I just happen to be Autistic

While a nation empathizes with a track star, “Don’t judge me because I am human. I’m you, I just happen to run a little faster.” there are so many others around just as human, but perhaps not exceptional, who do not appear to warrant the same empathy.
My line might be “Don’t judge me because I am human. I’m you, I just happen to be Autistic”
But Autism doesn’t win gold medals, though there are times when it feels like it should. And instead of looking up to me, as a hero, many people instead seem to find me at the end of their downturned noses.
I can’t run fast, jump high, sing, draw pretty, or do anything apparently worthy of great respect. I just expend that same energy daily – only the effort doesn’t get me greatness… it gets me a barely passing job at living my life. I don’t want pity for that. But I want respect. The same respect others get. I want understanding. I want support. I want love. And I really want not to have to fight so dang hard for all of it.

My shell…

So I undertook an almost eight year experiment at being a people (as opposed to being an Autistic person who had been discouraged at just about every turn in being one, and as such felt the need to hide in a shell in a hole in a tunnel under dark clouds). So maybe I can abandon a few of those layers of protection – ‘cause I’m braver now – but that isn’t really because my experiment was particularly successful.
I found out that I’m still particularly bad at understanding people, and they’re still particularly bad at understanding me. I also found out that in general people aren’t as good as I wanted to believe they are. But maybe also came to realize that I myself am perhaps better than I gave myself credit for.
Sadly for me, however, is that – though somewhat disillusioned – I still seem to adore people. And in that, loving them and building friendships with them is something that I wish I’d had more success at. But I’m fresh out of ideas. Understanding seems just as far away as it did seven years ago.
I had this glorious wish that just being loving would be good enough, even if it was delivered in a manner that apparently most people find ridiculous. I wanted to prove that love could win. I also wanted to find that little place where a ridiculously not normal Autistic lady might fit, and perhaps in the process win a little acceptance and understanding for Autistics and others, who perhaps also ridiculously not normal, could be seen for what they are good at… being truthful, transparent and loving, even if overly much of all of those.
But I’m tired now. This last year was a hard year. There was too much that assaulted my psyche, and not enough to bolster it. So maybe at least the shell awaits me. If anybody wants to find me there, just knock.

The Kitten and Goliath

I wrote this four years ago, and wanted to share it again… I call it “The kitten and Goliath”

Everyone has heard the story of David and Goliath. Goliath was a giant, and David a young shepherd who stood up to Goliath, and fell him with a stone. Well, I want to tell a new paradigm. I do not want to be David, standing up to the giant in anger. I want to be the kitten, sitting curled up in a little purring ball of fluff, on the foot of the giant. In my paradigm, the giant would look down upon this little ball of fur, and pick it up, and hold it in his huge hands, still sitting there boldly purring before him. And Goliath’s heart would melt, and he would hold the kitten close to his heart. That kitten, standing boldly at the foot of a giant, does not feel beneath him, does not feel less than him, does not fear him. All the kitten feels is love. All the kitten wishes to do is to bring both of them closer to love. For certainly, sitting at his feet purring, that kitten is not less of a being than that huge giant, she is only a being nearer to love. And by being that, she has the responsibility and opportunity to bring a huge giant closer to the foundations of love along with her.

Picking up Nails

I am admittedly frustrated at, to little avail, spending so much effort trying to find understanding about Autism (not just for me, but for all Autistics – diagnosed or not). There is a meme “A bad attitude is like a flat tire. You can’t go anywhere until you change it.” But, well… a difficult environment is like a flat tire in a field of nails. It doesn’t matter if you change the tire unless you also change the environment that it exists within. Being Autistic is like that. People have accused me of having a bad attitude. I struggle sometimes, certainly, but I only wish to struggle less. I wish that perhaps those around me might help me pick up nails, rather than throwing them at me. People who love you should care to make your way easier, rather than criticizing you for finding it rough terrain sometimes. If you have not cared enough to understand what Autism is like, or to try to realize how being Autistic particularly affects me, then you have not helped pick up nails. And worse than not picking them up, but to drop the analogy, you haven’t understood what they are. Don’t just learn about Autism for me, learn about it for the (up to 40% of the) people who are also Autistic, for the many who go undiagnosed, but who struggle with an unknown condition, not even understanding why they struggle. I am fortunate, in a way, that I was diagnosed before I even knew what Autism was, but unfortunate, like so many others, in that I although I understand why I struggle, I don’t understand why I should have to – why I can’t hope for understanding and bits of “nail picking-upping” from those around me. Not a lot, just a bit… Autistic or not, if we each picked up a nail or two from each other’s path, it would be such a better world for everyone.

