Sorry to not have posted on this blog for a while, but honestly I haven’t thought of that many mental health topics lately. I did think of something interesting the other day, which is related to autism. I have mentioned before that I have some kind of developmental disability, which affects me in extreme ways, even though I function normally on many levels. Like a lot of other people with autism, I have major mental gifts and deficits. There is a range of very inspired poetry versus not being able to clean a room. And I think aside from mental illness and trauma, I mostly don’t reach highest levels of genius or severe disability. But I did some testing a while back, and I thought about it again recently, and I think I might have an extreme “estimation” ability. What is estimation? I do not really know, except I saw it listed on a blog, and I think it was measured in a test I took. I think it can involve an awareness of time passing, numbers, predictions, and other kinds of assessment. And I think it is possible that I am almost a savant in that area. That is weird and random isn’t it? I really think there is something to it, but I think it comes out in how I manage money, how I am able to maintain a schedule, and how I am aware of the passage of time. I also think that because of my Christianity, I have used this gift socially as a form of deliberate appreciation for people. I am calling it appreciation instead of love, because I think there are different definitions of love. Even though I have used my estimation skills to try to love people well, I think that a lot of it might really amount to estimation. I basically have esteemed people thoroughly and have thousands of friends from looking for good qualities in people and easily finding things to like about just about everyone. Something interesting about it is that I think some people still feel judged by it, even by my positive reaction to them. Like they still might feel judged even though they got a good score. A lot of people prefer more direct feelings from people, and that is probably part of the social challenge of autism. But I think people should not take us for granted, and if one of my friends literally handed me a report card based on their perception of me, I would feel thankful that they cared at all. I am still going to keep appreciating everyone, and love my neighbor as myself even though I am so different. People who like parties more than school can still be my friends, and if my gifts are not appreciated in this world, I will still try to help everyone if I am able to achieve my goal of eventually being a trial lawyer for Judgement Day.
