Moving out, learning life

It's the first night in my new apartment. I've brought an inflatable matress, a sleeping bag, and some pillows, and that's pretty much all that's in here now. That and some toilet paper I bought earlier today. I brought a toothbrush, but forgot to take tooth paste. I have also brought some dental floss, but I have nowhere to dispose of it after use. So I'm skipping dental care this evening.

It's been a long time since I posted anything here, and I'm not sure I've even mentioned that I was planning to move out from my mother's... well, I've been planning to move out from my mother's even since before I moved in. Because for eight years I had a student apartment, but I never really lived there. Except the first couple of years. After that, visits to my mother's began to last for weeks, even months. Among many reasons for this was that the collection of stuff I had laying around there grew for each month I stayed, so it became more and my base of operations; at the student apartment, I shared kitchen and bath with up to four other people, which was more of a challenge than I was aware of at the time; and after a while, the habit of heading towards my mother's rather than home became so entrenched, it was mentally hard for me even to try anything else.

When I wanted to convince myself to go to my own place, it felt to me like a kind of anxiety. Thinknig about it now, it can also have been a kind of confusion I think might have something to do with autism... the confusion of making a decision, when you call up mental representations of every possible pathway and have to bring one to the foreground, and the effort of doing that is so high that you'd so much rather fall back on routine, turn on the auto-pilot.

That sensation feels very much like anxiety to me, and when I think of it, I don't believe it's restricted only to autism. Like with most other things I associate with autism, really. It's the degree and pervasiveness and extra effort of it that makes me different enough to benefit from a diagnosis.

Anyway, eight years is the maximum limit on student apartments, and seeing as I hardly lived there anyway, it was for the best that I eventually had to move out. (Apologies to other student that might have needed that apartment more.) And since then, I have been living with my mother for real. Which is a bit different, because then I can't just go somewhere else if one of us should need some time alone. And it's worked out well enough, we get along great, but, yeah, I've missed having the opportunity of privacy. Particularly over the last few years, when things have been coming together for me mentally, I've missed having a place to build a life in.

Or I should say grow a life, because that's how I'm trying to do it... that's why I left my mother's at around midnight, carrying a sleeping bag and a couple of pillows, even though I'm not actually moving out for some weeks yet. Because I want to start quite literally from the ground, learn how the place works, fantasize on where I will put all the furniture. (Same furniture I had in my student's apartment, only there is more than twice the space now to put it in.)

Same thing with tooth paste and waste bin – I'm thinking that because I don't have those things now, I'll remember to go out and buy them tomorrow, and that way, I'll learn from experience what things that ought to be present in a day to day life. Maybe I won't drift back to my mother's place this time around. (It also helps that I've learned a very big lot about myself since my last try at living on my own.)

Now, the apartment: I have been so very lucky. For one thing, it's only a five minute walk from where I lived before. That's why it was easy to go over just around midnight, with my sleeping bag and my couple of pillows. And it means I don't have to leave my neighborhood, which has been one of the reasons I've been reluctant to move until now – I've lived here as good as all my life, am familiar with all the streets (though for some reason not with street names), have my favorite coffee shop here, am even starting go get a favorite pub here. I feel at home here.

And for another thing, there's a convenience store in the block next to mine, a hardware store less than a block away (for when I need things like a waste bin. Or frying pan.) A bookstore and a movie theatre as well. That favorite coffee shop? If I lean out the window, I can see it from here. And for a third thing, it has a fairly comfortable size, and a fairly comfortable prize. I had really not believed I'd be able to afford something like this. And my landlord, well, I've a feeling he's a really good guy. If nothing else because the friend-of-a-friend I got it through says so, and that person has been living here for a long time.

That's what I'm planning to do. Live here for a long time. Figure out what's what, and how to keep up with change. Grow myself a life.

