Writing Your Own Life History

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I have an old journal still up from before I even knew what Asperger's was.

probablyacircle.co.nr

It's really strange to look at it now, because everything I have written in there is just one giant sign pointing to AS. Funny how obvious it all is now. People have told me my site is an interesting read, so, I trust them. Tons of archives on there, tons and tons of writing. Enjoy? Maybe?

One thing I'd suggest to people, if you're planning on publishing in print anyway (on the web is different), is do not write your autobiography until you've known and thoroughly absorbed the fact that you're autistic and what that means in your life, for quite some time.

I've seen the sort of things people write hastily (and excitedly) right after being diagnosed, and often they will not entirely agree with them five or six years down the line. It often involves a major shift in how people view themselves, and shifts like that require time to deal with. Often the shift is into a very standard-medical view of who they are in terms of being autistic (and in terms of what being autistic is), and then after a few years they have a less medicalized and more natural view of what it means, its place in their life, and what their life is like.

So if you've just been diagnosed relatively recently, it might be good to write an autobiography privately or on the web for self-understanding, but I'd wait awhile before publishing anything like that, because your viewpoint might change, and once something is in print you're stuck with it.

To be honest, I wrote my narrative for myself, not for anyone else. (Perhaps that is because of my Asperger's autism. Who knows?) I look at the hits tracker I have installed on the narrative page, and most visitors spend only a minute there. Since the narrative is more than 10,000 words, that is clearly not long enough for even the fastest speed reader to get through it. However, like I said, I wrote the narrative, and continue to work on it, primarily for my own benefit. The process has been like a kind of meditation.

I'm way younger, but I thought about doing the same thing when I learned that it was autism that was a part of my life at the beginning of 2007. But when I tried to describe what my world was like at a young age, it turned out that all words didn't quite fit my memories. I can remember everything and it's unfair that I can't put it into words, whereas I think I can say I'm a decent writer when it comes to short-stories and poems.
It's just that words don't do it - I mean, I did speak, but how do you write about a time in which you only spoke randomly to the outside, means, other people, but never to yourself? Just describing what I did isn't the real thing, there are countless texts from parents and doctors that do just that. Describing my thoughts is where it is at, but this just won't work out. I could write it in a poetic way or something that's closer to my own thoughts back then and today, but I want to verbalise it, translate it into what the rest of this planet is so fond about. I wrote a poem once that explained a great deal in a few verses, but nobody would understand what it is about, so I gave up on explaining for the time being.