Look Me In The Eye

My wife bought this book and kept saying that she thought I'd like it. I dutifully took it and put it into my shelf to read later. Literally. I have an entire bookshelf of books to get to. And worse, I usually only get to read for a short time before going to bed at night, so at most I get a chapter done a night. Not a fast reader, I guess (part of this could also be attributed to the fact that I'm spending much of my after-work hours riding bike, at the gym, or working on a journal/blog/novel first draft...priorities, I suppose).

Anyway I finished a book and surveyed the shelves for what topic I should tackle next. My book on workouts that develop muscles? Essays on computer science? Starting your own business?...then I saw the book my wife gave me, Look Me In The Eye by John Elder Robison.

I was hooked by the second chapter. The book is about the life of the Aspergian brother of the author of the book Running With Scissors. Apparently he had one chapter about his brother John and had so much feedback from other Aspies that he urged his brother to try his hand at writing, and the result was this book.

I was in love with it. He described so many traits that slammed home in my own life. His inability to relate to people. His fondness for mechanical things. Inability to relate to what people were saying, his "eccentricities." Sensitivities. His compulsion to assign his own name for people or he'd forget who they were (his brother was for many years named "Varmint"). His rational, logical view of death of people he didn't know that neurotypicals find appalling. I totally understood his description because that was me. If a child of a friend's friend passed away in an accident, I don't react. It doesn't make sense to me, since people die every day. Thousands of people. We can't grieve for them all. I don't know that person, so I'm not sad. I'm glad that it didn't happen to my family or my immediate friends.

Neurotypicals apparently find this to be cold and irrational. It's perfectly rational.

Every chapter I read ended with me thinking, "Oh. My. God. This is me."

I didn't grow up with a mother in a mental hospital. I didn't have an alcoholic father. I did rather well academically and went on to college. But his mental issues were things I could relate to for the most part.

More to the point I finally found someone with whom I could relate. I often refer to Asperger wiring screwing with my viewpoint on things compared to other people because having this perspective is very lonely. It's hard for Normals to understand what it's like to be lonely but having an extreme aversion to relating to other people. It's not unlike having bariatric surgery and wanting that peanut butter brownie in the window with every tastebud on your tongue only to know that doing so could make you extremely, extremely ill. Not just an upset tummy. All out hours of agony ill culminating in sweats, palpitations and a toilet visit from the depths of Hades. See "Dumping Syndrome". Only this would be for social occasions and relating to people, not just food with sugar in it.

I haven't finished the book yet. Normally I finish before posting about it. But I was just too excited halfway through the book. Plus I discovered that he has a blog. I added it to the sidebar of this blog. He has his own website as well and a twitter account.

I think the best way to sum this up was summed up in my statement to my wife the first night I started reading the book; "How could you possibly have read this book and still not understand me better? This book is me." I learned that I'm not alone out here. There are others who have to cope with issues that I have to cope with (although it was a bit distressing to read the entry on his blog that points out there's a rather high incidence of suicide among people with Asperger's).

If you know someone with Asperger's this book can offer some insight to what it's like to be trapped in my head. If you don't know anyone with Aspergers,...well, it's still a great book telling you about a man with mental wiring that makes listening to neurotypicals a challenge in itself. Plus he worked with KISS. How can you not love a guy that made guitars that spit fire and smoke before it was a familiar spectacle on the performance stage?

Truly...I can't begin to describe how nice it is while reading this book to feel as if there are like-minded individuals in a world of neurotypicals. No matter how much we love our family there exists some things that they just can't relate to and they struggle to accept in us. This book highlights some of these issues, and maybe can help them understand a little better.