I need an ally

I don’t know what to do. I honestly don’t know what to do. I have spent six years trying to change me, not to not be Autistic, but just to be the best, most understanding, most patient me I know how to be. It hasn’t always been easy. It hasn’t even always been successful. I’m not a perfect person and I never will be. But I do care and I do try. But the reality is that Autistics, and handicapped in general, need a Rosa Parks, need a Martin Luther King, and I can’t be that. I can’t be that not because I don’t want to be, not because I’m not willing to put in the work, but because I don’t know how. I have had the hardest time just trying to be a voice for myself. How do you advocate for something people don’t understand, that they don’t really see, that they don’t know how to differentiate? How do you advocate for change in an area where people don’t even understand that change is needed? Autistics typically don’t face open bigotry as do many (though granted sometimes they do). But what they face more often is much more subtle, and hard to quantify. It is not, “you have to sit in the back of the bus.” It is more typically, “Ewww, I don’t want to sit by you.” “ I don’t want you in my life.“ “Keep your distance.“ It is, you make me uncomfortable, I don’t understand you, and I’m not going to make the effort to do so. But we don’t understand them either, only we spend our whole lives making that effort. And still, despite that we do, it often doesn’t matter. And I don’t know how to change that. I don’t even know how to change that within my own life, much less within the world at large. I need an ally… more than one, even.

Just me

People might think that because I am so open, that means I am very trusting. But that is not actually the case. I am so open because I don’t feel like I have anything to hide, and even if I did I’m not sure I would hide it anyway, because if someone is to like me I want them to like me for all of me. It is Autistic nature to be honest, but from what I understand not typically to be so open. I think in some strange way that my openness is a result of being hurt so much. However trust is another matter. I actually find it hard to trust. Very hard. I give my heart away freely, yet I typically don’t give it with much expectation. There are very few people who it allows itself to believe in. Even then, most times when it has, it has not ended well for me. So if you win even a bit of my trust, it’s a big deal. You can count on the fingers of one hand the souls who have earned it. In fact sometimes I think you can stop with a thumb, and the thumb is a cat.

So, to be honest, one of the hardest aspects of my life is my relationship with God. Arguably it began with my mother’s words that He hated me. But it has been through a lifetime of seemingly unanswered prayer. Prayer that is entirely about love. I keep praying. I keep searching for faith in the midst of the struggles. It is incredibly hard being Autistic. It is even harder being an Autistic person whose biggest goal in life is to form relationships. A skill I don’t have, but that I have worked for, begged for, prayed for. So my mannerisms are not typical. But I want to see my heart accepted by those I love most. I want to see my heart matter more. I want only to feel that I belong in their lives, and that I am valued in every way just as much as their friends who are not Autistic. I am not certain I have ever had that relationship. I don’t believe it is intentional by some, but just a factor of my differences. And I have worked so hard to change that. But for the most part it seems I clearly don’t know how. And that is the biggest source of sadness and frustration in my life.

Wearing masks, but not by choice

There were four seemingly disparate topics that I read, and/or that struck me yesterday. But then, as I thought about it, I realized they are not disparate at all. Not to me. Not to an Autistic. They are related, and intertwined.

The four topics, in general, are Autistic Masking, The Ego, Imposter Syndrome, and the (Autistic) relationship with God.

Autistics “mask”. Or so I hear. We are also very literal and very factual. So what does masking mean for an individual who is very literal and factual? I don’t mask, she says. (“She” being me) Or do i? Perhaps everyone does to a degree, but Autistics more so. Only we don’t put on masks to impress anyone, we mask out of fear that if we don’t, we will be ostracized. And that feeling is very real.

If I allowed myself to fully be all of what I am inside – the “overly” enthusiastic, openly affectionate, bouncy thing – I fear that I would be looked at with even more doubting eyes than I already am.

And this is where it fits in with Imposter Syndrome – at the deepest level. Many autistics, myself included, feel impostors not at our job, or at a talent, but just being human. We feel that way because the people around us do. Because most if not all of us are made to feel different from the time we were born. And for somebody who admittedly needs accommodations, being treated differently is a double edged sword. Yes, I understand that I take understanding, that I am asking something of those people around me just to be around me. Yet, as a human, as any human, I want that understanding to be given from a place of love. Not to be given as if I was a burden.

