Chapter Twenty-Six: Asperger’s and Imagination

Q:		I’ve heard people say that Autistics can often have vivid imaginations and are known to sometimes retreat into fantasy worlds. Is this true?
A:		Oh, good. Now I get to move on to a fun topic!

I think a rather vivid imagination is a trait that many Autistics and Aspies share to varying degrees. In a discussion with the League some months back, I remember one fellow Aspie, Rob, sharing how he liked to take journeys into outer space. He described the fantasy as being so real he could feel the sun on his back.

Another man, David N., explained how, when he feels life is hard and his anxiety is heightened, he struggles not to withdraw into his own world. He talked about getting images, such as people stabbing at his head, as an expression of his emotions. I can imagine Aspies in general being prone to escapism in any form that encourages retreat into visual fantasy; e.g., role-playing games, reading, anime, etc. We seem to have an extra ability to really feel and engage in these images.

I know that, for me, I find reading hard to snap out of. If I particularly like a book, I’ll read it cover to cover and avoid stopping even to eat, sleep, do housework, or do any other thing I ought to be doing. Any interruption agitates me, and I rush through what I need to do to get back to the story. I never fully disengage.

After completing a book, I can then find myself stuck in the emotions at the end of the book for days on end, unable to snap out of the mood or stop thinking about the storyline. It causes me a lot of trouble when I read books with melancholy or flat endings. I also found role-playing games in my teen years to be similarly consuming. Fortunately, I don’t read or play these games that often or I think I would become an emotional wreck!

And while I’m not so heavily engaged in visual fantasies as some of my Aspie peers, I do have a tendency to be visual when it comes to imagining or recalling scenery and places I like. One day in Houston, when feeling homesick, I made this post on Facebook about missing home. (I’ll explain how I ended up in Houston a little later on in the book.)

“I wish I could walk down a path on the beach and find an isolated beach area all to myself and sit on the rocks and listen to the waves crash against the rocks. And Isaac could play in the little rock pools and find strange and interesting creatures and boulders…

“I wish I could go to a wildlife walk and have the whole place to myself and sit and listen to the birds and animals and wind blowing in the trees…

“I wish I could go down my parents’ yard and walk along fallen trees to the creek or lay in the soft grass (not like Houston grass!!) and watch the trees swaying and the clouds moving along the sky until it almost feels like I’m moving and not the clouds. And just relax and recharge and be happy, with not a person or building in sight.”

Each scene I was visualizing in striking detail, far more details than I was able to describe in a brief online post.

Another evening, after wandering some parkland with my camera, I remember jotting down these notes on the visions that the walk inspired in me. I often have similar visions of nature and imagery. They’re such a soothing thing to just relax and dwell upon.

Now my editor has told me that this next section gets a bit boring and I should consider cutting some of it out, but I decided to ignore that advice, because I think it’s a good example of just how much detail the Aspie mind goes into. So shhh, don’t tell her I left it in! We can just nod and agree and pretend it’s gone. *wink wink*^[33] But if you do happen to get bored as you read down, please feel free to skip forward to the last paragraph of the quote!

“After a glorious day’s walk in the park with my camera, I come home and find my mind full of visions of foliage. Every time I shut my eyes, there is a new image, crisp and clear and vivid in its detail. You would think they would be of the plants I’ve seen during the day, but they seem to be new visions I’ve never seen before, each one stunning and radiating color. Perfect in every detail. Symmetrical, with no messy parts. Like the perfect photography shot.

“I see a tuft of sturdy grass like stems poking out of the water. The tuft is creating ripples outward as if agitated by the wind. The dark green of the tuft is highlighted against the nearly black water. Of course, the water might be clearer if it were real life, but in this lighting, the hue of the water appears particularly dark against the light of the grass and sky. The image shows only the one central tuft and is crisp and free of other reflections or messiness that would crowd the frame. The black ripples come and go in little gusts.

“I see a tree branch coated in yellowish, even slightly off-green moss. I can make out the detail in the moss pattern. The branch itself has creamy white/grey bark with little spirals of bark pattern in the visible patches between the moss. Far off in the background, I see a blur of green bracken. The bracken itself is perfect in its evenness, each frond growing to exactly the same height.

“I see a zoomed-in shot of a new leaf budding out of a cut-off stump of wood. Just a thin, clean, pale, pine-colored cut. You can sort of make out the circles in the wood. The leaf itself is uncurling, a little like a fern frond, but thicker and furry. Its pale green stands out and complements the stump. I can see the detail of the fur on the edges of each leaf.

“I see purple flowers wilting off the end of long green stems. They’re small and wispy. The flowers, not perfectly crisp, hang downward in a trumpet shape, delicate and thin like lightly crinkled paper. The crinkles are uniform and visually appealing. Each flower hangs off a single stem, displaying an array of aligned green stems. The pale purple/lilac makes a nice contrast against the light, slightly yellowed green. The background is a similar, darker green blur of clover and teardrop-shaped leaves, although to me, they are not the center of focus and hard to make out individually.

“I see a flower in a shape almost too odd to describe. It has a circular center with a long protruding stem. Its ‘petals,’ if you call them that, reach outward like elongated fingers. The whole thing is red/green, not in crisp sections of color but mottled red/green color gradients. Its shape is distinctive and perfectly formed. It gives me the impression of some exotic species that targets flies and insects or even moves its fingers to entrap them upon touch.

“Some of the images aren’t even in real-life colors. It’s like a picture that has been edited. I see a plant in a vivid yellow-green glow. A series of leaves radiate outward from a central vein. It’s patterned like a fern, but with thicker, crisper leaves of defined shape. Each one is an elongated rectangle rounded into a curve at the end. In perfect series, they transition from larger to smaller. The whole leaf is not visible, as if it’s been cropped. The radiating yellow/green is striking.

“I wish I could put my camera into my head to capture them. They’re magnificent, image after image after image, each as stunning and detailed as the next. I wonder where my mind draws them from and how it keeps generating them.”

Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly positive about who I am, or occasionally as an attempt to cheer myself up, I focus on this image I have of myself standing in a grassy area, which is actually the front lawn of a library back at home.

There are a few trees around me, and on that particular day, the colors are radiant. The bright green of new grass encapsulates me. I’m standing in the center of the grass with my arms stretched out, spinning in the sunlight. Of course, I never really stood there and spun in real life as I know that would be strange, but it was something I imagined doing, walking past the scene one day. My hair is shining golden in the sun. It does that. The feeling of letting my hair flow in the wind makes me feel light and free.

In this image, all the beauty and magnanimity on the inside is radiating outward. It is just an image, and I don’t know why it has this effect, but it reminds me of who I am and what I stand for. It’s about beauty and love and peace and caring for others and seeing the good in people. It’s me.

So I suppose I do share some components of that common Aspie vivid imagination, and I have to say, I love it. The images I create are inspiring and relaxing and help me feel at peace with the world. I’ve read suggestions before that Aspies are so inclined toward fantasy and retreat because they want to escape from the overstimulation and stress of the real world, and I can see how escapism could be tempting. But I myself am pretty tuned into life around me and don’t have a problem with “fading out,” so I see no negatives in it.

I see such images more as something to enjoy in a world that’s often hectic and unpleasant otherwise. They’re inspiration to go out and do and create beautiful things. It maintains my feelings of peace, joy, and purpose in an otherwise flat sort of existence. To have passion makes life. To have no passion feels dead inside. I’m glad I have this ability to fantasize.