I got asked in which language I think in, and it’s a pretty commonly asked question because I very readily admit that I don’t think in English and I’m non verbal, I only pass for normal, sometimes.
It’s taken me a very long time to be able to explain things in a way that people can understand. And now that autism is becoming more and more of common knowledge as well as accepted, I feel pretty comfortable explaining.
I was raised that all of this is BS, and so part of me believes that all of this is just stupid BS, but this is true for me, bs or not.
I don’t think in what most people would call a language.
Do you know anything of Plato’s perfect forms i think the theory is called? Take that, then throw in abstract shapes that I don’t have words for, and colors and you have how I think. Throw in about 20 different hallucinations of voices speaking in at least 5 languages (it feels like I’m in a crowded coffee house), most of the times the English speakers are practicing conversations or predicting what’s gonna happen (due to past behaviors of whatever and very complex math that I don’t know how to explain) and that along with the Navy is how I learned how to speak in real time, I have predicted how so many conversations might go, if you truly catch me off guard, and it does happen, I can take hours to figure out how to respond.
Also if I’m in to much pain or to sick or to emotional, my ability to remember how to speak English gets lost, though sometimes I can speak at least simple words in other languages. I can almost always write or type though.
And my hearing is stupidly good, I can hear so much, the electronics, all the individual conversations around me, when people are walking, I’ve been in sound proof rooms and still heard the muffles that are happening out of the room. I have to constantly measure how loud the blues kids are, because am I sure they are being to loud? Or am I just being over sensitive, I typically play something like audible at a specific level and as long as they don’t drown out my book, they aren’t to loud. And if I shut my door and can clearly hear anybody, they are being to loud, even more so if they drown out my book.
Funny enough, if I listen for accents, I can sometimes use them to trace where someone is from, I use to have fun guessing which part of Asia someone was from, and could get pretty specific about which part of China they were from if it was the south east, even before I went there, not knowing Chinese, and sometimes I only heard them speak English.
Also, it’s weird that if someone has more visual way of thinking, like when they are thinking about a tree, they picture an actual tree, I have almost zero problems understanding them no matter how broken their English.
However, for people who think of tree and only think the word tree, it can be a struggle to understand even adult native speaking English where that’s the only language they know
And omg, I can just be completely lost if you just dead pan from a book, I know your making sounds, but I don’t understand them at all a lot of the time, some of my teachers would get really annoyed until one day in ASL my teacher was like, you understand me expect during quizzes.
And I realized, when he was doing quizzes, he would be looking at the book and just blandly signing, no thought went into what he was saying. When I pointed that out, I started passing the test without the struggle because I understood.
And did you know you can hear with more than your ears, every part of your body is picking up sound, you just don’t think about it because your ears have an actual filter for a lack of a better word, it does most of the work, but it doesn’t have to do all the work
I mainly “listen” for special awareness things, like who is where, or which way a sound is coming from. I don’t listen to words and stuff, but then I can barely understand words with my ears.
I do have “deaf spots” of my special awareness that are freaking painful. Anything that hovers around the height of my ankle (think dishwasher’s door fully open) actually kinda hurts if I get to close and I will just stop and try to figure out what the heck is bothering me, it’s annoying.
But what really gets people is how I “see” everything.
I struggle to constantly remember that people need more I think the word is “lumes” to see. Give me the light from the clock on the stove and I see just about every item downstairs, even around the corner, pretty clearly, but only in grayscale. However, if the power goes out and it’s cloudy outside, there’s nothing providing any lumes, right, this is what people consider my blue light at 5% is dark, which I think is quite bright. I prefer red or blue light at like 10 or less.
And direct sunlight actually does make me sick when I am in it to long. Which has caused so many problems.
Do you know what an exploded cad view is? For example, how many pieces do you think make something simple like a bedroom door?
Looking at my bedroom door I see it in multiple layers, one, the basic 3d view to walk around and whatever, how everybody prob sees the door
But I also the wooden door board by it’s self, the stuff attached a few inches away along what is being used to attached said stuff to the door between the
The handle is also exploded, sometimes I guess at the inner working of the mechanics and everything, sometimes I actually know it down to each screw, don’t forget the hinges, and the screws that are holding the hinges on, and the bar that that is connecting the hinges.
Or the babies small cage, it’s much simpler, ish, just being a few pieces of mesh wire held together by a crap ton of rings.
My wireless charger, I break it apart at the seam and will try to guess how the motherboard looks
But I don’t just do it for physical items, I do it software as well
Let’s say you are looking at this form from your phone, I not only see the phone in the exploded cad view, but my mind with do a deep dive in trying to figure out the OS of the phone, the code of the software.
