![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flyboy_foxSleep helped a bit, I think. Bearing in mind that last night I was literally communicating with Jei via keyboard-head-smashes (which, btw, look like: "[-p[-pp00"), I guess coherent typing is something of an improvement.
Guess I'll explain.
Yesterday I had to travel 100-ish miles to Bournemouth, to visit my university for a 'Needs Assessment'. What this entails is pretty much a solid three hours of being quizzed, grilled and interrogated about pretty much every aspect of my day-to-day life and my academic/social/vocational history. The reason I had to do this is because I am eligible for an amount of funding and support to assist me during my studies at Bournemouth University.
In other words, I would fall into the bracket of having "Additional Learning Needs" (ALN).
This is something that has been a bone of contention throughout my life. I'm not happy about it. The idea that I'm in some way faulty or broken bothers me deeply, and I guess I'm too prideful to admit that I have problems. The sad thing is, I can tick all the boxes. I'm a classic example of the failure at life with delusions of grandeur.
Where do we start? I was diagnosed at 14 with Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism. This is a label I have NEVER been content with. I don't believe that I am autistic, but at the time I was called a "textbook case". The diagnoses was re-evaluated at age 21, in which a revised report placed me as 'Borderline'.
I don't tell people that I 'have AS', because I don't really believe that I do. There's such a stigma to it... yet so many people seem to want to embrace the label as an excuse for their antisocial behaviour or stubborn rigidity. I will never use AS as an excuse for my faults. It's not cool. It's a cop-out.
I think the basis for my diagnosis stems mostly from the Sensory Integration issues I have. If I ascribe to being disabled in any way, it would be these that are my major problems. I'm not gonna list 'em, but suffice to say I do have a problem with processing sensory information. Sometimes it stutters and jars and becomes totally fractured, and sometimes a rush of it can knock me out like a punch to the head. Thus, the inevitable result is that I often feel like I'm walking headlong against an increasingly strong wind.
It manifests in a number of ways. I have Dyspraxic tendencies, which means I'm more than a little clumsy at times, I have an incredibly awkward and painful pen grip, and there are days when I can't do things as simple as turning on a tightly closed tap, opening a bottle/jar or fastening a stiff button. Of course there are other days when I can do these things fine. I also can't hold faces in my memory. I get very confused between left and right. My depth/scale perception is gloriously skewiff. Basically, on a bad day I'm a mess.
On a good day, I'm fine. I deal, it's no biggie, hey - I'm normal! So I like to forget that I have 'problems'. And I like to pretend that my crazy obsessions and inability to cope with change and my reliance on routine etc are all just part of my 'quirky' personality, and not cluster symptoms of being a very badly put-together person who uses fantasy to escape from the reality of simply being inadequate.
So day to day, I'm chipper, fine, relatively confident (as long as nothing throws me), ambitious even.
But it's amazing what three hours of going over past failings and listing everything you need help with and all the potential situations that can disorient you can do. Looking at the support package BU wants to offer me, I honestly feel like crying. It's not that I'm not grateful - I am! But that they think I fit the criteria for this... it's disheartening. I always play down my problems, but clearly I am so obviously a broken person that it does not matter.
I need to let go before I end up as a main feature on ED. Stop relying on fantasy. Stop pretending to be what I'm not. Grow up. It's about time, Jai, you're 23 and about to (finally) go off to university. I have to do some serious hard thinking.
I don't know what I'll do. But I have to do something before I delude myself into mental illness. If I don't break away now, I never will.
Guess I'll explain.
Yesterday I had to travel 100-ish miles to Bournemouth, to visit my university for a 'Needs Assessment'. What this entails is pretty much a solid three hours of being quizzed, grilled and interrogated about pretty much every aspect of my day-to-day life and my academic/social/vocational history. The reason I had to do this is because I am eligible for an amount of funding and support to assist me during my studies at Bournemouth University.
In other words, I would fall into the bracket of having "Additional Learning Needs" (ALN).
This is something that has been a bone of contention throughout my life. I'm not happy about it. The idea that I'm in some way faulty or broken bothers me deeply, and I guess I'm too prideful to admit that I have problems. The sad thing is, I can tick all the boxes. I'm a classic example of the failure at life with delusions of grandeur.
Where do we start? I was diagnosed at 14 with Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism. This is a label I have NEVER been content with. I don't believe that I am autistic, but at the time I was called a "textbook case". The diagnoses was re-evaluated at age 21, in which a revised report placed me as 'Borderline'.
I don't tell people that I 'have AS', because I don't really believe that I do. There's such a stigma to it... yet so many people seem to want to embrace the label as an excuse for their antisocial behaviour or stubborn rigidity. I will never use AS as an excuse for my faults. It's not cool. It's a cop-out.
I think the basis for my diagnosis stems mostly from the Sensory Integration issues I have. If I ascribe to being disabled in any way, it would be these that are my major problems. I'm not gonna list 'em, but suffice to say I do have a problem with processing sensory information. Sometimes it stutters and jars and becomes totally fractured, and sometimes a rush of it can knock me out like a punch to the head. Thus, the inevitable result is that I often feel like I'm walking headlong against an increasingly strong wind.
It manifests in a number of ways. I have Dyspraxic tendencies, which means I'm more than a little clumsy at times, I have an incredibly awkward and painful pen grip, and there are days when I can't do things as simple as turning on a tightly closed tap, opening a bottle/jar or fastening a stiff button. Of course there are other days when I can do these things fine. I also can't hold faces in my memory. I get very confused between left and right. My depth/scale perception is gloriously skewiff. Basically, on a bad day I'm a mess.
On a good day, I'm fine. I deal, it's no biggie, hey - I'm normal! So I like to forget that I have 'problems'. And I like to pretend that my crazy obsessions and inability to cope with change and my reliance on routine etc are all just part of my 'quirky' personality, and not cluster symptoms of being a very badly put-together person who uses fantasy to escape from the reality of simply being inadequate.
So day to day, I'm chipper, fine, relatively confident (as long as nothing throws me), ambitious even.
But it's amazing what three hours of going over past failings and listing everything you need help with and all the potential situations that can disorient you can do. Looking at the support package BU wants to offer me, I honestly feel like crying. It's not that I'm not grateful - I am! But that they think I fit the criteria for this... it's disheartening. I always play down my problems, but clearly I am so obviously a broken person that it does not matter.
I need to let go before I end up as a main feature on ED. Stop relying on fantasy. Stop pretending to be what I'm not. Grow up. It's about time, Jai, you're 23 and about to (finally) go off to university. I have to do some serious hard thinking.
I don't know what I'll do. But I have to do something before I delude myself into mental illness. If I don't break away now, I never will.