More about Hirundo

I have reached a turning point in my life, and I have remained there ever since. Or rather, there have been several turning points. There was the one in 2011, but the one I refer to happened back in 2007. And then there were the turning points of 2005, 1998, 1995, and 1984. They are mostly about how well I do with the people around me, how well I do with practical stuff, how well I like myself. They are probably a bit about growing up with undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome as well. Maybe I ought to call them milestones instead – but no, they are turning points, they did turn everything around for worse, or better, or both. The one I have remained in, the one in 2007, was one of the good ones.

In 1984 I was moved to a new kindergarten, one closer to where my mother worked. I was five at the time. The first day, I got into some sort of argument, and became angry in a very expressive way. Or at least, I remember it as the first day… there has probably been some editing since. I may have been that angry before, I may have had problems in the old kindergarten as well, but in my memory, that was the start of a ten-year period where I was publicly, expressively angry almost every day. (By expressively angry, I mostly mean yelling, screaming, complaining. Sometimes throwing things.)

At the time, I felt strongly that almost everyone was against me, that provoking me into anger was everybody's dearest hobby. I take a more nuanced view today. Now first, everybody was certainly not against me. I had a group of friends that took good care of me, and looking back I have just as many fond childhood memories as painful ones. Second, while some people did enjoy getting a rise out of me, and did so whenever they could, many just happened to say the wrong thing. I would easily misattribute people's intentions, and I was on high alert for any insult or humiliation, self-fulfillingly believing that conflict was people's normal way of interacting with me.

There is a lot to say about my childhood, and if I keep writing about myself I am likely to return to it. Right now, the main point is that there was a lot of conflict, I was on high alert for most of the time, and I can still slip into that mind-set on occasion.

In 1995 I went to school carrying a board I had made myself with the text "this is not a desperate cry for attention". I carried it around the entire day, and then never picked it up again. This was met with a lot of concern from the teachers of my school, but it was very well received by the other students. The students took it as it was intended: A rather sophisticated joke.

This stunt was the culmination of a change I had been going through for probably a year, a year and a half, getting more confident, discovering more of an identity. I had decided to become a more spontaneous person, and then gone on very systematically about it. The idea was that if I kept doing strange things that popped into my mind, I would sooner or later get into the habit. So I kept doing that for the next five years.

This version of me may sound as a rather annoying person to be around, and maybe I was, but I also found out that I got a lot accepted by people that way. I have a theory as to why. I don't pick up on all the information I need to make my interactions with people go smoothly, but the friction is so subtle that it's not immediately obvious to people. When I act in a more obviously eccentric way, it drowns out that sense of dissonance. People know what they can expect from me, and they can correct for it.

I didn't have any of those ideas back then, I just learned that for some reason, this way of being worked better.

For the next three or four years, I became very creative, very productive. I got along with people, I established some long-lasting friendships, I had a lot of writing projects, and I founded a science fiction fan club at my school that is still doing well today. There was some movement in my love life.

After this good period, the beginning of 1998 marked the beginning of some really bad years. I stopped being creative and productive, found myself unable to write, I was anxious, and depressed, and angry, mostly angry. Angry at things in general for not making any sense. Angry at people for not making sense. Angry that no one could reach inside my head and help me make sense of things. I am not going to say much about those years, only that I wasn't a very good person. As for what set it off, well, for one thing, I was finishing school, and that meant a lot of things changing at the same time. I had little mental resources to deal with this change, having spent so much of myself in the years before. And my eccentric persona stopped working for me. I took it too far, and it did became annoying then, rather than endearing.

After the really bad years came a long run of just not very good years. In 2001, I decided I wanted to study clinical psychology – not so much to solve my own problems, as to make some use of the introspective habits I had developed. The idea was that the methods I used to make sense of myself might also be helpful to others. I spent two years on the introductory program, to get good enough grades for the clinical program, and once I got in, I did fairly well. The first half of the program was about theory, research, method, and I liked those things.

