Megan Hammond - My Life With Aspergers

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First published in Australia in 2010 by

New Holland Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd

Sydney Auckland London Cape Town

www.newholland.com.au

1/66 Gibbes Street Chatswood NSW 2067 Australia

218 Lake Road Northcote Auckland New Zealand

86 Edgware Road London W2 2EA United Kingdom

80 McKenzie Street Cape Town 8001 South Africa

Copyright 2010 in text: Megan Hammond

Copyright 2010 in images: Gordon Hammond

Copyright 2010 New Holland Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

ISBN: 9781741107883 (pbk.)
e-ISBN: 9781921655463

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my whole family who have stuck by me,
also
to all the ladies in the writing group for their belief in me.

Firstly I would like to thank my long-suffering parents, my brother Cameron, and my extended family for sticking by me through thick and thin!

Secondly I would like to thank Gaby Mason who teaches the writing course and group that I still attend, for her support. An extremely big thank you goes to all the patient, wise, caring, wonderful, understanding, supportive women who have attended the group over the years including Caroline, Paula, Louise, Carole, Agnes, Faye, Helen and Ruth.

Id also like to thank Christine Paul, who was my teacher for the first writing course I had ever been to in my life. A thank you goes to another writing course run through the Manly Community College as well.

I would like to thank all my church and Bible study friends who have been there every step of the way along this road. I appreciate all their unconditional love, understanding and support, which have made me a better person.

I also would like to thank my other friends Jackie, Justine and Beck who have taught me different things when going out to places.

A big thank you goes to Dr Milch who has been there for me over the past 10 years or so when Ive needed help from him. Thanks also to all the staff at the clinics Ive been to for accepting me in extremely bad emotional states. They should be remembered more

Another thank you goes to all the professionals who have seen me over the years and their dedication to trying to find out what was wrong with me. We all know the mystery has been solved!

A special thanks to my patient and careful editors, Helen McGarry and Jenny Scepanovic. Their advice and understanding have been invaluable.

As Megans treating psychiatrist, it is an honour to have been invited to write this foreword.

Megans experience of Aspergers disorder is at the core of this book. This developmental disorder is diagnosed when there are deficits in social relatedness, communication skills and restricted areas of interest. This is commonly associated with emotional vulnerability and learning difficulties. It is one of the more common autistic spectrum disorders. Autism had previously been identified in one in every 1000 individuals. More recently autistic spectrum disorders have been recognised in one in every 100 people. This is thus relevant to the world we live in today.

Megans developmental experience has shifted on her journey from survival towards competence. To my mind, the production of this book is a milestone in this regard.

Megan has shared with us her very personal journey.

She describes how helpful it can be to find a label, a diagnosis, a way of making sense of her particular experience. As a professional, it is all too easy to focus on diagnostic and clinical issues. As a member of the general public, it can be hard to get your head around what this is all about. As a consumer, Megan has given us a glimpse of what this means for the individual.

Writing and other forms of self-expression offer a pathway for working through ones experiences. It has been exciting to share with Megan her motivation and purpose in the preparation of this book. Structure and deadlines are all a part of the ride. Creativity provides such an important outlet, an avenue to explore meaning.

Megan has shared her pain. Her confusion has been a source of profound distress, particularly within the domain of relationships. Her openness should be treated with respect. It is distressing that so often it is greeted with misunderstanding.

The following pages will add to the readers insight, tolerance and respect for those who experience developmental challenges. Megans writing is both generous and courageous. The journey is one that is all too human, one that will touch us all.

Antony Milch

MBBS FRANZCP Cert Ch Psych

I am not an animal! Nor am I retarded or even brain damaged! I am not someone elses project! I have very real and human emotions. Im not unlike you.

Its just that sometimes for me things are scarier to deal with because I havent got people-intuition. My world is ordered with routines while the outside world around me is powered by massive change and chaos. I am not blind to whats going on around me, yet I see things with often a very different slant or perspective.

I can hear a multitude of words and can take them very literally. Like the other night I heard, Were ladies and were allowed to wag or flap our gums!

It means talking, as I worked out, yet I was taking it literally, trying to do the expression for gums wagging. I must have looked a sight to the group of people I was sitting at a table with, but they didnt say anything to me. Luckily.

I love the sound, repetition, diversity and sameness of language because you can experiment with it and play with the different sounds. Sometimes I hear different words or sayings or things and I repeat them over to myself a few times. To feel words rolling off your tongue producing sound is amazing for me. Words are like raindrops soaking me with much needed information. But sometimes I get so confused with the different actions and reactions of people around me. Their doublespeak reminds me of the book 1984 in which information is twisted beyond comprehension.

Speech for me has always been extremely confronting because I dont speak properly or clearlyeven as an adult. I slur my words and talk reasonably slowly with a monotone that has no real expression or body to it.

Over the years, the drone has been a real drain for me as my confidence has gurgled downwards. Sometimes I became almost mute and asked others to do the speaking for me. It got to the point where my school friends would go up and ask for assorted lollies for me from the jars in the newsagency at the bus stop before school. They also helped find out things I wanted to know from the teachers.

Writing small notes and passing them to others in the class was useful for me because I didnt want to speak. Unfortunately the teachers didnt see it that way. I kept getting into trouble for passing notes in class. A few of them were intercepted by the wrong people who read them and then started hassling me even more as a result of it.

It didnt matter what I said or did because nobody ever really cared, listened to me or understood what I was feeling. Life was magic NOT!

I literally hated the sound of my own voice and wished many a time that I was mute, living in a world of silence. For me the silence was a whole lot safer as I didnt have to try to explain things.