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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

My little perfect world

Nothing as said, is 100% perfect. No matter how straight of lines we try to draw, or how neatly lined up the trees the side of the road are, life's imperfection tends to win, and always does. And it makes me unhappy about perfection in society.

The truth is, it's indirect discrimination in a way. I was discriminated by the fact that I have this symptom. I could not function 100% in social skills, I could not concentrate in things that I didn't find interesting, and especially, I can't take my mind off of my special and fixed interest. In result, I'm not human, like, I'm an alien of some sort, in the wrong world, the wrong society. I was uncomfortable, and sitting in my Laz-boy doesn't help!

No possible way of perfectly carving myself to fit %100 into society & adapt society to fit me. A dark world, with no room to spare. Imagine that..

Back in the times I was very young, I was never aware of what was what. I was nervous of things in life, yes, but nevertheless, I felt somewhat normal. I only realized things were out of hand during my first years of high school, where the social scene REALLY takes place, that I was aware. And by waht I mean aware, meaning that I knew I was really in my own world.

But why exactly do I say that I feel safer in my world than the outside. Several factors take place here. First of all, I was a target for bullies, and I barely had friends at the same time. Friends were hard to make for me, and I was unhappy. Rather than outside, I would go straight to the classroom after lunch, the only safe place in the entire school. I would draw cars, airplanes on a piece of paper. I drew various designs, despite some woin't fly, but I imagined they did. Any plane I drew in my private little world, it could fly. They were planes that may be unorthodox for real, but I liked them, because I was their master, I created them, I was their god, I drew them with my own hands.

My last years of high school, I was a bit lucky that the bullying seemed to slow down. Possibly beacuse everyone is trying to focus on higher education, college. The bullies must have been distracted to get their grades up(without much success). But I was still depressed and at one point, almost attempted to end life by jumping off the building(actually, global warming was the reason that time, not bullying!). And during my last year of high school, I was taken to see a psychiatrist, not for a diagnosis(I was already diagnosed with AS while I was 4 years old), but just to cope with the outside world as it is.

But as soon as I stepped into college in mid-2009, my engagement was in real tourmoil. Whilst as I was partly excited to be a college student, I was also tense from being more exposed to the horrid outside world. I tried to keep myself away from my private world as much as possible, but troubles still got to me while I was doing so.

But I struggled to upkeep on homework. I don't know why, maybe because the difficulties of the outside world battered on me. I got things complete in the end, I managed to do it. But my nagging mom and such have at times, forced me to retreat to my personal world, my little perfect world. As that went on, I realized that imagination may be needed for the career track, therefore, I granted my personal world to run along side by side as I finished my freshy year.



Reading a lot about other with asperger's, many of them had their own private world, a perfect private world, where everything was up to their standards, perhaps, related to their special interests. It was no doubt that in my own perfect world, involved gliding as a part of life.





Everyone in my perfect little world flew gliders, and own a private one. In here, you didn't have to pay $100,000 or more for a sailplane, they had trees which Ventus's, LS's and DG's grew from trees. It may go against the grain, but that was the way it was. Want your own DG800? Go find a Glaser-Dirks tree and pluck a DG sailplane that's ripe from the branch. Indeed, that's all I can wish for. If I were to have a DG in real life, it would mean big cash was needed.





My perfect world had a better hamony to nature. People respected trees and such. They respected the winds. They respected the vallys. Here, winds blow over the vallys, causing lift for the glider pilots to soar all day. Everyone was a glider pilot. And money didn't matter in this place, only flying mattered. Social status didn't matter ether, nor being rich or poor. Only the gliding hours. They don't just glide, they breathe the sport.


I travel to my private little world often, to escape from the horrid real world. I feel like that the real outside world is like toxic fumes. I can't breathe that well in it. The more I breathe it, the greed, the hate, destruction, the more I feel like I'm slowly dying. I can't stand thunder and lightning ether. Whenever it rained in my world, there was no thunder or lightning, just rain to keep my world from becoming dry.

But I can't bring my perfect world 100% to real life. I can't build valleys with my hands, nor I can genetically modify trees to grow sailplanes. All I can do is finding the middle ground. To use things in my perfect world that is possible in the real world. I grow trees to clean up the environment, my garden is filled with trees and plants of all types. I try to spread the word of gliding to my friends and family. I know it's going to be a long way to have my own glider, as a lot of money is needed for training and even owning one! But I know I'll get to that point sooner or later, to spend hours gliding.

So, do you have a secret perfect world too? And are there things in your perfect world that you can apply to real life, and perhaps, help the world too?

Monday, August 23, 2010

Early fixtures

Special and possibly, strange interests are inherited in a person with asperger's syndrome. Whilst a normal person may have interests in many fields, unfixed, an asperger's only has a few and very intense.

For example, I used to be fixed with barber poles. You know what I'm talking about; those rotating poles with a neon light at salons and barber shops. I used to be fascinated with them, curious of why the spiraling stripes moved. Why would they? Obviously, an optical illusion, which I knew nothing about back then. Today, I no longer have interest in them. In fact, I find them useless. What's the point of them? Why would you waste electricity and space with a rotating pole? Why can't you just have the sign on top that says "Salon" on it?! Isn't that enough?!

My fixtures have changed over the years, from barber poles, to names of bridges all over Thailand, airplanes & helicopters, trains, etc.... A book about Asperger's explained that a majority of Asperger's syndrome people have fixtures in vehicles for somewhat reason. I later on changed to cars in 8th grade, when my parents wanted to change our family car. Well, the brake started to fail, so a new car was to be done. And my fixture in car names and stuff arose, and lasts until today, however, sailplanes won it out. I'm not so interested in cars as much as before(but I try to since I have to get my own soon).

With my fixture of sailplanes now, I have the desire to study more about them, the models, the specs/performance, even down to air traffic in commercial aviation. I try to talk to radio on FSX, and understand about commands and all that stuff. I'm even going into meteorology!

Often, Aspergers become involved that normal everyday things like chores and stuff will be a pain. It is rare that I'll have the hype to wash the dishes(eventhough it's my main chore) or mop the floor. I prefer to look up and stare at pictures of sailplanes on the internet. My mom was annoyed of that. So, as an alternative, I think about flying in one whenever I wash the dishes, to keep me from getting bored. My imagination then stretched on and became stronger as the years passed.

I called for help, I went and explained on wrongplanet.com about it, and I finally realized that it wasn't sailplanes that my mother was irritated about, it's more of me staying in front of the computer screen and staring at pictures and watching videos about sailplanes. And the person recommended me to try a more concrete alternative. Build a kit model or locate an enthusist's group. So far, I have been trying to spend more time trying to find an RC glider to fly, and to allow that concrete activity to takeover and engage.


It also interferred with my university life. Whilst my friends were more interested in fashion and soccer and manga, I was more interested in beautiful, sleek, white, engineless aircraft. I struggled to study, even with Ritalin. But managed to get a 3.0 in the end. Not too bad. But sometimes, in art projects, I engaged sailplanes to help. In the screenplay class, I wrote a story about a heartbroken man who gets engaged to the sport. It helped a lot to engage my interests in such subjects. Still, I hated going to school.


So far as things go, I managed to talk to some glider pilots on Youtube & Aviationbanter, talking about what I like. It helped a lot sharing experiences with real pilots. Sometimes, special interests can help with social skills too!