Reflections

I was an angry, reactive, dangerous kid as a teenager.

I was of course a product of my environment.  Having by that point survived a lifetime of hell.  The kind that came via beatings, both physical and mental.    These experiences warped me from a young sapling into a twisted piece of petrified wood.  I was on edge all the time.  Years of surprise attacks in the school halls, or walking home alone.  I was coiled like a cobra after that, after so many people revealed themselves to me to be cowards, idiots, and bullies.  Kids and adults alike both proved to be more enemy then friend.  Adults were only interested in covering their own asses, kids would just brazenly lie when marched into the principle's office with me, the wounded punching bag sitting across from them.  That was as much help as your average adult was for me back then, and all throughout my educational process.

By the time i'd gotten to my teenage years, i had an aura swirling around me.  I had nothing left to lose, it had all been taken away from me already, so bullies sniffed around cautiously.  I still had a few, but i was fearless at that point, dead inside.  They learned quickly engaging with me was a losing prospect.  Either my years of abuse and hardness led me to beat them, and cost them their status, which would be passed up to me by other kids like a trophy.  Or they would outnumber me, beat me down, and i wouldn't cry.  I wouldn't complain.  I would stand back up and look them right in the eye, blood trickling down my face.  They would see there was nothing left to take inside of me.  I was hallowed out by other blood thirsty alpha's looking to make a name for themselves on an easy target.  Wasn't so easy anymore.

This mutation came from how i was treated, like creatures in the wild, it had evolved as a defense mechanism.  No one, and nothing, was out there to protect me from this.  My body had to come up with a way.  My mind ended up stitching it all together.   There were, and still are, side effects.

The rage of those experiences is permanently embedded in my psyche.  The angry and fierceness born of that nihilism hammered into me defended me so perfectly, but only from that one, specific, narrow type of enemy.  Covering your body in spikes and acid defended me from predators, but invariably repelled potential friends and allies eventually.   There was novelty in knowing me as i was, and many people latched onto that.   That's all it was though.  Novelty.  There were no real allies to be found when the days and weeks wore on and that got to see that it wasn't a costume i could take off at the end of the day.  That this is what i REALLY looked like. This i what i really was.  Angry. Acid tongue. Nihilistic. Hardened.

I was autistic too, of course, and had some simple tricks for faking other emotions, but as all weathered travelers know, the mask requires amazing effort to maintain.  And it slips. And it consumes the bones and sinew as part of it's price.  Drinks the blood to smile and joke. To look you in the eye.

That total defense that i had virtually no hand in building, ruined all the years afterwards.  I was too angry, so much so that it consumed me utterly.  I shook with rage at times no good reason.  I wanted to hurt, i wanted to harm, i wanted to punch everyone in the fucking face over and over and over.  I knew, rationally, that this was normal.  It was that wounded child inside of me that wanted revenge at the cost of everything else.  I would gladly, light the room i was in on fire, if i knew i could take some of them down with me.  Knowing wasn't enough. I didn't have any real support system, then, or in the years preceding either.  So while i knew what was happening, and wrote about it often, i could not conquer this thing with ease.   It took me years. and years. and years. Several of which i spent completely isolated. Not dating. Not talking to friends. Not doing anything.  and even saying this now i know, it's still a part of me.  I am standing above it now, but our positions change as the seasons do.  I want you to know i've done all i could on my own.

These memories are so visceral, that when i read about other kids getting bullied, or adults getting bullied, or autistic people getting bullied, i am completely overcome with emotion.  I feel great surges of fear, rage, sadness, and deep anxiety. I want to snap the world in half. I want to sob uncontrollable like a child.  Sometimes i do. When i hear the music of my youth, i remember each emotion connected to each song i sang. To each person i shared that song with, and i am filled until the pressure makes me wince.

The things we endure as we grow up, as so incredibly powerful and life altering, and we don't have any idea until it's too late.