In 2005 I was part of a popular, Norwegian reality show. It was a rather nice one. It was about collaboration, not conflict; about challenge and mastery, not humiliation. There was on on-screen conflict. No one was ever voted out. The idea was to take a group of geeks and try to make them into a football team. (Or maybe nerds, we don't really use that distinction in Norway; the definition was "someone with an intense interest in really anything at all," and we ranged from autograph collectors and passionate musicians to gamers and science fiction fans.) I was one of the worst football players and one of the most popular characters. My eccentric persona was working for me again.

I don’t know if this is really a turning point or not. It did have an impact on my life, and on the events that followed. Being recognized by everybody, interviewed in every kind of media, paid to appear around the country, all those things were fun, but also exhausting. Especially the bit about being recognized. People would shout my name or the name of the show as I walked by, would approach me, some in a nice way, some more testosteronically, and in my head it became much too similar to when I was a child, people flocking around me, waiting for a display of my personality.

Then 2007. I went into the practical section of my studies, and after a week I had to leave the clinical program. As soon as I actually got to interact with clients, it became clear that I wasn't suited as a therapist at all. I acted nervously all the time, made some poor decisions behind the scenes, and everything was just confusing and overwhelming. All this didn't come as a complete shock, there had been some worries about my behavior the year before, after some role-played therapy sessions I had done with my classmates. It didn't take long, though, before I recognized this as a good thing. That week in practice hadn't been very enjoyable at all, and after just a few hours, grief was replaced with relief. Now I could do the things I wanted to do instead.

I was moved within the psychology department the to the non-clinical Master's program, became very delayed with my thesis, and didn't get my degree until the end of 2013. I also went into therapy for myself, not for the first time, but for the first time I understood that there had to be some larger, underlying cause to all of my others problems.

In 2011, I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. I had suspected for a while, but after the diagnostic interview, as I got the diagnosis confirmed, it felt as if I had passed a high-stakes test. It provided me with a personal identity, a cue to re-organize my life around needs I never really knew I had, and a code-word that gave me extended rights within the Norwegian welfare system. And that's how I have spent my time since then: Living on welfare, re-organizing my life, getting comfortable with my new identity. And finished my master's thesis at a slow pace.

And now, that it is finished… I know with myself that I am still at that turning point from 2007, whatever that means. Since 2007, I have been mostly waiting for things to fall into place, and while many of them have, I still take very little initiative. I'm done with my studies, but I'm still waiting for counselling to work out what sort of jobs I am suited for. (If I had only been good with computers, things would have been easier, but I'm not one of those autistics.) I'm still waiting for the courage to move out from my mother's apartment. I have improved my interpersonal skills, but I still don't have the initiative to get a more active social life. Outside my immediate family I have three or four friends that I get together with three or four times a year each. When it comes to physical intimacy, my only partner since even a bit before 2007 has been myself. Although I am a rather good lover to myself, if I get to say so myself.

When I look back over the past seven years, it's as if very little time has passed. Oh! when they finished Battlestar Galactica, was that really so long ago? The role-playing game of Itras by that I published together with a friend, has it been out for six years? That writing class I took, can that have been back in 2008? The teenagers that still recognize me from when I was on TV, were those kids even born at that time? And my father… who moved to Spain in 2007 and passed away there three years later… Is it really seven years since the last time I met him on the street as he was walking his dog? I have spent all that time waiting.

And… it has been necessary, and good for me. But waiting has become so much of a habit, and I am not sure if I remember how not to, how to do things. No, I am doing things with myself, but they are almost all internal. Pondering this or that social skill. Trying to learn by reading. I am growing a bit impatient now. There was always moments of impatience, flashes of frustration. But I did have that thesis to finish…

I have organized this brief autobiography into a series of stages, to give a bit of background for this attempt at an autobiographical blog – and to sum up the state of things – and, as always, because I enjoy talking about myself. Where the blog goes on from here is a bit more uncertain, as is the unfolding plot of my autobiography, as I will be reaching for the next turning point without really knowing how, as I will try to get out of the habit of waiting.