The Love of the Loveless (Chapter 2) (3)

Cherry

By HarryC

Mon, 25 Feb 2019
  • 4600 reads
16 comments
 

      By ten to four, everyone had gone home and it was just the end-of-day tidying and wind-down.  Most of the staff were sitting around the main table, as usual - finishing off paperwork, drinking last cups of coffee, chit-chatting about their day, and their intentions for the evening.  A tone of end-of-week chirpiness was in the air.  Phil and Nova shut the office and came and joined in.  It sounded like a few of them were meeting up later for a beer.  It was Friday, after all.  A couple of days off.  Good hangover recovery time.

      As usual, I sat on the periphery listening in.  Occasionally I'd put in a word or two - if there was a gap or if someone looked my way, which wasn't often.  It was something I'd grown used to over the years.  With a couple of people, I could be part of the conversational centre of gravity.  If it was around five or six, I was a marginal participant.  With anything more than about eight people, I was just a spectator - even if I had something pertinent to add.  It had been the same from schooldays onwards, and I'd never really understood why (again, until the diagnosis).  I used to sit and study people to see what it was I was missing.  Was it tone of voice?  Facial expression?  Familiarity of subject matter?  Or was I simply not a likeable enough person?  It had always felt like other people were privy to some secret that was none of my business.  Even in situations where no one knew each other at the beginning - evening classes I'd been to, for instance, or training courses - I'd usually ended up the lone wolf.  It didn't bother me so much now.  I understood it better.  And I was happy enough to sit and observe. Part of me wondered, with this group, if it was the age factor.  In spite of not looking my age, or acting it, I was still older than the other staff by a few years.  Many years in a lot of cases.  The closest to me was Sue, who was fifty-two and had been at Pennethorne Manor since leaving school, so knew everyone and everything about the place.  Then there was Gary, who had turned fifty in March.  We had a drinks night at The Viking to celebrate - handy for me, as it wasn't far to walk home.  Gary was always a centre of attention.  He played lead guitar in a local rock band, Pump, and had a blonde cropped mohican with intricate mandala tattoos above both ears.  He'd spent many years in his youth nomading in India, North Africa, the US and Australia - playing music, dossing, sampling a variety of substances - so he always had plenty of stuff to tell.  His music and style naturally kept him in with the younger crowd.

      Maybe it was just my condition.

 

      At one minute to four, the hubbub was still in full throng.  The moment the long hand on the clock hit the four, though, people were standing up and gathering their things together, heading towards the door.  As we filed out, Bob sidled up next to me.

      "What you up to at the weekend, William?"

      He was the only one who ever called me William.  It was kind of a term of endearment, I think.  Even mum only ever used the diminutive.

      "Mum's birthday on Sunday, so we're going out for a family meal."

      He looked at me with a straight face.

      "Looking forward to that, eh?"

      He knew a couple of things.  He was one of the few I confided in.  He was also one of the few who'd taken a genuine interest when I mentioned my Asperger's.  His sister had it, too.  He knew the score.

      "Sister and hubby going to be there, I guess."

      "Yes."

      He nodded his head.

      "How old will she be?"

      "Ninety-three."

      "Blimey!  Good age, eh?  They made 'em to last in those days."

      "I hope so."

      He tapped my arm.

      "Oh, well.  Enjoy it anyway."

      "I'll try."

      I went down the side of the Centre and unlocked my bike from the patio fence, then cycled down the long route to the road, past the lake and the rehabilitation unit.  Across the grounds, at the main house, I could see the usual large group of wheelchairs at the smoking shelter - residents and staff alike having a puff and a chatter in the sun.  It struck me then, as it so often did, how special the place was.  The house itself was a vast neoclassical edifice, set in nineteen acres of parkland which included a small boating lake and an outdoor theatre.  It was built as the family home of a wealthy Victorian banker with clear delusions of grandeur and far more money than sense.  The charity had acquired it sometime in the 1950s, when the family fortunes had finally dried up.  The house itself was the main residential block, with the coach house used for residents with learning disabilities.  Other bits had been added over the years - including the Centre where I was based: an agglomeration of wooden cabins, laid out almost like a Swiss chalet. The place had an indefinable feel to it - shut off as it was behind high parkland walls on the outskirts of town, away from the main pitch and sway of life.  When I cycled in the main entrance in the mornings, it was like entering another zone of existence altogether.  It felt safe and inviting, like it was in its own bubble.  Here you are, it seemed to be whispering, along its tree-lined pathways, around its walls, through its winding passages.  It's alright here.  You're safe again now.  I'd never felt that in a place of work before.  In all the care jobs I'd taken in those ten years since it all went wrong - dad's death, the divorce, the breakdown, the need to break out of the old life and find something else before it was too late - this was the one where I felt settled. 

