I was just wondering, is this how aspies fantasize?
I remember back in the summer of 95' when I was at summer camp, I discovered that I could form images of places, things and people that were not within my peripheral. Early in the mornings, before camp started, all the kids would gather in twosomes, or groups surrounding the basketball court. I remember walking on these tannish brown dirt mounds, and, although I don't really remember what the images in my mind were, I do remember asking myself how was I able to be in one place in the real world (day camp) and yet be able to picture in my mind a totally different location (a dark, murky stream, overshadowed by luming storm-clouds). From all the overly analytic introspection that I've been doing, trying to figure out my "true wiring" so to speak, I've come to the conclusion that my daydreams, my inner-imaginings stem from more concrete stimuli. When I was in second and third-grade, I hated to read chapter books and yet I
always love to watch Disney movies, despite not having a fully developed theory of mind. I remember watching the Disney Animated Version of Robin Hood and despite my being in first grade with ToM deficits, almost immediately getting a crush on Maid Marian. And from then on, until my next crush came along, I would not stop thinking about there. There would be times where I could have been in the Christiana Mall picking out a toy or a new movie, and in my mind I'd hear Maid Marian say something like "Oh, come on, make up your mind, we don't have all day". Or when I was playing cards with my grandmother, I'd feel like Maid Marian would be sitting right next to me, silently admiring how nerdily cute I was. But the sad thing about it was, I didn't have enough of a dialogue with her. I would just feel and bask joyfully and warmly in her imaginary presence, but I would never, to my rememberance, have any actual imagined conversations with her. When I would pick out a movie at the store, in my mind, she'd just be smiling at me, admiring how cute (I made her) think I was, but she'd never, to my knowledge say things like, oooh, oooh I let's get Roger Rabbit, I've always wanted to see what happens when cartoons enter real life"! Unfortunately, we'd rarely if ever share the same thoughts with one another.
I remember when I was in second-third grade, although I was impaired in my ability to have imaginary conversations with all the girls I had crushes on, and yet I could vividly feel their gentle, colorful external presence inside of me. There would be cloudy, lazy Sunday afternoons where I would be lying on my living room floor while my mother was curled up on the couch, and, this is going to sound creepy, but I promise you I'm not a pervert, I would visualize my current crushes sitting on the same couch or in the love seat right next to where my mother was sitting. And I vividly picture my crush in a marron cashmere sweater, pale black, semi-rumpled stretch pants, and glittery maroon cashmere socks slumped, dazed in the living room love seat, as if my malfunctioning mirror neurons projected X into hers, quietly gesturing for me to sit beside her...and, all I'm going to say is that I'd have these vivid, albiet highly concrete, real world fantasies of "puppy love" (me and my crush watching movies together, running around the playground on a rainy day, flailing our arms, throwing mud at one another, flapping our arms as we jumped in puddles (i.e acting autistic together). What was so, oh, unfortunately, so beautiful about it was that in my mind, me and my crush, at least when she became mentalized by me, had the same level of social intelligence, that of a prematurely birthed "normal" toddler. That meant that in my mind, we were totally on the same wave lenght, and that meant that in my mind, somebody other than my parents saw and felt and believed that there was warmth and love, and relatibiility inside of me. And, despite me, in a real-life social context being totally unlovabe in the eyes of my peers and especially in the eyes of my crush, in the real world, I was still able to feel love by her, even though she'd die before she'd even begin to want to want to develop such a feeling for a then-social pariah like myself.
And unfortunately that imaginative paradox that had going on extended to virtually all facets of my childhood. For example, I would have my GI Joe action figures do all sorts of complex idio-creative martial arts moves. I remember making my action figures fight atop of and inside parakeet cages, and having them dive off of wooden table ridges and jump into my mothers half drunken coffee cups...and yet, it, to me, felt lively and spontaneous. And yet, while this was a demonstration of an (at least partail ) capactiy for spontaneous creativity, it was also a demonstration of barren imagination because I was rarely, if ever, able to give my action figures a reason for fighting one another. I was never able to give them goals, a purpose, personality...
Because I was, in the real world, seemingly blissfully content (as much in the Hare Krishna sense, as in a beatuful, wistful sense), I didn't have much of a need to create elaborate "imagination-based" fantasy worlds. Because I was so enamored with my Disney movies, my premature crushes on girls, my love of rainy and cloudy, and sunny days, my love of hearing my camp counselors reading Goosbump books, my love of my Grandparents putting up with my shanatagans, my love of gathering animal and geography facts, of the programs about miracles, the PBS mysteries that my mother watched that I'd tuned in and out of, my love of swimming, my love of my one and only (autistic friend) Alaric, my love of having intense, vivid, emotionally exuberant and vibrant, and yet empathically impoverished and yet forever beautiful fantasies of companionship with girls my age
I lived in a reality based fantasy world.
01 Aug 2007, 6:59 am
