Feel like your "soul" doesn't have a "voice"?

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Many of my problems at this stage of life boil down to feeling like I don't have a true "voice" (the rest can be traced to chronic health issues). What I mean is, while I can use language just fine, I don't feel like I can express the deeper "me", the part that makes me unique and that makes life worth living for me. Therefore, social issues seem in some way moot, like even if I was able to read social cues and fit in, I still couldn't share anything really personal.

I'm a very visual person, and I started a thread here about that. Many of the images in this thread come the closes of nearly anything I have seen to giving me that elusive "voice". In other words, I see that other people have a similar way of seeing the world, and attach emotions to the same sorts of things. Other times I have that sense when viewing photography online.

I think part of the issue is that this inner world is a combination of a lot of things--it connects stuff like the mathematical images in that thread, complex scientific ideas, the beauty of natural scenery, and moods, like the comfort of childhood and the intensity of romance. These things are connected in my mind in a way that doesn't really match anything in the external culture.

Also, I am not satisfied just expressing that "soul" to others who have the same focus I do. I feel the need to reach out to people who can show me other kinds of beauty and truth that I can't see with my own inner eyes. This doesn't seem to happen though. The only people who are that into visual complexity, and have a strong emotional reaction to it, are other math types with Aspergers.

I feel that having someone, a guide of sorts, to help me find that "voice", whether it's a form of drawing or painting, a kind of computer graphics, etc.--something that is accessible to people of other types--would be very helpful. Unfortunately, all the groups/venues I have seen that try and help people express themselves are full of "new-agey" sort of stuff--which quickly gets old.

Is anyone else in this "boat"?

I think I know what you mean.
I describe it as having a very strong self, but a very weak identity. I know that's a completely different angle to look at this from. The explanation can get complicated.

If you haven't seen the documentary on youtube about Daniel Tammet, then I think you would find it interesting.

Yeah, I can relate to that a lot. Most of the time I see no purpose in verbal communication because I can't verbalize the truth about who I am and my experiences anyways. I like to communicate with people by sending them music, but not everyone (heck, probably most people) functions that way. Sometimes I would try writing abstract poetry, but just about everyone I show it to would stare at it blankly. "Too abstract" for them.

I don't feel a need to express it to people who don't get it, though. I'm terrified of ostracization, and I feel like there are a lot of things that we as a society are just not ready for yet. Sometimes I come across someone who attempts to express something that this social consciousness isn't ready for, and the backlash and mockery they get terrifies the hell out of me. People don't want to hear about experiences that screw with their fundamental assumptions of what reality is, what is their place in the world, what infinite range of experiences are possible, stuff like that.

To explain the possible difference a bit from NTs --

I feel that emotions and images express what I think, although I am "gifted" with my use of language (hyperlexic, speak multiple languages, high verbal SATs, etc). For example, when a therapist asked me to rate my closeness to a friend on a scale from 1 to 10, I could only answer truthfully with the image that came to mind: that if I was a pond surrounded by trees, the friend was a leaf on that pond. Saying "4" would have been meaningless to me and a lie. I can provide the "4" answer but I have to translate it from the leaf, and that never really explains it.

The translation process is never-ending. It's like daily communication for me demands I constantly rewrite poetry into prose, render complex images in ASCII. "What did you do last weekend?" for me yields an image, a feeling -- a couch, a wall, people I saw, colors. By the time I can remember "Not much, what about you?" (the "right" social response), I've already become "weird" and half the time get a little anxious realizing this and fumble in my performance.

I think the strong difference between austistic folks and NTs is the level of interconnectedness within the brain. So I may have some connectors that are leaning heavily to some nonverbal areas and which aren't so well connected to the "social language" parts of my brain.

The thing is I can speak in poetry very well...but that leads to basically nonsense in conversation and really turns people off. So I think my language and image sections are connected OK, just not to the social script parts -- and also the parts that require gestalt-type generalizations of what the images mean enough to put comprehensive words to them. That requires a real change in gears and takes a little while longer for me. NTs probably have better connectors there than I do.