I see patterns.

I knew that seeing patterns in things was viewed as on of the positive symptoms of ASD. I took it as being meant in a metaphorical way, I.e. you’ll look through a dataset and recognise that a lot of events x happened around date y, namely that your adherence to studying the detail gave you insights in a generally quicker way than someone without a diagnosis. I myself am quite good at this sort of thing, I’ve built myself a career around data analytics, finding meaning in some pretty dense and badly integrated data sources. So I assumed that’s what people meant. I don’t know why I assume that though when I also literally see patterns in things. 

It sometimes makes me feel like I have some strange and oddly low-key psychosis. Instead of demons jumping out of the shadows telling me to make a blood sacrifice I get parallel lines jumping slightly up, threading me with the darkened uniformity. I first noticed it when Around when I was 18. I remember a couple of individual instances. Firstly was the walk back from greenfield after the millennium. I remember it must’ve been maybe 3 or 4 am, maybe later and looking up at the sky and seeing clouds shrinking and growing at unusual speeds. It was a bit annoying I remember but didn’t shake me that much so must’ve been something I kind of recognised. Second to that I also remember standing at the train station at Birmingham university, looking up at the sky and seeing everything glowing a little weirdly and little very faint dots jumping around my vision in unison. It bothered me for ages before I kind of realised it wasn’t getting worse and it was never going to leave me. 

These days if I look at an object that that has any sort of pattern in it then geometric shapes will pop out, little circles or squares where my brain perceives there’s a local pattern. Reading can be the worst, my eyes will end up focusing in between the words and the gaps will all join to form shapes. Again not like an hallucination as such but just as my brain going, hey, here’s a pattern. We got a new rug today from Ikea . I really like it but it’s really busy so I am see loads of shapes in it and those shapes are constantly breathing in and out. It’s a little exhausting. It’s also a little odd that I can only see these sorts of thing in physical materials, a computer screen always looks flat to me and stable. It’s just so damned odd.