So the Ego, in assessing those reactions to who I am, just searches to be afforded the opportunity to stop being seen as a human imposter in my own skin. Autistics are human, fully human members of society who might take a bit of extra loving, but are willing to return that love in spades…

So where does God fit in all this? It’s just hard not to sometimes wonder why God would create this being – person – so loving, and yet hard to love, at the same time. But my heart wants to think that He did it on purpose, to help show all of us what love is

Autism… and loneliness

They say you should never make anybody a priority, for whom you are only an option. But she was never sure if she was even an option. And, yet there were so many priorities. And she cried. And she didn’t understand. And she learned more patience than she ever thought she might know. And the tears were not so much those of sadness, but of frustration. She wondered if there was anything she might ever know, or do. Anything, that might help them see beyond the awkward shell. They used words, nice words… The ones that matter. But she often wondered if they really realized that those words truly described her. And if so why it did not seem to matter. And she wondered if anything would ever change that. And she loved them anyway. And she cried.

Autistic Love

It is impossible for me to separate my Autism from the circumstances in which I was raised. I have a fair expectation that Autism shaped part of those circumstances. – though I read of other Autistics who were raised much differently than I, yet feel quite similarly.

When it comes to love, I equate Autistics with those with Down Syndrome, with kittens, and with puppies. I personally take this comparison as a complement. You see, those in this group are innocent, are unjaded by many of the thoughts and attitudes that pervade those who are considered normal. Wanting to love just seems as though it should be simple and natural.

Admittedly, through my lifetime, the thing I have found hardest about being Autistic is not understanding so much of how to interact successfully with the rest of the world. I suppose that is where I somewhat envy others in the above group with me, in that they don’t even recognize that need. They are just happily who they are, and the world can conform to that. Kittens don’t worry about “conforming”, they just love. Yet Autistics recognize that we are out of place, because we are seen as so.

Not everybody wants to be loved by a kitten. But people are far more accepting of a kitten’s clumsily loving behavior, then they are of that of an Autistic human, who “should know better”. Should we, really? Do we need to?

There are things about how “normal people” think that I will never understand, there are those I have come to understand – that I work hard to try to accommodate without fundamentally changing who I am, and admittedly there are those things that I simply don’t agree with. But it is hard, as an adult, to continually work to make those assessments that most, without thinking, learn as children.

Throughout my life, honestly, what I have most wanted to do successfully is just love people. I wish that was so simple as it is for a kitten. I believe it should be. But in the human world it is not. So many of the people through my life who I have just wanted to love have pushed me away. And many have done so quite cruelly. Yet I continue to love. There is nothing else I want to do, except to love more successfully. To me, to love successfully is to love in such a way that those I love are happy that I do. And to find those people who let me love them, in all the ways that are just me (even when all those ways are not “typical”), is just amazing. Gratitude cannot even begin to describe what I feel at finding what should be such a simple thing. To spend a lifetime wanting so much to do something you’re seen as bad at is just disheartening, especially when that something is simply loving people. And that was my story for most of my life. To be able to let my heart be my heart… is just the best thing. The thanks are overwhelming to those I have found who allow me that. My goal in life is to build the understanding that allows that, until we can live in a society which can allow each person to simply work to be the best of who they are, and not be expected to “conform” by being someone they are not.

My heart loves as it chooses…

Mark Twain is quoted to say “never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.” I don’t know what to feel about that. There have been many people throughout my life who have been priority for me, for whom I am well aware that I’m not even an option. I’m not even on their radar. I think about people every day, for whom I know I am not even an occasional thought. Should I change that? Would I want to? Should I temper what is in my heart to match their reality? Or should I just continue to love who I love with every bit of the zest and enthusiasm as my heart would choose, irrespective of their feelings for, or interest in me? Of course I wish it otherwise. Of course I wish we were not both missing out on sharing my excitement at who they are, at sharing the sparkle in my eyes, or the smiles they bring me when I even think of those people my heart so enjoys. But why would I want to lose that enjoyment, just because they will not give me opportunities to share it with them. That is not a choice I personally can make. I have chosen to allow my heart freedom to love who it loves, and make my head mature enough to deal with consequences that might not be what I might wish.