Completing the Circle

Mostly in respect of bereavement you hear a lot of talk about closure and the need to obtain this. Well, closure is something we “Aspies” strive for and completing the circle is vital but what if the other person also has Asperger’s? There is a definite compulsion to write with this and it’s even more pronounced in those with temporal lobe epilepsy.

On a true Crime programme, this guy was thought to have murdered his wife who hadn’t been seen for ages but was reclusive anyway. The numerous notes, detailing her every-day life in all its fine detail were all over the walls of her home and were what convinced people that her husband was not responsible for her death. She had temporal lobe epilepsy as do I but even I don’t write to that great an extent.
I will keep writing though, as long as someone else does and at one time, K and I sent each other about eight emails per day. In the end I think it was K who managed to suggest that we cut it down to three or four. I have to write straight back to whomever writes to me. Then if they write again they get another reply. This keeps going until someone, always the other person, either says clearly that they are busy and has to get on now, calls a halt by not replying to the final email I send or they don’t reply at all when I have initiated the correspondence.
Every time a new message comes it starts to build the circle. Every time one goes it begins to build the circle so the only thing I can then do is respond firstly to widen it and then to keep rounding it off. I don’t think anything terrible will happen if I don’t write again but it stems from somewhere.

What if I can’t keep writing or they stop me before I write again? Well there’s always the option to write it and not send it.
How interesting it would be for someone to ask me is there an equivalent to not stepping on the cracks in the pavement for someone who isn’t able to see them? The answer is yes, there is or at least there was for me. So far no enquiry along these lines has ever been made.
If Mum had the radio on when I lived at home and I was reading a book, I’d have to make sure or hope I reached the right-hand page when the Greenwich time signal (the pips) went on the hour. If I were reading the left-hand page then whatever I decided was going to be my fate would definitely come to pass. This superstitious stuff has not gone but it takes on different forms which I’m almost too embarrassed to relate.

I’ve got BBC notifications on the phone so if there’s a horn sound or the start of the BBC TV news theme while I’m doing this or that (normally before managing to get out of the shower and into my bath robe) something ghastly will happen. Last night there was the dreaded horn sound, heralding a notification. First thing I thought was: “Oh goodness! I hope that plane stays up in the sky in June”. What possible connection could one thing have with the other? Other people touch wood, cross themselves when they mention a dead relative so once more this is a way of humans trying to exert, gain and maintain control over lives that are random though part of me thinks it’s all planned out from the word go until the day you do go.

Thank goodness I don’t have to check the door a million times after going out or before managing to get out. My dogs and I just went once and that was it or we just checked once (well she didn’t bark once for we can go now it’s all locked up safely and twice for don’t forget your key and to lock the front door and make sure the electricity is off).

Completing the circle is vital though and when one “Aspie” man and I used to write, we’d keep going and going and going and going until even I had to suggest we stop. K has been like this with her parents and her father said to her that this is a compulsion. I have said likewise as I know it is. It’s a funny old life and maybe soon, it’ll be time to tell you about puns, the fact that many “Aspies” of my acquaintance abhor filthy language and coarse humour and sarcasm. Until then wish me luck with the notifications and horn sounding at the wrong time. Some smart Alec is going to say: “Why don’t you turn off the notifications on the phone, you chump”? If it wasn’t that it’d be something else and think of the thrill when the shower is had in peace with no funny noises before I have stepped gracefully (well come on! I am almost seventy) into my waiting, cosy bath robe.