      Ten years already.  It seemed almost impossible.  So much happening.  Maybe that, too, was a natural aspect of getting older - the way that time seemed to telescope down.  As a kid and a teen, it all seemed so large and far away.  A great long highway, winding off through a Claudian landscape of mountains and valleys to a far distant horizon - so far and so distant it was barely possible to discern the point where the land ended and the sky began.  Now, that horizon seemed firmly in view.  I couldn't see beyond it, but I knew it was there - some days seeming closer than others, like the way light refraction makes distant objects look far closer than they are.  Like that pier head I could see from my window, which some days seemed so far and tiny, and other days seemed so close that I could almost pick out individual details. I looked back at the distance I'd covered - some of the mountains I'd scaled.  I wondered about some of those forks I'd reached.  Those other paths I could have taken, but didn't.  If there were parallel universes out there, maybe things had turned out differently after all.  Maybe nothing in my past had been lost. 

      Maybe one day I'd find out.  

 

 

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Comments

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

Wonderful fluent writing. There are quite a few names without faces - for me at least - at the moment, but as you say, this is a work in progress and you don't need to bother with suggestions like that at present. I'm very pleased to see more of this - thank you Harry!

 

Submitted by HarryC on

Thanks, Insert.  I've not struggled so much with a piece of writing before.  Currently up around 30k words, and I'm still not sure where I'm heading...

Submitted by skinner_jennifer on

You've written such an informative story here and handled it so well. I very much enjoyed reading.

Jenny.

 

Submitted by HarryC on

Thanks, Jenny.  Glad you enjoyed.

Submitted by celticman on

what is a Cluadian landscape? I like this a lot. A hidden world. 

 

Submitted by celticman on

https://britishpicturesque.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/claudian-landscape/

I googled it. yeh, got it. 

 

Submitted by HarryC on

Heavily-idealised, of course, like a lot of those landscape painters!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Lorrain#/media/File:Amanecer,_1646%...

Submitted by HarryC on

And thank you for the cherries, folks blush

Submitted by Di_Hard on

I like the portraits of other people you bring out each part, and also the unfolding of the narrator. It is kind of like the card game at the moment, not knowing what you are aiming for but that you are going somewhere.

I was thinking about paths when I was walking this afternoon, too :0)

Does ANYONE  look people in the eyes? All the time? Do you think they notice if you don't?

 

Submitted by HarryC on

Paths have become a bit of an obsession with me lately!  Parallel universes, etc.  I wrote a novel once (unpublished) about a man who dies and in the 'afterlife' is offered the chance to see what would have become of his life if he had made different decisions at various important junctures.

In some, he would already have died.  In another, though, he would still be alive.

The eyes thing... I simply cannot look at anyone in the eyes.  I've lost count of the number of job interviews I've had where I've given (I think) a really good interview, but not got the job... and the feedback has included 'Unable to maintain eye contact with the interviewer', or similar... which is, of course, generally seen as a sign of untrustworthiness or deceit.  The irony there is that many autistic people (myself included) do not like deceit or manipulation.  We once had a vet who had Asperger's and she would simply keep her eyes closed the whole time she was speaking to you.  I don't go that far!

I'm finding this a real task.  Sometimes, when I start something, I get this gut feeling that it's going to be alright and reach a conclusion.  But then I usually write short fiction.  Something longer is obviously more challenging... and I can't work to plot.  So I can only go with instinct and listen to the character.  I still only have a vague idea of what's going to happen and what it's going to be about.  Anne Lamott in 'Bird by Bird' (one of my favourite books about writing) talks about Polaroids.  You look at this blank card... and then very slowly, a picture begins to emerge.  I'm seeing a few features come through - but I'm still not quite sure what I'm looking at yet!  There are days when I just think I can't go any further with it and need to just give up and start something else.  Sometimes, it's hard to even get any more than a couple of dozen words out.  It may hit the buffers yet.  I hope not, but I can't be sure.

Submitted by Di_Hard on

It must be hard when it is a mixture of autobiography and fiction? You have all the characters already do you think it would help if you concentrated on inventing some stuff for all the characters apart from the narrator? What would make a change in their lives?

 

Submitted by HarryC on

Thanks... yes, that's already something I'm working on.  The principal thing has to be the change that comes over Will as the story moves along - things that happen that force a reassessment. 

And I'm reassessing my own life in tandem.  Lots of changes have taken place recently.  Lots of things have come together that have made me question my own thoughts and feelings.

