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Personal rambling

All my life partners (all women) have, to one degree or another, said I am ‘difficult.’ and ‘obsessive.’

Neurodiverse? Maybe: 

• As a teenager I collected a label of ‘Moody’ from my girlfriends but that showed up later in life as a problem with a periodic cycle of depression.

• As far back as I can remember I carried painful anxiety; a tight wad of inexplicable fear - based on nothing I could think of, lodged just below my rib cage. I hefted this around in the background of everything I did until I was in my thirties when it disappeared for no tangible reason. But all my activities were still performed to a good, principled and sometimes high standard, despite my friend in the background. 

• I’ve never been able to make small talk and have always avoided situations like parties or social groups in the pub. I have though, throughout my working life, excelled at talking in groups on a specific subject; possibly for too long and loud, to my detriment.

• Always happy on my own, for the last couple of years and long before the Covid crisis, I’ve been a contented well schooled hermit living within the four walls our cottage and the confines of my studio garden room. Social life is via the computer and programs such as Facebook and e mail. Seclusion was made necessary by the difficulty of mobility and the avoidance of air pollution to prevent the worsening of moderate COPD. But the whole point in this context is my contentment with my own company.

• Here’s an odd one. When I worked as a tradesman, I was often asked to do ‘foreigners’ - jobs done privately, not for my employer. My problem was that I could never give a price for the job or ask for money. This was a complete mental block; an impossibility. The same contingency as the next oddity.

• When first married, the immediate necessity was to find somewhere to live. 

I was useless. 

The act of phoning or going to knock on a door to ask about an advertised flat, to me was a flaming barrier covered with barbed wire; my wife or a relative had to do all the asking. 

Yet when I worked in social work, phoning and other means of communication were good skills, especially one to one and group work; listening and psychotherapy carried out at an advanced level with full empathy. Maybe it was because I was doing something complex, specific and not irrelevant social conversation or activity?

Am I on the autism spectrum?