Mission statement.

My name is Erik. I am 34 and on the autistic spectrum.  I am for all intents and purposes what you might consider smart.

I've been pinned down to paper like an insect and studied since i was old enough to go to pre kindergarten classes by psychologists and psychiatrists and teachers alike. I have a GIANT ream of paperwork with some of my records i managed to recover as a 30 year old man from my various schools that was so completely gut wrenching to read i was in a walking coma for 3 months afterwards, recovering from the whiplash of all that information and what it meant finally sinking in.   It was the key component to my finalized diagnosis after several months of dual evaluation (differential diagnosis) that led to me being official labeled as having Asperger's Syndrome. Though that definition may have changed slightly due to the DSM manual changing, so now i am simply an adult with autism, just maybe not the kind that you would immediately recognize.

I have spent a great deal of my life in the back of the class, literally and metaphorically BEHIND everyone.  I had to study in class to learn, and keep up with the standards of each state's requirements but i couldn't.  I couldn't find a way to meet that requirement AND to meet the requirements of my autism.   You see, I had to study PEOPLE when i was in school, and it was a full time job with much higher stakes.    Much of the class work was manageable, if i was allowed to do it my own way.  If i knew the answer in math class, i would write it down, but even if it was right, i was yelled at to show my work by the teacher, and i couldn't understand what he had meant by that. My writing started in the 3rd grade, and i was only encouraged because as it turns out, they were just using my writing to study me and perhaps publish a paper on my behavior. I wrote about trying to understand other kids, and why they were mean to me.  I wrote about how scary my asthma was and how sad i felt at home and at school.  I wrote about whatever autistic interest i had at the time. Dinosaurs for a long time. Then learning every breed of dog and how to draw them.  Learning to fix computers and write in MS Dos when i was in the 3rd grade. My homeroom was in a chicken coop outside of the school in a small town in upstate NY.  Not a great place for a kid like me to be, but i'm not sure there was any place in the world for a kid like me to be.

So i struggled. Of course.  The depth of that struggle is a million stories that would make your heart hurt to hear.  They make my heart hurt to recall sometimes.  I have achieved a herculean task in simply making it to this stage of my life.   In managed to exist right now.   I was never prepared to make it this far though.  I made it on instinct and relentless study and mimicry of my surrounding. I took social risks and after years of being beat on became hard and fearless in the face of threats and violence. I stood against my would be tormentors until they broke under the effort required to beat me into submission. I just had nothing left to lose anymore.

So here i am.  Smash cut to the here and now.

I'm functional, in some rudimentary ways.  But i'm also ruined for life, like a war veteran.  Warped by the things i've seen and had done to me.   My rational mind cannot filter out all the hurt, all the negativity, all the cynicism, even being this far removed from it's frequency.  I can't work a conventional job because for all my efforts, i'm still a mutant, and the fact that i require "Effort" at all to affect a normal personality to work with others saps my strength quickly and completely, running me into the same problem i suffered as a young man.    Either i can do the job well. Better then well.   Or i can manage all the social contracts in the workplace that must be maintained, and flounder in performing the actual duties with all level of acumen.

So i live lean. Incredibly lean. I have learned to make the meager stipend i receive for being ruined into a manageable mess, at least somewhat.  I have insurance. I have food. I have a tv, a computer, an internet connection and various other bits and pieces of a life strewn together from thrift stores and sales and trades and the like. I built my own computer. I fixed my own electronics. I don't have a cell phone or a car. I have enough.  Just enough. To survive, but not to thrive.

I have no family connections, nor do i have any connections to my social history.  All the faces and people i have met over my life have fled, many before they were aware of my condition, but i am certain they would not return upon learning of it.  Every living person i know and interact with by and large is brand new, and our relationships are kept shallow and distant. Engaging only under strict conditions of a shared interest on occasion and with great restraint on my part.  I yearn for a deeper connection, the strings i grasped at when i was young and tireless, but anytime i have attempted to obtain them, i find i am overreaching and run the risk of driving new people away.  I want to ask you who you really are, and why. I want to know your stories and how you got this age, to be sitting across from me here now.  My desire is to understand people, so that maybe someday i can fully understand myself. So that i might know warmth and affection born from a deeper place then the utility i offer. The odd collection of humor and skills that i present to you.

I don't have a dream. An overarching goal or purpose. Even when i was young, i just said i wanted to be happy. Maybe when i was a teenager, i thought i could be a singer if i kept practicing, but bands are VERY social and hard to manage.  And a job in the music industry when the pie was shrinking was not to be.  I wanted to be a DJ once. An on air personality, only to share my love of strange music with other people.  This is of course before i understood that being a dj required much more then just being good at it and having a great background in music. It required interviews and uniforms and protocols and gatekeepers. I tried, for a while, but it was not to be.   Since then i don't think i've had a single thing i've really wanted to be. I thought i might be a writer.

That my pain, my experiences, my unique brain and it's story might be worth something in the world. Maybe my life could help ease the pain of others, help people like me who could not relate in the normal world have a comforting and funny voice to support them. Something i wished i had in so many dark moments.  But i only knew the writing part of the puzzle. I wrote and wrote and wrote.  But i never knew what to do with it.  I'm not a guy with a terribly high self opinion. I could never figure out how to "market" myself. What i would send. What i would say.  What to do with a writing style that is like an unbroken ream of paper darting gleefully from gallows humor to sorrow.

I want the same things as you mostly.  A sense of purpose about my life and what i put my effort into. Some tangible result of that spent life to gradually emerge and form the beams that might support a fully realized person and life.  To feel friendship and feel no anxiety about losing it.  To make enough money to support myself, stand up from this wheelchair and walk off into the sunset alone, emerging when  i feel like it, not because i have too. To make a difference.  To mend my shattered wings.

So here i am, and here i have been for the last 2 years. In pursuit of nothing. Digging a hole and filling it back up each day. Strangling myself with my own noose of failure.  My own shattered sense of who i am, versus who i believe i am supposed to be.

And i still don't know. Maybe you can tell me.