I keep a collection of quotes on my desk:

"I write to find out what I didn't know I knew." - Robert Frost

“I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.” - Flannery O'Connor

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” - Joan Didion

'I write to discover things: to learn how to think and to know what I feel. I puzzle out problems, some of them personal and some of them of larger scope, but still personal. The imagination interests me, its patterns and imagery, its silences and its shouts; I like to explore what gets into it and lodges there. Reading until the world disappears and is replaced by the making of the mind's eye gives me the greatest pleasure; when I write, I stumble after this experience. I also believe writing makes something happen, in spite of evidence to the contrary, so it's important to take part through words and pictures made of words and ideas made of both.'  Marina Warner

Yes yes yes... to all of that.  It's basically what's carrying me through this.

And another important one, too - which I think too many writers (including myself) lose sight of in the search for glory:

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." - Cyril Connolly

Hm... well, maybe I'll be a bit flexible with that one!  It's certainly nice to be able to share on a place like this, where we all understand the ups and downs, the joys and frustrations, the failures and successes - big or small.

Submitted by Rhiannonw on

Concerning the 'eye contact thing' you commented to Di about – Do you think part of the problem may be often the impression being given that it means longer eye-contact than is really right or necessary. I know it can be painful for those with Aspergers, but I have felt that sometimes some try to hold the eyes too long, and that isn't comfortable for anyone. I've been trying to think about what I do, and I think it's a very short 'catching of the eye' and glance away, but trying to have a friendly smile as I do so which lasts longer. I've no idea if that is any help to anyone, or whether my self-analysis is correct! Rhiannon

 

Submitted by HarryC on

Thanks for your input, Rhiannon.  It's something that's often discussed on Aspie forums.

I tend, now, to try to hold for a couple of seconds if I can - but it's never easy.  It is a bit of a myth, to be fair, that we avoid eye contact altogether (although there are extreme cases, like that vet I mentioned).

It's quite a complex issue, and many think it's bound up with the 'empathy' issue (about which there's a lot of misunderstanding).  Empathy itself falls broadly into two catergories: Emotional empathy (feeling without thought) and Cognitive empathy, which is the more analytical side of it: being able to see someone's emotional response to something and also understand what's causing it.   Non-autistic people, so thinking goes, have a good balance of these.  People with autism, however, do not.  They can see that someone is in distress... yet still find it hard to process and respond.  I know, for instance, that if someone bursts into tears in front of me... I simply don't know what to do.  I can't offer comfort.  I can see their distress, and in a sense feel it.  But I can't respond to it in a way that many other people would (a reassuring arm, a comforting word).  Which is why Aspies get labeled 'cold and unempathetic'.  We can't integrate the 'emotional' and the 'cognitive' very well.  Where this ties in with eye contact - again, so the thinking goes - is because it brings 'emotional overload'. Trying to listen to what the person is saying as well as gauge the emotional intent.  It's probably, also, why so much meaning is missed, given that the eyes communicate so much - and only a small percentage of communication is verbal.

My own personal jury is still out on it all!  There are so many theories out there.  The one that I think is most interesting at the moment, though, concerns the way the brain builds mental models of things going on in the world.  So called 'predictive coding'.   Most non-autistic people are able to build 'variables' into those models and understand a broader pattern of behaviour.  For autistic people, though, the 'variables' become the focus, and divert from the broader picture.  It reminds me of the old saying 'You can't see the forest for the trees.'  People see a whole forest.  I'm looking at the tree!  A typical brain might chalk up a stray car horn to a chance variation in a city soundscape and tune it out.  To the autistic brain, though, every chance beep becomes an intense focus of attention.  When you then translate all of that to dealing with that most unpredictable thing of all - another human being - you can see where problems might occur!

It pains me now to think back on opportunities missed.  It was only a few years ago that a woman friend pointed out to me that I completely miss flirtation signals.  I still don't get them now!

And now I've done another 'typically' Aspie thing and gone on and on at huge length about my special subject, and bored everyone to tears crying

Submitted by Rhiannonw on

No, really, that's all very interesting. The focussing on one thing not the general view I've noticed in other ways. I do think that being yourself and knowing you are concerned when someone is upset, is far better and appreciated than rushing into  a gesture you aren't at ease with.  Rhiannon

 

Submitted by HarryC on

I think I would agree.  On the few occasions that I have tried that - in my last job, for instance, there was a service user who often would ask for a reassuring hug - it always feels awkward and uncomfortable.  I loved my mother like the world - but I always found it hard to hug or kiss her.

The focusing on the particular rather than the general, too, probably goes a long way towards explaining why autistic people - of all abilitiies - need structure and routine, and become anxious about disruptions.  With lower-functioning people (I hate the 'functioning' terms, but they're the ones mostly  used) that can manifest in much more catastrophic extremes of behaviour.  If I'm 10 minutes late home from work, it's a big deal, but I'll manage it.  With some of the people I work with, a change like that could easily lead to a broken window, or worse...