Collections

I seem to collect things wether I want to or not. Some of my collections make sense to me and to other people. Some of my collections make sense to me, but not to other people. Some of my collections don't really make sense, even to me! For example, I collect books. I have always collected books. Most people seem to think that this is perfectly reasonable. I like to own my books rather than borrow them from the library.

I have always collected artefacts from nature like interesting rocks, feathers and sticks, shells and crystals etc. Some people don't think this collection makes much sense (what's so special about a stick?). I have a dead tree in my front yard that I have had for nearly 15 years and have moved from house to house with me. At least they live outside now.  Unlike the chicken!                                                                                      



left: an old tree I have
carted around for 15 years or so.





below: a piece of wood and some rusty stuff (another collection) that came from my friends station north east of Broken Hill.

Strangely I have always had a fascination with self adhesive products. This began as a sticker collection but is so much more than that now! This collection made more sense when I was a kid because lots of kids collected stickers and my dad was a printer so he got some pretty amazing stickers from coke ads and the sides of buses etc. It probably makes less sense now that I am 'a grown up'. Even Im not sure why the self adhesive stuff matters to me but it does. The 'magic' element of things that stick together is something I find quite satisfying. I have always collected art and craft supplies and in some ways the self adhesive collection could be seen as a sub set of the art and craft collection. Most of my collections have collections within them.

   

The most important collection in my life right now is my collection of invertebrates... because I have to maintain them daily and because I like them and as far as I can tell they like me.

Some of my collections appear to be highly organised and some of them appear to be highly disorganised. It think it is somewhat unfortunate that my order is in chaos - as long as I can see it and I am the one who created it, I tend to know where things are. It is highly disturbing to me when someone else messes with my order. Many a meltdown has occurred in my life when someone has imposed a last minute or unwanted change to my order. This can happen in several ways. It can be a physical change like someone coming in and moving my stuff (awful scenarios spring to mind of my Mum coming in and cleaning up my room when I was still living at home). Things not being where I think they should be is terrifying.


Timetable changes or changes in my schedule can also be quite difficult to adjust to. Last semester at Uni, my time table was changed unexpectedly and adjusting to this pretty much caused a major breakdown in my ability to function. I wasn't able to complete the semester.

Two things have occurred to me in terms of my relationship with the things I collect and the order they are in. The first thing is this... (I won't go into the reasons here but I will try to write about it later)... Im not sure that I fully understand that inanimate objects don't have feelings. I find it very hard to throw things out in case I cause affront to that thing. This is especially true of things that belonged to other people or things that were given to me by other people. This is not the entire reason behind my collection but it is definitely a part of the reason I find it soooo hard to let go of stuff. I have strange attachments to things. It is as though they are physical markers along my emotional path.

The second thing is that I do seem to have an attachment to spatial distribution - I have a picture in my head of where things are. If I want to find something I examine the picture in my head of where I last had / saw that thing and it is easy then to find it. If I have moved the thing in question then the picture in my head will adjust accordingly. If YOU move that thing without me seeing you do it then my picture has not been adjusted. When I walk into a room where someone else has moved things without me being there to see them do it, sometimes this can have the effect that very suddenly and frighteningly NOTHING makes sense anymore. It doesn't just become a picture with a hole in it where the thing that has moved is missing (although sometimes it does). It becomes a picture that has been scrambled.

In order to make the picture make sense to you, you have ruined the picture for me.



This is hard to explain because I am aware that not everyone experiences their world in this way. I don't understand how other people create their order so I don't understand what it is like not to rely so heavily on visual/spatial distribution. This might not make any sense to some people but it may help teachers, parents, friends understand the importance of order to my people. It may explain why the aspie in your life has a meltdown when you touch their stuff or clean up their room. One thing I have found that helps a bit is this... If you really want to help an aspie clean up a room, and you know they struggle to make choices themselves about where things go etc. Then let them sit on a chair or on a bed while you talk them through where you are putting things. "Im putting these socks in this drawer". Better still label the drawer "socks". I will talk more about this later but I have to go now.