Writing Your Own Life History

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I wanted to toss out the idea that some people might find it helpful to write your own, for lack of a better term, autistic autobiographies, life histories with Asperger's autism, etc.

For those of you who have done so, and your writing is on the web, I would personally like to read it. Mine is here:

narrative.neurelitism.com

I have been continually revising it over the last few months. In writing it, I have, in effect, discovered myself at 51 years old. The process has been very liberating.

I find it too hard. I get bogged down in details, and then get frustrated, and then give up because I also can't force myself to remember things so then I start falling back on what I've heard people say. That's every time I've tried, including for things like school assignments. I also find it really unpleasant to remember certain periods of my life, so I prefer not to think about them.

I've also been pressured to do so a good deal as an adult, and I really don't like that pressure. I'm glad it was good for you, though. I also collect autistic people's autobiographies (when they are in book form) because I am intending to make a searchable index of them (I originally collected them to not feel so alone in the world when I was living alone with no nearby friends).

I prefer talking about my life pieces at a time, because that's how I remember it, I don't remember the whole thing at once, and I can't force myself to remember, it's so much easier to write about my life when it's triggered by something else I write about. I have a blog (Ballastexistenz) where I write in general.

Perhaps in my case, it is a matter of age. I have had quite a few years to get a perspective on my life. Most of the events I wrote about took place in the 1960s and early 1970s. I am detached enough from that period to where it doesn't really upset me to write about it - almost like I am writing about a different person.

I had been writing mine for ages, but now I've discovered I have aspergers, so the whole thing needs to be re-evaluated.

I've been wanting to do that, but I've been too lazy to get started.

I don't like writing too much. I don't ever plan on writing an autobiography. I rather live for the future than think about the past.

For a long time, I had tried to forget my past - to suppress it and make believe it never happened. I am not dwelling on the past, but I am trying to learn from it. I realize that who I am now is, to a great extent, a product of my prior experiences.

hello Mark,

I am involved with several other late blooming Aspies that are compiling their collective and separate thoughts on the subject. Dredging all that stuff up had better be therapeutic is all I can say at this time!

ciao,


Merle

I am considering writing my own life story, it is going read a bit like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night
The last time I wrote something intellectual, one of my work mates didn't believe I wrote it.

Hey, Merle. Very nice. Do you all plan to put it on the web? When I first thought of writing my "aspie autobiography," I suppose I expected to see a lot of others who had done the same. I was surprised that I did not find any.

I've always had a yen to do this but could never get a unifying theme on which to pivot. Since the assessment, I realise that the AS was the crucial piece of the puzzle and so writing an autobiography feels simple now. I have just written a book about my relationship with someone who is AS and I'll be sending it off for publication this coming spring. I'm a writer and have published in my field but the relationship book is the first thing I've seriously written without a commission.

Does anyone else think that the Dog Incident book was rather a wooden stereotyped account? I wouldn't have been able to write so lucidly about my inner life at that boy's age.

I had never heard of it before. However, I read the summary on Wikipedia. Well, all I can say is that it is nothing like me (past or present).

I've never thought of writing my autobiography but I have been keeping a diary for the last thirty years or so, I suppose that would be a good start. There isn't an entry for every day because either I would have viewed this as a chore or got bored, I just write something when I feel like it.

Ed Almos

Writing about my "autistic" life seems too...narcissistic for me; besides, I'm just another boring old human whose specialty is not communicating to people out there and in person.

To each their own however.

I'm the same way. Whenever I set out to write about something, I have this compulsion to describe everything, so I end up going into detail far too much. The end result is an exceedingly long piece of writing which, in effect, gets nowhere.

Besides, writing about myself seems uninteresting. I do like describing random scenes that touched me in some way, or anything else I find memorable (it can be anything - a landscape, the clouds in the sky, a random cat I met and rubbed cheeks with, a kind of flower I'd seen somewhere, an especially emotional conversation with a friend, something I'd read about in a science book that amazed me, etc.). But it always remains just that, fragments, bits, with a focus on the visual detail, but not anything resembling a linear description of my life, specifically not the mundane events which one just doesn't want to remember since there is no point.

I started to do that a few weeks ago as part of a "self diagnostic" process. I wanted to have a retrospective on my life till now, an therefore started to write it down from my first memories, partly completed by memories of my parents, taking a special attention to the different diagnostic criteria and known traits, which ones fit or explain my life and which don't.
I find it to be very worthwhile, and as Mark said, liberating. So many memories are being triggered by other memories while writing them down, situations I did not think about for many many years.
As not being officially diagnosed I don't think I would ever make that story available on the net, but even writing for my own use is nothing short of amazing and gives an exciting new view on myself.
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