If you ever have the chance to protect someone, all i ask is that you think about this story.  Really try to feel what i feel.   And you do whatever you possibly can to prevent that person from having to endure this pain.  It is not growing pain.  It is the pain that keeps on growing until it is the epicenter of who you are. Everyone deserves the chance to be happy, don't take that away. I am ruined by my trials. By body is a wreck as a result of what i went through, and as it turns out all the science is there to support it. Bad childhoods result in extremely poor health outcomes. It's call the ACE score. Mine was 8 out of 10.

These are not growing pains.

These are the pains that keep on growing.

If you let them.

-e-

Patterns

There are some patterns that most autistic people share. 

Extreme focus on a subject of interest (my playing a certain game for an entire day, or reading a book in one long session, fixing an object that is broken until complete, ignoring sleep and food.) 

A level of detachment from emotional matters, though the degree varies. I still possess empathy and emotions, they are just very VERY subdued by comparison to normal folks. Many people have remarked that i seem "Robotic." and at times that is probably true. I Seek to solve problems in a pragmatic, rational, and unemotional way so, yes it is, clinical or perhaps robotic. 

Traits like this, when you lay them out line by line, don't seem on paper as if they would be so crippling, so alienating and limiting, but in the real world even little differences matter. Even the little variations get you noticed. The guy with the mole on his lip will always be that to some people, forever and ever. That will color their interactions, perhaps it's subtle affect will radically alter his ability to progress upward in his chosen career path. 

It could be that simple, and my condition is quite a bit more pervasive then one little physical deformity.

It would be if not perfect, at least ideal, if difference was praised more in common encounters, less in tiny off shoot artist communes. If my brain could be recognized as a different operating system, a program designed for different tasks, and not uniformly compared to the existing archetypes and found lacking. 

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

It is attributed to to Albert Einstein but a disputed quote. The message should still resonate loud and clear. 

Were so many PEOPLE not standing in front of so many doors, i could open them all with my mind. 

But there is no ruthlessness in me. No desire to hurt or reduce for malice. I can only make a cold logical presentation of why you should, 

But you are not obligated to ever, 

Move.

Neurotypicals and you.

SIGH.

I bet i'm more frustrated with you then you are with me. You have to deal with me once, i have to deal with you EVERYDAY AND FOREVER AND EVER.

Communication difficulties are the hallmark of an autistic person's life.  It doesn't matter where you fall on the spectrum, if you are on it at all, this problem is assured.

I often find myself sitting in the wake of various histrionic outbursts, pondering the thrashing, hostile neurotypical that has just stormed out.

Sometimes i myself become angry, as i saw nothing wrong or offensive with my response, but find myself being verbally assaulted with vulgarities seemingly out of blue, and i am a grown man. I will not be talked to in such a manner unless it is truly warranted.

I've tried to make sense of this for my lifetime, and it never, never makes sense to me.  Some suggestions for neurotypicals engaging in communicative efforts with those on the spectrum.

DO NOT ASK A QUESTION YOU DO NOT WANT ANSWERED
This is paramount.  If you are not ready for the full range of possible answers to a question, DO NOT ASK IT.  What the neurotypical mind is designed to do, anatomically speaking, is to be a predictive computer.  All of our TESTS for intelligence are based on prediction. What word comes next in this sequence? Which order do these images go in, and so on.

So i suspect i understand what is happening here.

You are asking a question, but predicting an answer.  If the response falls outside that range of predicted outcomes, it elicits hostility, or a general negative emotive response.  I cannot read your mind. I cannot read your face. I cannot read the hundreds of ques that other NT's can read that would allow me to know exactly the thing you want to hear in this instance.  You created a loaded situation for yourself, and me, so read the caps-locked-bolded part a few more times. I do not want to hurt your feelings, and i do not take kindly to being yelled at, over reacted too, or treated with great hostility when i do not understand the cause.  I am honest, i am different from NT's, this is true.  That does not mean i am LESS than, and i will not be ABUSED because you are incapable of hearing certain sequences of words.

SAY WHAT YOU MEAN

If you are the significant other of someone with ASD learn how to do this as soon as humanly possible.


