I don't automatically hear words. If I'm not actively listening, languages I understand sound like languages I don't. I recognize the rhythms and cadences but not the words. In a noisy place like a restaurant I might as well be deaf. I can't separate a single voice from the crowd. I don't know the words of music unless I've seen them written down. I don't listen to vocal music for fun, or in the background, it's too much work. If I watch a movie on my own I turn the sound very low and rely on the subtitles.
My writing is a very tactile thing, patterns remembered by my fingers as much as words in my head.
I didn't realize until I was an adult that words were flowing through other people's heads even when they were alone and not talking or reading. If I'm not talking, writing, or reading the words simply go away. When I was single I used to throw a few gallon bottles of water in my car and drive out to the desert. I can go many days without any words in my head and I like it.
In school I always felt like an outsider and I'm sure that's one of the things bullies picked up on. I was weird.
I think humans develop a "secure self-concept" mostly in early childhood. For all the crazy in my extended family (and there is a lot of it) infants and small children are cherished. When we are older and getting smacked about by the world the firm foundation built in early childhood does not crumble.
This autistic-language-processing disorder seems to be a dominant gene in our family, a 50/50 chance of inheriting it. Sometimes the expression is very mild, sometimes disabling. Nobody mentioned this when I was a kid, but we had relatives who were entirely asocial hermits. Nobody talked about them, they were hidden away. I now know why one of grandfather's sisters kept such close watch over me. My grandfather had siblings who were essentially hermits. My grandfather was that sort too, but he was also an aerospace genius so he found his place in society during the Second World War, the Cold War, and the Space Race. His eccentricities were tolerated.
I started school able to read, so when the other kids were learning their ABCs I was spending time with the speech therapist and some kind of "posture" training. I don't know what they called that special education, but the teacher was always talking about "posture." I was a klutz on the playground and wasn't allowed on the monkey bars because I'd invariably injure myself or someone else. (Later on as a teen that's the same reason nobody wanted to see me on a surfboard.) I overcame the klutziness, but it took a lot of work as a young adult.
One of my kids carries the hypothesized gene, the mild version, and so do a few of my nephews and nieces. It usually shows up as something that catches the attention of kindergarten teachers, and then off to speech therapy the kid goes. It's a family tradition.
I'm not certain where the depression and OCD come from or how it's related to the autistic baggage. Anti-depressants are one of the meds that keep me functional. It makes me a little sad when I think about my older relatives who lived their lives in some state of dysfunction, hiding their illness from the world.
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