Not infrequently, I lose my words. Not sure where they go off to... if I knew, maybe I could convince them to come back. At the moment, if my life or yours depended on me speaking... well, let's just be glad that's not the case.
Yes, I can still type, but it's much slower and harder. The grammar and the structure confuses me, and suddenly the pronouns are a lot less important. I tend to leave out the "I" in most of my sentences. In case you're wondering, I'm going back and putting it back in, for your reading ease, tonight.
Tonight, this isn't at all a problem. I can sit, read my book (Temple Grandin's Animals in Translation... more on that later), try to pay attention to TV, whatever. Sometimes, I lose my words when it's a little more important, like at a restaurant when I need to order food or at work or in class when I'm expected to speak. Somehow, I've always gotten around it. A lot of times, that involves simply making sure that I'm not with people when I can't talk to them. Oddly enough, I don't mind being out with my mom, or something, if I'm not talking, but I'm embarrassed to be around my peers when it happens. That's when I avoid everyone until I can get it together again.
It's happened as far back as I can remember. Earlier, I asked Amy (my older sister's childhood best friend who has known me since "before I knew me," since I was months old) if I did it as a young child... shut down, stopped talking for periods of time. She said that I did, but that at the time I seemed tired or cranky, but that looking back, kids don't normally do that. Anyway, good to know that it's something I've always done... somehow, I take comfort in that.
Anyway, that's enough blogging for the moment, but I'll leave you with this snippet of a conversation Leigh and I had that still makes me laugh. Background: I was in Disney, and my sister had just arrived. Within about 5 minutes, she and my mom were talking about things that I had no idea what was going on. I went into my room at the resort and called Leigh because I knew I'd cheer up. This was the end of the conversation.
Me: Hi to Joe! (Joe is Leigh's cat)
Leigh: Okay, but I don't speak cat like you do. I'll try.
Me: Okay. Yeah, try. Try to speak cat.
Leigh: You... go back and try to speak people.
Lydia, thanks for your blog. I have a nine-year-old son with Asperger's Syndrome. He's high functioning too, in fact so high functioning that people are surprised when he does act autistic. It gives me great comfort to read your words to confirm what I know Jonathan can't say. The fact that he often "looks typical" means that he's working very hard to hold himself together. I try to remember this when he needs to let go at home. But I often forget how hard he's trying to live in my world instead of me trying harder to understand his world.
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