Wednesday 9 January 2013

Alien invasion? Yes please!

New Year, new look blog, new ideas and some sense of purpose in posting. Yippee! Something that has been playing in my mind for a while relates to one of the concepts mentioned in theTen Traits of Asperger's (women, girls) which I mention from time to time. The one about not fitting in, not feeling as though one belongs on this planet...

As a teenager and young woman, I frequently fantasized about aliens landing and taking me into their spaceship. There, rather than do horrendous experiments or try to inseminate me, they would actually improve me. Using my genetic code as the basis for some lovely sciency rebuilding from a cellular level, they would take all my bits and improve them to the best they could be, according to my chromosomes. I was big on genetic inheritance! So, banished would be the asthma and allergies, which came from my father and instead I might have my mum's stoicism and physical constitution. It was a fervent wish and a frequent fantasy.

Now in my fifties, with diagnosed Multiple Sclerosis, managed hypertension and flat feet, some of that has come true: I don't get asthma any more! Hours of my life were spent in mental anguish; alone in my bedroom because I had no idea whatsoever of how to go out and be more sociable or how to get hold of that elusive but expected accessory, a boyfriend. At School I was not really a 'loner', but asthma excluded me from many sports, which in turn meant exclusion from the groups of 'fit and popular' types; while interest led me to a small group who were rather nerdy and insular. They didn't do well with boys at first, then improved as I continued to lag behind. If those aliens could have mended me, perhaps I wouldn't have been so lonely for so long?

I really didn't fit in. It's too easy to say that all teenagers are disaffected, or spend time being lonely and confused, of course they do, it's part of normal development. Looking back though, it was all of those years. It varied, there were some social occasions, but so few I can still recount them in detail. Some relief was finding said nerdy friends wanting to go the the local weekly folk club, when we were all seventeen. That was fun, we all passed for eighteen easily, so drank pints of mild ale and sang along to hairy folk bands. Apart from that though? I was no party animal. Clearly alien myself, I needed rescuing!

Standing in the garden at night, looking up at the stars, I would send out my heartfelt wishes in telepathic form - sometimes even empathic, once I knew that word - in the hope that an advanced society on the wing, scooting across the cosmos, would alight and immediately 'know' me as friend. Then, without pain or making me forget what happened, they would transport me into their craft and use sundry molecular machinery in my remaking. It was a lovely fantasy. Sometimes even now, I wonder if those evolved and lovely beings are about somewhere, taking notes of all the requests from disaffected teens, or Aspie women around the globe. Wouldn't it be nice if they decided to drop by? I bet they'd like cake...!

2 comments:

  1. mmm ... I remember those years ... and reading a story about a world in which the people had developed a pill that adjusted each person's hormones, body (and possibly mind, too, I can't remember) to make the most of their own personal resources. it was a lovely thought, I thought. I lived a lot in my books in those days :)

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  2. Hey Nancy, thank you for reading my post and commenting! I suppose adolescence is the time for such fantasies, though I have never quite given up on those Aliens :)

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