My First Confession

I am writing this for myself.  As any human being with an ego does, I do appreciate an audience, especially an appreciative one.  This is for me though.  If there are a few people who become interested in my words, then I am grateful for their attention, and hope it serves to motivate me to impart more words, for my own good.  If anyone apart from myself gleans something from this, perhaps it is because we share in what we struggle with.  Perhaps if you are one of those people, we can learn from each other.

Why am I writing this?  To discover who I am.  One of my struggles, and perhaps it is the very foundation of my struggle, has been to establish some kind of identity.  To feel valued by myself.  I find I am so wrapped up in what others must think of me, that I give no ear to that feeble voice within that wants to say what I think of myself.  I silence the voice with worry and doubt, making it all the more difficult to stand up against the opinions of others.  More often than not, these opinions are not really the thoughts and feelings of other people, but actually my own thoughts and feelings, misplaced and misrepresented. 

This blog is for me.  It is made public so that I may invite inquiring minds to speculate and comment on what I have to say, and maybe even identify with.  What follows is my confession.  I will strive to omit nothing, not for shame and not for its apparent lack of value.  What follows is who I am.

My name is Rene, but you can call me Will.  Rene William Moes.  I have what is referred to as Asperger's Syndrome.  I don't like calling it that though.  I am 25 years old, and only found out a few years ago that this is what makes me feel different from you.  By you, I mean every single person I have ever met.  Asperger's Syndrome, is a controversial term used to refer to certain people who live with something called the Autistic Spectrum.  You have probably heard of Autism.  You may have seen Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman and thought it was kind of cool, albeit something you were glad you didn't have to live with.  Autism is a complicated subject and I don't want to talk a whole lot about it right now.  As I go on, I will be recalling things from my past that I now view in a different light.  Things that I thought were something only I had a problem with.  Things that I thought were just me being weak, or frail.  Learning that I am an autistic person has been one of the most profound and affirming things to ever happen to me.  It has helped me to accept myself.  Now I seek to understand myself.

I feel I should at least briefly explain what I mean by the autistic spectrum, in case you are unfamiliar.  Autism is a psychological condition that affects ones perception and understanding of the world they live in, as well as having a significant influence on their behavior.  It is a spectrum because different people experience it differently, to varying degrees of severity.  The example of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man is one that is extremely autistic.  His character is unable to function in society due to his autism.  He lives in a psychiatric institution under the care of doctors and psychologists, and cannot care for himself.  This extreme form of autism accounts for a very small percentage of autistic people.  To say one has 'Asperger's Syndrome', such as myself, is basically to say they exhibit a mild form of autism.  I'm not going to outline all of the diagnostic criteria, or explain it in detail. 

An 'aspie' is someone who is fully capable of learning to function in society.  Learning is the key word here, because it is a different kind of learning than for most other people.  While social skills develop naturally for most, the development of social skills requires explicit instruction for someone with Asperger's Syndrome.  And while the fundamental skills can be learned, the subtleties of communication that others grasp may always escape them.  This results in someone with AP being "the same, but different", and makes it especially difficult for them to experience what they see everyone else around them experiencing.  Like I said, this is a very complex subject, and there is no way I can explain it in two paragraphs. 

What I wanted to describe though, is this sense of not quite fitting in.  It is something that has been with me my entire life.  Others see me as fitting in, but I do not feel as though I am fitting in.  Nor am I particularly compelled to try.  My social interactions are dictated by necessity.  I do not like being around many people at once, as it is just way too much information to process.  Large groups of people are like a school of fish to me - one that I can observe, and even learn to swim along with, but I can never truly "go with the flow".  They all seem to know what they are doing and where they are going.  I struggle to make sense of it.  As you may have determined, my identity is very tied up in this.  I would not be so accepting of myself today, had I not learned that there really was a reason for my feeling so different from nearly everyone I ever met.

I was born in Guelph, Ontario on May 8th, 1985.  I do not know any further details about this time in my life.  The life I remember began in Winnipeg, Manitoba in elementary school.  The earliest memories I have are of painting with my hands and being absolutely terrified at the prospect of placing my hands in the paint.  I have vague recollections of walking to and from school with my older brother.  I once visited Minnetonka Elementary School as an adult.  It struck me that the doors seemed much, much smaller than I remembered them.

Halfway through grade one, my dad got a job in Brandon, a couple hours away from Winnipeg.  We picked up and moved here.  We moved to a small community about thirty minutes away for a brief time, and I spent a year at University in Nova Scotia, but apart from that nearly all of my memories come from Brandon.  This is my home.  Maybe I will move away someday, maybe even someday soon.  But this will always be home to me, it is where I came from.

I spent eight years at a Christian School - much much more on that later.  I didn't realize it during those years of course, but those years served to worsen and cement my social difficulties.  I am sure there are aspects of myself that flourished there, that could not have flourished in a secular environment, and in truth I value my time there.  I cannot deny though, that the process of integration following those years has been incredibly difficult, and at times painfully isolating.  I was also indoctrinated with fundamental Christianity there.  These beliefs simply did not hold up as my rational mind developed.  Again, more on this later.  Suffice it to say that my education at a religious institution is a fundamental part of who I am, and has made my departure from religion to be especially painful, albeit necessary.

I moved from the christian school to the largest secular highschool in the city in grade nine.  I went from a class of 12 to a class of 300.  I went from a school in which I knew every teacher and every student, to a vast sea of unfamiliarity.  It terrified me.  Ultimately I did not end up integrating into this community.  I always felt isolated, and for the first couple of years tended to wander the halls with a notebook, writing notes and thoughts, slowly slipping into a heavy depression that lasted until my early twenties.  In grade ten I did find at least some sense of community through theatre, but I never really connected to anyone.  I would sit with them in the hall at lunchtime, the quiet one, wondering to myself what it was that made me so different from them, and why they couldn't seem to see it, or if they did, why they didn't say anything about it.

In fact, there was one person who I did feel a connection to in high school.  He was one year older than me, and in him I saw the closest thing to a reflection of myself.  On theatre trips I would sit beside him and he would tell me about the music he liked, or discuss his impressive knowledge of history.  I would have conversations with him in which I actually felt as though what I had to say was important, and valid.  We even seemed to wear the same kind of clothes - not quite fitting in with the fashion choices that proliferated the halls.  Yet, we never established a real friendship.  I felt drawn to him like no other person, because he seemed most like myself.  Yet at the same time, I felt very repelled by him, because he seemed to not fit in.  He demonstrated behaviors that I worked hard to conceal.  He seemed to be the me that I was trying so desperately to not let other people see.

I did not find out until a couple of years after high school that in fact, this person also had Asperger's Syndrome.  I was drawn to him because he was the only one of many that I could actually see myself reflected in.  And I avoided being like him for precisely the same reason.  Only I thought the things that he did that made him different were the things we were supposed to be hiding.  This was me not realizing that there was a very valid reason for these behaviors, and it was going to be a long time before I finally began to accept them, and will be much longer yet until I understand them.

And it is here that I will sign off for the day.  Tomorrow I will continue on, but I have already taxed my focus, and I fear pushing myself too far will only result in me giving up on this confession, and that I will not allow.  If you have read this far, thank you.  If you come back to read more, bless you.

Peace and sanity upon us.