I have always understood software better than English
When I was about 3 I use to spend my days in my papa (grandfather) lap as he did his computer coding, in hex, it was the 80s, I would point to the wrong bits of code on the screen, get a pat on the head, and later did that for math, when I was in college I had to program in basic C put it on a compiliar and then use the chip, but if I messed up, I would just look for my mistake in the ASCII and edit it there. I can’t program in ASCII, but I could tell what was wrong if it was a simple fix. I still remember Dr Rodgers standing behind me over my shoulder with a book he happened to have on ASCII trying to look up what the heck I was doing as I assured him I didn’t need to wait the like 5 or more minutes for the complier, and I didn’t
I can also go deeper into the physical aspect, have you ever wondered why which fabrics are used or where seams are placed? I kinda refuse to take more chemistry and biology classes because it doesn’t take much more me to add that later of information as well.
What about when I look at beings? Like people, animals, even plants?
Let’s start with plants, cause it’s the easiest. 1st, yeah, I think plants have a basic level of feelings, if they didn’t they wouldn’t evolve to try to get things to stop eating it. They also do have basic emotions, plants can wilt when then need something, or just have this full “bloom” when they are happy.
That being said, nothing is going to stop me from eating plants (or animals). I’m just not going to hurt more than what I need. I find it very funny that vegans don’t want animals hurt, but have no qualms hurting plants?
Bugs, bugs are um, ick. If they stay out of my house, I try to ignore them (except for what we feed our gliders) and I do try to put bugs found inside of buildings outside instead of killing.
People and animals it gets really complex, because what information are you getting when you look at anybody? If they are strangers? Body language, shoulders and feet are normally the first place I look because almost no being thinks about them to the minute detail to not give away a crap ton of info, where is it pointing, how are they compared to the rest of the body, emotions can be hinted at from there too.
This sounds a bit bad, but just bare with me. Shape and color of beings can speak of their origins. I know some basics of animal breeding, and if you look at someone who has roots from the middle of Africa and someone who’s family is 100% Irish, you can know that at a glance.
And knowing that information about a human, tied with how they hold themselves, and what they are wearing, you can make a pretty educated guess in their beliefs and what their reactions are going to be. Yes, okay, fine, stereotypes, but I’m talking about using them for like, this person prob isn’t going to want to look me in the eye when speaking, this person is going to be insulted if I don’t look them in the eye when speaking.
And I personally am not using stereotypes I have been taught. I am using ones I have learned from interacting with so many freaking people from all over the world, along with taking a handful of psychology, culture, and child development classes. I also outside of trying to predict their next action, wait for someone to prove they have whatever stereotype okay.
My dad, who i had no idea was actually a racist a*hole until was 16 explained it to me like this “I want you to judge people because of how they act around you, not because I taught you that all Mexican’s or Blacks are whatever. You make your own opinion because of what you personally see and feel. My feelings are wrong, I can’t change them, but I don’t have to teach them.”
… That being said, I still have to blink at a mix race family… But I know there is nothing wrong with it, his siblings really had no bones about speaking their feelings. Though my mama and papa did not like to openly speak ill of anybody.
And I watch the strangers, to gather information, to learn, I like learning.
I want to point out that it’s really hard for me to remember that people outside of my bubble are real, that you are actually on the otherside of your screen (and I know all about how the info is getting to you) is real, not just some clever AI.
But the people that I actually know, because I interact with them enough that I start to care more that I do about plants, which is you are happy and healthy, and outside of needing to interact with you for whatever reason is meh.
I see them as they are, I see them as I have seen them in the past, I try to remember little details that might change like their hair or maybe style of clothes. I see my idea of what their true name might be, which I might simplify in something meaningful but easy to say. Like I have a friend I call her Raven because, her hair color is much like raven feathers when she’s happy and healthy, she flits and hops around much like a bird does, smart, likes shiny things and so many more comparisons. All of our shared friends almost immediately picked up on that name because when you said Raven, you could clearly picture her, but if you used her legal name, you might struggle due it being a common name.
And by true name, I’m speaking of something akin to what the old Egyptians believed, your name is a sum of everything that you are, all your happy moments, all your darkest secrets. As you grow up, your name is more and more complex. Several cultures do this if I remember correctly.
… I can do a whole nother post about names, my dead name, as pretty as it is, wasn’t my name, nobody looked at that name and thought of me, but the time I was 12 I had hit 200 nicknames and stopped counting because nobody could agree what verbal components fit who I was. At home I barely remember having a name used at me, I always seemed to know when I was needed, though my papa STILL will call me by my youngest aunt’s name from time to time. Or will have to say all six of his kids names before remembering mine or giving up “you know which of you I am talking about” (my aunt is 10 years my senior while my uncle is 5 years my senior)
Though as soon as I started using Decinaty as a log in (because you did not use your real name online) did people started using it, or shorten versions of it that I realize that I found my name
And it wasn’t until my dead name was being weaponized, that I finally blew up at said person. I was waiting for my youngest to graduate high school before I changed it.
… I think I covered everything, no, I didn’t talk about smell, because outside of using it to know when something is wrong in my environment, or help me.judge when I’m cooking, I don’t really think about it…