If you come home after a long day at work, and start talking about something that is deeply frustrating for you, and you are VENTING and expressly DO NOT WANT ANY INPUT on the situation you are relaying, YOU MUST START WITH THAT FIRST.  If your stress about this day or said situation is profound, and my response, as covered in lesson one, is not what you predicted, or want to hear, you will likely become more agitated and now direct that stress and anger squarely at your partner, whom up until a moment ago, was a confidant, and is now, a punching bag that had nothing at all to do with your stress.

It is considered, i'd like to think universally, EVIL or at the very least, cruel, to hit a pet, or spank a child for it's actions when it cannot comprehend what is occurring.  I do not know at what point responding to a statement was grounds for full out verbal nuclear warfare, but had i known, i certainly would have avoided in it entirely.  I get no joy from oppressing or irritating others indiscriminately. I am pedantic by design as a result of my brain's biology,  not because of my desire to show off my  intelligence or make you feel stupid.

BE SPECIFIC

This is a continuation of lesson 2, but important. When you say, "I wanted you to support me."

I don't know what the fuck your talking about. Seriously. Even if  i've known you my entire goddamn life, that sentence means NOTHING to me.  It's far too vague, it forces me to make vast amounts of assumptions about what your precise desires are and am not comfortable doing that.  I will not undertake to do something i know i will FAIL at, just because you are incapable of more coherent language. I experienced this problem once in a very short job i held as a prep cook.  I would be given a list of materials and quantities required of me to prepare for the chef, but no notes regarding specifics.  To tell someone, "chop this up." Is woefully inadequate to me. Do you want to onions diced? Chopped? Quartered? Cut into strands?  I was NEW TO THE JOB, and in all situations dealing with people, i respond that same way. I will not prepare all the food under the assumption that perhaps, this is how you want it done, only to be browbeaten upon completion because you did not specific the thing you wanted because your inconsiderate or just a complete idiot.

Tell me how you want it done, and I will do it perfectly, comfortable that our communication was flawless, and that i did the job I was supposed to do, not the job I assumed that you wanted done.

Think about it. The whole fucking world runs like this.  I feel so excluded from virtually everything that it takes all of my will power to get out of bed day to day, and you could help me so much, by just thinking a BIT more about how you act, what your saying, and by being a little considerate.

DON'T FORGET

That i am on the spectrum.

That just leads into the whole mess repeating itself. You get angry at me for some perceived slight or lack of some vague feeling of support or politeness or social protocol that i did not enact....

and i am depressed and irritated that all the times i explained in great depth, THAT  I AM NOT LIKE YOUR FRIENDS,AND THAT MY BRAIN WORKS DIFFERENTLY THEN THE PEOPLE YOU WORK WITH, and yet your still getting angry at me for the way i think and the way i talk, even after spending countless hours carefully explaining how i work to you. I feel twice slighted,  for not being listened to, and then being yelled at.

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I still don't know if there is any practical way in which those on the spectrum and your average NT can interact in a fulfilling manner without these reactions eventually driving the autistic to live out life like a hermit in a cave due simply to be outnumbered by those that would be oppressive and close minded about different types of people.  I'm going to sit in my cave for ANOTHER 10 years, while i think about it.

This structure heaves and sags under it's own weight, and i have no course, but to patiently await it's fall. 

Expository Exhaustion

One of the biggest reoccurring problems in my life having to do with my disorder, is directly related to having to talk about it.

If your similar to  most any sort of person at all, chances are you have run into the problem of having to explain something to someone that just does not understand. I feel like it's a relatively ubiquitous experience. 

Most of the time, when it comes to social things ("You shouldn't say that.") That guy is me.  But all the other times, for ME, that guy/girl is YOU.

It happens to everyone. You try to explain your political position to someone who inquires, but they really only asked to be polite and wish you would shut up. You get dragged into a discussion about finances, or politics, or pop culture, or *sigh* RELIGION, and feel sweat beading and rolling down your forehead and that familiar warmth in your throat that reminds you of your growing exasperation. 

