I am a prisoner in my own mind.

I have Asperger's Syndrome. I don't have it as bad as some but there are some things that, in my mind, are not quite right.

"Asperger's syndrome, is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. It differs from other autism spectrum disorders by its relative preservation of linguistic and cognitive development. Although not required for diagnosis, physical clumsiness and atypical (peculiar, odd) use of language are frequently reported." -The Almighty Wikipedia

This, combined with ADD, gives me some interesting quirks, some of which I will share with you. Really, as no one reads this, I am really just writing them down.

First and foremost is that I don't like people. Rather, that is to say, I don't like interacting with people. I don't feel comfortable talking to people and I don't seem to relate to people my age really well. I am great with kids because I have a comparable attention span and fascination with similar things (bugs, rocks, animals, poop, burping, farting, etc). When I do have to talk or interact with people I get anxiety about saying or doing something stupid or unacceptable (even people I've known for years) that will make them hate me or think ill of me (some of this may stem from childhood trauma too). At the same time I am extremely uncomfortable looking at people's faces. I can look close, such as at an ear, forehead, neck (sometimes I've had women uncomfortably adjust their shirt at that, I apologize, I am not looking at your breasts) etc, but I can't look people in the face and on the occasion that I do I usually have what a term a "freak-out" afterwards.

"Freak-outs" involve me having to find a spot alone where my brain can fire off all its discomfort and get rid of it. In the process my eyes will move back and forth as far as they can to try to stretch the muscles out (because it physically hurts my eyes to look at people) and my heart races until the "freak-out" passes. Other things cause "freak-outs" as well. Sometimes there is just too much sensation at one time and I have to cut one of them off. I usually accomplish that by covering my eyes or my ears to block out one of those senses. Sometimes when my eyes are bad I see things start moving that are completely inanimate; the biggest offender on this is a textured ceiling, the textures become pictures and shapes that move around on the ceiling. Most of the time I see animal or humanesq-ue faces (made of texture shapes) that turn and watch me or seem to do battle with each other. I always have to put my arm over my eyes when that happens and breathe.

The other side of the sensory input, though, is that I have really fast reaction times and can usually fully follow multiple conversations at the same time. This can also be annoying as I'll be listening to a teacher in Sunday School, talking to my wife, listening to my neighbors argue about their child, and hear the people in front of me discussing dinner plans. Any of these conversations I could repeat back verbatim. One time for the hell of it I watched three TV shows at the same time and understood everything.

Some of my other quirks include a necessity to sit in the same spot for everything. Computer time requires I be on the left side of the couch; TV the right. Dinner I'm on the first left chair of the table; Games the first right. (Last night I sat in the second right chair and my brain thought the game board was wrong. I insisted and insisted that it was wrong and my eyes started doing their stretching routine. After about 5 minutes I was able to realize what was wrong and reorient myself,  but up to that point my brain ached with the wrongness.) Church I have to sit on the back pew by the arm; I usually arrive 30 minutes early so I can have my spot. If someone has taken that pew and I am forced to sit somewhere else my heart races and I can't focus on anything going on, my knee bounces, my body shakes. It's all rather horrible.

Quirk the forty-second: I don't generally talk like other people. I use British and archaic slang, I structure my sentences somewhat differently, I tend to use larger terms than necessary (I had a couple of friends tell me they use their google, or dictionary, apps a lot more frequently when I'm around) and sometimes have to repeat a sentence with different words to make people understand. That I kind of blame other people for (example, not often is "that' used that way as it becomes confusing) as I think that people should have a larger vocabulary and use more of the English Language. (I also take great, great delight in wordplay).

I have several routines that I do in order to make sure my day goes smoothly and when I need to change a routine it usually takes a couple of weeks before I am comfortable again. Some of these routines are rather simple things that shouldn't make a difference, but do. For example; When I get in my car I have to start it, put it in gear, and then put on my seat-belt. If I don't do it in that order then several hours of my day will be governed by anxiety and my brain firing all cylinders trying to justify within itself what I did. Part of my brain will say "it's okay, it's unimportant, the end result was the same". Another part of my brain will say "AHHHHHHHHHHHHH". A third will argue with the first that It doesn't know what It's talking about and because I did something wrong something horrible is going to happen. All the while the background of my brain will play a movie or song that I find soothing (some of these may be surprising to other people: Movies that my brain calms itself with are the Star Wars trilogy (I can play the entire movie(s) in my head verbatim), Pride and Prejudice (A&E version, the others are tommy-rot), and Kill Bill. Music that plays is (9 times out of 10) The Girl From Ipanema).

I learned over the years how to deal with most of my quirks and "freak-outs" to the point that I appear mostly normal and people have no idea that my brain is firing a hundred thoughts at a time. Sometimes I have to explain things I say and how I got there. Much like a person can get on youtube and find themselves after a click on a click on a click looking at a page on the binomial nomenclature of a cape buffalo my brain will hear something and flip flip flip flip flip to something completely unrelated that makes absolute sense to me but once voiced meets confused stares. Along with that is quite literally everything that someone says will bring a song or movie to mind immediately. EVERYTHING.

Anyway, there are more inexplicabilities that go on, but I just wanted to ramble a little bit about some of the things I do that make people say/think "what the hell?".