Aspie Obsession
After all, I'd still be autistic and I'd also still be me. We aren't all carbon copies of some original form. That being said, I may not be able to speak for all autistic people on how they handle their obsessions, but I can tell you that we all tend to be hyper-focused on what we're interested in, and little else. These "special interests" may manifest differently from person to person, or you may not even know someone has them if like me (when I was young) that person is good at concealing them.
I was a quiet child. That's an understatement. I was a selective mute for the first decade or so of my life. My sister had to talk for me a lot of the time. Needless to say, people didn't know me very well. They had to make a lot of assumptions because I was careful to conceal many aspects of my personality, and especially my obsessive nature.
If a psychologist were to ask me right now what was my first obsession looking back-- I think I'd pick music. Oh... everyone likes music, right? Many can even say they LOVE music I'm sure. But can they love it like an autistic person loves it? If you're reading this post and you consider yourself neurotypical (not autistic) ask yourself this question if music happens to be your thing: Have I ever loved music so much it felt like it was tormenting my soul? Did you ever love it so much you couldn't function? Ever put a song that moved you on repeat for an entire week? A month?
That's what my obsessions did to me. They tormented me and I could barely function in every day life away from them. I used to sit by my radio for endless hours with a blank tape cassette, recording my favorite songs and editing all the interruptions out. I didn't care about eating or outside activities. I didn't care if I saw my friends or pets. I was shackled to that radio and couldn't imagine being able to love anything or anyone the way I loved those songs. Oh, I had other obsessions too. I was obsessed with movies and television when they were made available to me, and from time to time, I'd become obsessed with some boy or girl. And those obsessions tormented me as well. Because I could never have them the way I wanted.
You can't eat music instead of food. You can't climb inside the movie screen and disappear from real life. Most autistic people have trouble feeling truly connected to the people around them. They don't know how to take care of the needs of others unless they share the same obsessions. So most of my friendships were to other weird kids, and then as I got closer to adulthood-- addicts. Which takes me to the obsession I developed once I was no longer a child; sex.
Intimacy was a foreign concept to me. Hugs were almost physically painful. Friendship was always riddled with anxiety and imposter syndrome. I did a lot of faking it. Because I was good at imitating others, I became a personality chameleon so that no one would see how limited I was as a whole person. That's what made sex so great. It was a genuine thing for me that helped fill in so many gaps. I was fascinated with its power and relieved that I was so good at it. That's what's great about aspie obsession. You become so hyper-focused on your interest that you master every aspect of it through endless research and consideration.
But sex became the glue to all of my romantic relationships, and over time, I began to feel that imposter syndrome kicking back in. Because I could give little else of myself, once a relationship would progress far enough for other things to become just as important in order to strengthen the bond, I would have to start sabotaging everything. Sure, there were other reasons I had problems in intimate relationships. I came from severe abuse and was diagnosed with PTSD when I was fifteen. I'd had my first nervous breakdown by eighteen. Then there was the fact that I tended to choose relationships with people who gave me a sense of familiarity, and all that was familiar to me was warped and unhealthy. But I have to wonder... if all those things were taken away, as an autistic woman, would I still have been a major target for predatory men? I think I would have. And I think I still would have used sex as the glue in all my relationships. Hell, even neurotypical people do that.
What's my point?
My husband has been diagnosed with ASD because I bothered to observe that his son had an unusual fixation with tractors and diggers. Yes, other young boys may love these same things, but not like this boy did. It was all he wanted to talk about. The only kind of toy cars he wanted to purchase. The only games he wanted to play online were games involving diggers and tractors. The only YouTube videos he wanted to watch were the same. Naturally there were other odd things that stood out about him, but his fixation on diggers was what I used to do my online research, and Aspergers was what kept coming up.
Suddenly my husband's obsession with fishing came to my mind. How it was almost the only thing he ever wanted to do on our free time. How he didn't seem to have an interest in friendships or any relationship (besides ours) outside of people willing to fish with him. Which led to his diagnoses and then my own. He and I have been misdiagnosed many times throughout our lives and needlessly medicated with crap that made life worse for us. I have pursued a career in a field that has absolutely wrecked me for two decades because I didn't know why I was, the way I was. It breaks my heart sometimes to think about how different things might have been if I had known much sooner, but it's comforting enough that I lived long enough, to know the truth at all.
Think you love music? Do you love music the way an autistic person loves music? Maybe you're not who you think you are if your answer was yes.
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