed a preview copy of Part One of this book to a few people, looking for some general feedback. It wasn’t long before I started to receive it. And the point I would like to address comes from Lucy. She said:

Thanks for the writing you sent me. I've just finished reading it. So it is the Intro of a book you are writing? It is a book about yourself? A memoir? Or the book of understanding yourself? As I am reading it, I remember when you told me about all these. I told you that I had the impression that you are not suffering from it although you attach great importance to it. In fact, I am a bit curious to know: why couldn't you let the issue rest and you were so bothered by the facts/theory (not reading, short of empathy etc.)? what has changed since you got a diagnosis? I would rather see Autism as a unique trait instead of an illness.
Lucy is a Cantonese music and literature journalist, currently living in Beijing. I first met her via a website called Couchsurfing when she was staying in Edinburgh. Anyway, she raised a couple of points here that I felt would be worth exploring.

The main one is that I definitely agree with her that my condition is not an illness. It is also not a mental health issue – a fact that might surprise some people. It’s a neuro-developmental issue. Which means that my neurological system didn’t develop in the same way as a neurotypical person’s would. This affected things like memory, emotion and some of the higher cognitive functions. Personally, I don’t consider it to be a disability; it’s created problems over the years, but it’s also had some very positive effects. It’s really just made me a bit different from other people.

I had real difficulties as I was growing up. And a lot of those difficulties stemmed from the fact that nobody knew I had Asperger’s, so they didn’t know that certain allowances had to be made for me. I process information differently, I perceive the world in a different way and I respond to outside stimuli differently from other people. If this had been known, I suspect that my youth would have been radically different. I don’t know whether that means it would have been better, but it might have been easier. At least, there would have been more understanding.

All of this will be explored in more detail in later chapters.

So… I’m not treating the condition as a disability. In fact, I’m fascinated by it. And also – to be honest – there’s a part of me that feels seriously vindicated by the discovery of it. Because, despite the fact that I have an exceptionally high IQ, I’ve been to college three times and dropped out each time because there was just too much going on at once for me to cope with. I began to think of myself as an under-achiever and I didn’t like that thought. I felt that I should have progressed much further with my life, my career and my future prospects and couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t done so. Finding out I have Asperger’s Syndrome, however, has changed all that. Now I realise that I’ve been fighting to learn and progress within an educational establishment that wasn’t aware I had any stumbling blocks. I don’t consider my condition to be an illness or a disability. It’s just a different way of thinking. But it’s still fair to say that the difference has come at a cost. And part of the cost was three aborted attempts at going to college.