No manner of explanation seems to be good enough. Be it carefully thought out and rigorously fact checked, or emotional and profoundly felt, or hastily babbled out over too much caffeine in one of many government approved meth dens (starbucks) dotting the landscape.  

I hate the cliche' of it all. I HATE that the incredibly STUPID cliche' comes back around here and dominates.

"You just don't understand."

The statement is a non statement, a non sequitur. By itself, it means nothing. It is tendering your resignation to the futility of trying to codify the ineffable.   It is a face contorted by depth of emotion and words reaching it's finale via burst blood vessels in the temple and both eyes, achieving nothing, before the curtain falls, and the audience shuffles out, irretrievably vexed, and there is nothing either of you could have done to achieve a better result.

Imagine my side of this. Try to empathize with someone who has an obscenely heightened grasp of language, trying to explain WHY that does not mean i am a NORMAL person who is slightly smart with words and what it means to be on the autism spectrum to a person who has a one dimensional understanding  (or no understanding at all) of what autism means.

You would be welled served to walk away from that conversation 10 times out of 10.  It's valueless for both parties.  However social convention dictates i at least try, otherwise it is perceived that i am being some condescending holier then thou asshole, even if i already know the end result.  If you know nothing good can come of it, the logical course is to abstain from the conversation is it not?  I am trapped within illogical precepts that bind me up.

A lose-lose situation for me.  How can this be remedied?  How can i hope to make lemonade from this particular cart of lemons?  I have not yet come to a conclusion. Thus far it seems as though i have two equally unappealing choices:

Disengage utterly. Avoid interaction that leads me into having to have this conversation (lie) to achieve that end (which i am exceedingly bad at, almost completely unable to do) which leaves me feeling sad, lonely, hopeless,and burned out.

Ram my head into a brick wall. Which leads me to this end...  "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." -Albert Einstein  (note this quote is widely attributed to Einstein, but that is controversial) So. I can keep trying. As my perseverate nature tends to favor, knowing that there is no appreciable end in store for me.  If the numbers are right, then i am .1% and i cannot reasonable expect, as a scientifically minded man, to run into that in my daily travels. It is far more reasonable to assert that i will NEVER run into like minded people, ensuring my two equally unfavorable options remain as my only options. 

This is the difference between someone on the spectrum, and let's say just an antisocial personality.  I WANT friends. Honestly. I enjoy good conversation, it's one of my favorite things in the world. To be challenged, to be stimulated, to have an open and unfettered dialogue and peer into the minds of others.  I don't WANT to be alone, don't strive to be cooped up in my apt and have no friends (which at 31, i still have no lasting friends.) but my condition seems to impart some odd characteristics that disallow these kinds of relationships to form for me.  Of course i have tried my hand at faking, many, MANY times, but those relationships are unfulfilling and ultimately fail.  Eventually the real me coming beaming through the cracks in my expressionless mask and then it always comes back to "I don't like that guy.."   why?   "I don't know."

While having tried a dizzying variety of masks and techniques over my life, when the faking gambits work, they only allow me safe passage so long as i keep my mouth mostly shut.  When i'm honest, and i TRY to explain, well...  it gets old for me is all. The hope, the effort, the disappointing conclusion.  Being fired from every job, being dumped by every date.  All the while just reciting a memorized catalog of what you need to know about me before you know me. Exhausting. For others too, i'm quite certain. It's not as if i'm completely unaware after all this time. I know i have that effect on people.  The word they always used to describe me was "Intense." Which is to say, a catch-all for quite a few veiled negatives.  More accurately i surmise the words they meant were "Overbearing. Frighting. Intimidating. Condescending (i get that a lot), talks to much, asks too many questions, relentless."   To name a few. 

