Asperger Syndrome Part 3- My Childhood- Copyright Robert Fullarton

I hated sports. My father tried earnestly to get me to play football. Both my father, brother and Uncle Peter were avid followers of the soccer English League, with both my father and Uncle Peter having played football for different local clubs in their own time, it was up to the offspring to carry the tradition. But of course I have always viewed myself to be the offspring of my own creation and never to be a child made and coaxed into fitting the shoes of another man nor anyone to satisfy another previous generation. When people told me to kick the ball with the side of my foot, and not with my toe, I would think too much and delve too deep into wondering how you can kick a football without kicking it with your toe. Of course this technicality cost me greatly in the eyes of the popular boys, who picked and chose to their own arrogance the friends they wanted, the sporting boys who were talented at football on the pitches and in the schoolyard. I was made to feel strange for my inability to perform in such scenarios and believe me I was bad, my motor neuron skills were appalling, I was clumsy, I couldn’t even catch a ball on many an occasion. The kids simply had accepted me to be some sort of an oddball and perhaps something of a special needs child and seemed like this was the way things were turning out. I have always had an aversion for mathematics, for counting sums and making estimations in any form whatsoever. I had a special needs teacher for maths and was later diagnosed or said plain and simply that I had dyscalculia. 

The primary school had even offered to provide me with a special English teacher to help me with my supposed dyslexia.

Often on a Tuesday morning I would have to leave school early in the morning to attend the Lucena clinic where I had been diagnosed with Aspergers at the young age of ten and the old speculations of me having ADHD were ruled out. Many of the children would ask me where I would disappear to on a Tuesday afternoon, I would simply tell them that I had a dental appointment and they wondered quite frankly what was wrong with my teeth? Where they that bad that he had to go to the dentist each Tuesday afternoon?

Strangely enough and stupidly enough to my loss and future pain, I had my first childhood crush and even first feeling of love to a girl that attended my local primary school. She was confident, very cunning in her own way, she was a flirt even at an early age and had many of the boys enraptured to her, even at an early age. I invited her to several of my birthday parties and of course I would run away from her any time she tried to approach me and of course this was my strange way of telling her that I liked her. But of course it was also a way to create room for confusion, I think that my anxiety, coupled with my hyperactivity, strange behaviour and poor concentration had made it practically impossible for me make the right impression in such circumstances. But I did have a good sense of humour and my general cheeriness made some of my peers laugh with me, as they found my humour to be a novelty for it was unique to them and often uncanny at times.

How I hated having to attend the church on Sunday, having to be accompanied by my father to the steps leading up to the altar, but I had no hatred of Christ, nor had I and still don’t have any for God. I found that I was pondering in my furtive imagination on what God was? What was the meaning behind the fabric of life and death? But of course I didn’t have a notion of philosophy – I once later mistook philosophy for something else entirely- I simply thought alone to myself and enjoyed these moments in silence and this might be seen to be the silent beginnings and the foundation for my philosophy, for the self, the single subject we live through unto an external world of objects- which we call reality- is only known and concurred with through inner revelations, experiences and perceptions of everything. 

Family rows would come and go, reconciliation’s would emerge between various members and then the cycle would rotate onwards through time. We were a tightly knit group at times- my family- and I have to state that I admired and often feared my brother from times, he was so confident, so worldly, so extroverted and gregarious with boys his own age, he was precisely the product I could not become. My sister was the sensible one, she was very mature, often serious, could loose her temper at me if I aggravated her too much, and yet I enjoyed her company for we had no major grievances and often we would joke together. My mother herself would spend several gruelling hours a night, many days a week, like ritual, trying to help me through my maths, as I tried to learn my tables, compose English essays and write questions and answers up on my homework, but I performed poorly in school, for I generally lacked the depth of thought, the awareness and the capacity for school work in general. I was much happier when I was playing with my toy soldiers or free to muse in the garden to myself. But such happiness is meant to be disturbed; otherwise we have found our uninterrupted Eden, a state of childlike innocence in the simplicity and revelry of nature and of course time brought new burdens that would later culminate and foment in the pressures and strains of adolescence. 

What I mean to state that my physical aggravations, daily pains that is had not come upon me, nor was I aware to any great extent of the mockery that most probably circulated around me. Perhaps on occasion too I lacked empathy for others, despite the fact I usually found myself projecting my affection for those whom I generally felt compassion and gratitude for. However on one particular occasion when I had forged a brief friendship with a boy that lasted perhaps less than a year- I cannot be exactly sure- I regretted deeply, with every last fibre the day I watched that boy being picked on, laughed at and physically harassed by my so called friends. I had no true awareness of what was happening, as the boy had been pushed into a ditch. I think that I was about eleven years of age or maybe less at the time. 

They laughed and maybe I did too, but deep inside this was a boy I genuinely liked, wholeheartedly, who paid dearly for his behaviour around these so-called friends of mine. I always wanted to apologise to this boy for not standing up for him, how I wish I could have turned back the clock. I guess that in my heart of hearts I must have known that my so-called friendship to these boys would not last and would end up in betrayal. They simply would ignore me and mock me behind my back, for they believed that I was too childish for them, for they obviously wanted to become teenagers and men way before I, even though I was a year older than both of them. I was still a child, immature, soft, sensitive, with the temperament of a child, I would be more or less like this until I was 20 years of age.

With my diagnosis, came regular appointments with Doctor Melanie Gallagher- who has since been transferred from this clinic- she was a very polite woman, good natured, took an interest in children who were dismissed on the outset for being dim-witted, peculiar, unassertive and dysfunctional. She would explain things with me and with my parents. She would constantly remind me that I needed to mitigate certain aspects of my lifestyle and my behaviour, goals were set to coax and coach me to perform well in school and to sit down for two hours in the afternoon at least to do any home work that needed to be done. I was informed that when people call you, you should respond and not walk away. I had many rows with different people over the course of my life and for the first time I was being informed by my mother that I had Aspergers syndrome disorder, which I didn’t accept until I 20 years of age.

My parents kept the diagnosis from me for awhile and when I would ask why we went to the Lucena Clinic, I was told, it was to meet the Doctor so she could talk to me about my behaviour. On occasion when I was older many explanations came my way and each one was on the fact that I have ASD. But still I never dwelt on it, was not fully aware of it, forgot about it and still thought that I was like everybody else even though I knew deep down that I wasn’t. It is true to state than in childhood I had no true friends my own age and that at times my existence was filled with an unbearable loneliness, but that came later on in my life when I was an adolescent starting school.

Throughout childhood I always got the wrong side of my father and I really wish that it had been different, but with my personality we were bound to clash. This fear went with me throughout my childhood, to become an instinctual fear.

During my final year of school, when I was twelve I finally admitted my fancy for this girl I had so long been attracted to. It was a disaster, of course she told me that she didn’t fancy me and then it wasn’t long before practically everyone in the class knew my own private confession and many were secretly laughing at me behind my back. In these days as in this moment I just wish that I could have retreated into my books. I wish that I could have found a compensatory form of happiness and life, but I was stagnant, for all the imagination, my intellect was stagnant and nearly non- existent. But this was just the beginning of a long journey that I would have to take and much of the detail is painful to recount, but epiphanies come from unexpected places, love comes from unexpected faces and life can be filled with unknown graces!