How it feels to live in my autistic innerworld

Come, my pretties.  I’m picking up hitchhikers today, in the safest of senses.  We’re not climbing into my truck; we’re climbing into my brain.

My brain can be perceived as a map, with different towns representing concepts, subjects, and miscellaneous thoughts.  The roads between them link them together in unusual ways, with scenic winding routes and express, direct flights between towns one might not expect, but somehow manage to make sense.

It’s a busy place, with lots of traffic.  Everything gets to move, all things are considered.  That ant crawling on the balcony railing?  Gets a perspective, as I imagine life and the universe through its eyes.  There’s no reason it doesn’t deserve it.

And so it is with everything else, too.

There are some shortcuts, too, like a Favorites directory of most-visited links along the margin of an Internet browser.  Shortcuts to unusual topics that the average mind of the general population might not be used to clicking on.  Topics like metaphysics and biochemistry and human physiology and the afterlife and just how infinitely the color spectrum can be divided before one shade is indistinguishable from its neighbors.

Everything is personified, too–the ant on the railing, the colors on the visual light spectrum, and so on.  After all, colors aren’t thought to have neighbors in the general thought-stream of the general population.

Songs play in my head, too.  I don’t always realize I’m choosing them, but they’re in my head after all, so they must be my volitional choice on some level.  Today it’s “Rain Song” by Sunny Day Real Estate, a group that practically musically embodies how it feels to me to be autistic.

Nature is of utmost importance, as it is the factor of my world with which I feel the most kinship and the strongest connections.  The sky is infinite, as is the horizon, as are lifeforms.  Cats, of course, are royalty.

I need my external world to be as calm as possible so that my inner world can receive the proper energy allotment, which is a heavy investment.

My autistic mental landscape is mostly lacking in people, save for a select few in my inner circle.  Others matter to varying degrees, some much more so than others.  The general population matters least, as its members have historically ended up to be secret agents of pain, feelings of nakedness, and unnecessary self-doubt, and I no longer have room in my world for that.  Bah!  Humbug.

My landscape is vivid, with infinite color, ceaseless dot-connecting, and endless possibilities.  As new concepts are realized and learned, new nodes are built, as are connections between them and those already in existence.

Constructing these roads and redrawing the map to include the updated material is not difficult, but it takes time and energy.

Speaking of energy, it’s the rate-limiting step, the currency on which my world runs.  Without sufficient amounts, everything goes to sleep.  The traffic wanes, the lights go out, and all becomes quiet (unless, of course, my dreams are particularly active).

My world is not lonely.  There’s plenty happening inside.

I’m content here.  🙂

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