I don't mean to be, "intense." very little of personality is intentional. My mind is ME, there is no separating them. I AM my brain, and i don't believe otherwise. I don't  believe in free-will these days, i believe your conscious mind is a tiny pinhole of light poked into black shades over your eyes and the rest of what you do, want, say, feel, is already decided for you.  I could write 10 pages on the illusion of free-will, but that is another topic. My girlfriend said to me outright "Can you be a little less "You"?"   

The philosophical implications of that request are staggering! Well.. "If you consider the teaching of.,,,"  but seriously, I don't think i can.  I am 1, and i cannot subtract from that. I cannot compartmentalize or meter my personality. I can not be, 80% me or 45% me. I cannot even wrap my head around such a question.  She of course wanted me to be less "Intense" but alas, i am who i am, and i have already spent my entire life having to defend that, having to defend my brain, my personality, things i never had control over or asked for. I can't keep apologizing for what i had no hand in creating, and i'm not sure i can keep explaining.

I know that to stop, is to give up all hope. Admit defeat once and for all, and cut my losses from the human race. How much longer can i make it in this marathon before falling on my face and being dragged until it's finally over?

..........

Bullies, yeah, what are they good for?

Absolutely nothing.

But i'm biased.  In the evolutionary model, they must serve some purpose, or else they wouldn't be so prolific.  Alpha males, bullies, internet tough guys (trolls) and all there ilk have been gradually getting their proverbial day in court over the last few years. Public media finally started to catch on to the severity of the problem but even after the columbine shooting, it hasn't been enough. More lives have been lost to cyber bullies, a young man jumped off a bridge after someone "outted" him on his campus as being gay, a young girl hung herself, and countless others abound for you to find on the net.

We focus so keenly when something goes wrong but what about the altogether unsexy idea of preventing these kids from having to endure SO much abuse that they break?

I am an anomaly, that's for sure. My survival to this point that is.  As anyone reading this will know, i am open with my being diagnosed with ASD last year and using this blog to attempt to make sense of what that means for me.

I was a great big flashing neon target as a kid. Not only was i a spectrum kid in a time before Aspergers or variations of classic autism were diagnosed, but i was severely asthmatic and allergic to just about everything to boot.  My uncle, who was something of an informal mentor in some respects when i was young said i was a "Bully magnet."  How incredible RIGHT he was.    Of course, no one knew, medically anyways, WHY.

Being weak is always a trigger for sharks and vultures to circle, and my reduced physical condition was a dinner bell for hungry coyotes.  I carried multiple inhalers, including one i took regularly which was an inhaled steroid, indicating the seriousness of my condition.  I had to be rushed to the hospital on more then one occasion due to asthma attacks severe enough that the inhalers failed to work and i was in danger of immediate suffocation.

This is the genetic material i have to work with.  Little kids should not have multiple near death experiences.  I wouldn't recommend it.

Apart from being frail, which made me akward physically,  i was, well, WEIRD as i would become accustomed to hearing, and so you know, double whammy. My gym teachers routinely berated me and made fun of me, quite vocally in front of whole classes, creating a precedent by which other students would participate in making fun of me. If the teacher could do it, well why couldn't they?   I was afraid of swimming because of my suffocation episodes, so i could not complete those requirements. I could not run so i could not play basketball or baseball or kickball or soccer or any number of sports.  I failed every state mandated physical requirement test. You remember, the ones with the running a mile, doing x sit ups, pull ups, push ups, all that stuff.

I was odd and seemed to have no sense of what was acceptable behavior. I did not salute the flag because i did not understand what it's purpose was. I would get out of my seat and walk around the classroom in the middle of attendance, sometimes in the middle of class, and have no sense of it being wrong (this stuff will be further touched on when i write my piece of getting a large chunk of my SCHOOL RECORDS, only a few months ago.) I sat in the back of the classroom and made odd drawing and wrote poetry. I was fasinated with computers and in the 3rd grade had already fixed the schools apple 2 computers in multiple classrooms. I taught myself how.

As a result of all this strange behavior i fell under the axe of a common social phenomena,  DESTROY THAT WHICH IS DIFFERENT.  I was constantly insulted, and when i did not respond back, it was escalated into physical violence against me. I was beat up. Terrorized. Chased home by bullies so often the school just started letting me out 30 minutes earlier then everyone else. I was knocked unconscious in the lunch line when someone punched me in the back of the head.  I was punished for being different by the bullies, and then punished by the administration for "getting into fights." and often suspended and penalized, painted as a bad kid, a troubled child.  I experienced this for most of my time in school from 1st grade all the way until high school.  I was hospitalized as a result of all of this abuse, and i became extremely depressed and was thought to be suicidal. I did in fact have suicidal thoughts,  as a result of all this, and those thoughts were frequently part of my writing. I never had a "plan" and i never made an attempt. I was working through these worries and ideas WITH writing.  I was being constantly monitored, a bug under glass, from the start. Therapists evaluated me every year, different medications were tried, a barrage of tests at every age.

But when they kept reading my writing, and decided i was "Dangerous" they had me thrown in a mental institution.  It was here that after 6 weeks of serious confinement with severely damaged and dangerous adolescents that an alternative picture began to emerge.  The people i was locked up with were frightening to me. A young child that burned his neighbors house down for being bullied. A kid that took his parents car and tried to RUN OVER his tormentors. Multiple cases of attempted suicide, one kid that tried to electrocute himself.  I felt fairly normal by comparison, and that started to show in this confined environment.  Within the first 2 weeks the orderlies and doctors treated me differently.  They gave me my own room instead of sleeping with people that would have night terrors and become violent. They let me stay up later then all the other kids to watch tv, which was an unheard of privilege.  They let me trade some of the food my grandmother had brought me with the staff to order myself a pizza.   They let me have a writing utensil, listen to music, and even play with my Magic cards.   By the end of it that state of NY had deemed me to be sane. Not as i had been depicted by those around me. I was not a violent dangerous monsterous teen, i was a kid who was abused so much, for so long, that i had become aggressive in response to threatening behavior, and taken out of that threatening environment i was relatively OK. Undeniably weird, definitely different,but certainly not "Insane."

I could no longer trust my mother, or another of my stepfathers, as my mother was complicit in me getting to this state, and also had ensured my detainment by taking my written work and sharing it with others, who freely misinterpreted every word.  My stepfather was another source of fear and physical abuse and so, i opted to go into foster care.

Thankfully after a short while my grandparents petitioned the court for custody of me, and i was able to find some relief, but there was STILL more school to complete. Much more to yet to endure.

I think, it if weren't for my ASD, i would have experienced the same end as those tragic cases. Death by my own hands, or a violent act to defend myself against my abusers when no one was present to act on my behalf. Because i always felt this vague emotional disconnection i had always tried to logic out my problems. To find a solution, to solve the puzzle. I didn't take it as personal as a normal kid would.  I was mechanically trying to make sense of why i was so disliked, and in that was, was insulated from the greater harm of knowing exactly what was going on.

Kids on the spectrum now, at least seem to have a fighting chance, but it is still an uphill battle. There are more resources now, early detection is common as well, but that doesn't change human nature.

People will still seek to DESTROY THE DIFFERENT as it is part of the primal reptile brain, and these children CANNOT protect themselves. It is up to you, up to adults, up to society to take responsibility for these kinds of horrors that are visited upon the affected and stand up and protect them.  Go one step further and make the effort to punish those who would abuse or victimize ANYONE in such a way. Drag the bullies and abusers into the light of day. Expose them as the complete monsters they are and make them suffer at the hands of public exposure.   This cruelty should not be allowed to persist. This vile behavior cannot continue.   If we want to prevent these tragedies from occurring and increasing in frequency we must take every step necessary to be better people, better role models, and better stewards of  our youth.

I have so much more to say about bullies, but this experience, and reliving it, is emotionally exhausting, and i need a change of thought, let me leave you with this.

Not many make it through like i did. And i am not without permanent holes in my life and psyche, spectral wounds and scars that can never hope to heal.  I wouldn't wish that fate upon even my worst enemy.