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.

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.

How to give up (knowing when, or how, to throw in the towel)

This is not a tutorial.
It's a question.

At what point does toughness and rugged determination, cross over into delusional stubbornness and perseverence?

I don't have the answer to this, and being autistic, i don't know if ever will to a degree that makes me comfortable.   My very nature, like many others on the spectrum is interwoven with the tendency to perseverate. This word has a few different definitions so i'll clarify a bit.  One listed from wiki states: "the inability to switch ideas along with the social context, as evidenced by the repetition of words or gestures after they have ceased to be socially relevant or appropriate," ... Which is pretty good, but not an all inclusive explanation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseveration

More or less, what happens is we get stuck.  There is a point at which rational minded people would abandon a cause for one reason or another.

it could be simple disinterest, it could be that the platform has been abandoned and they are following the crowd (like from myspace to facebook ) It often times is because completing the intended action has become too difficult, and also could be that a person has made a reasoned observation that the amount of energy they would expend to complete it would be much greater then the end result (Sure i COULD repair that dvd player.. but a brand new one is 20 dollars at wal-mart.)

These options have never worked for me. It seems without fail, once i am commited to a task in the immediate sense, i am STUCK firmly to that task until it's completion, much to the detriment of my sleep schedule, any appointments i may have to keep, my hygiene, and even my ability to feed myself.  I have on many occasions, just forgotten to eat as a result of my level of involvement with whatever i engaged with, and it's not until i feel dizzy, or dehydrated , or deeply ILL that i notice.  Occasionally, i have someone remind me, and then i eat or drink before returning to to task, but if i'm alone..

Many examples exist in my own life where i have stayed awake for 3 days to fix something.  Usually this has to do with electronics. It could be building, stress testing, and repairing a computer, or last year, dismantling, rebuilding and repairing an X-box 360 that had stopped working by resoldering it and swapping a few parts.

The point is, while in some of these cases, the end result is great. I did fix the xbox and saved 300 bucks. I fixed a dvd player and saved 100 bucks. I fixed a computer and saved someone tons of  expense.  However the darker side of perseveration starts to drag into interaction with other people, and behaviors that can show potential co-morbidity with OCD.

Giving up on a task is hard enough, with someone who is built more then a little inflexible, but how do you decide when to give up on a person?  How do you DATE as an autistic and NOT just spend your relationships treating people like things to fix, never giving up because "you started it, and you have to finish it."

I know, externally, not intuitively, that people can not be dealt with in such a manner, and i know that at some point, you have to let go.  I feel as if i lack to insight to be able to accurately identify HOW and WHEN that should happen.   It tends to make me more black and white, and less forgiving when i try to create a system for myself.

3 Strikes and your out.  I know . What about extenuating circumstances? When if your partner is "going through something" and as a result is uncharacteristically mean towards you?  Should this allow for special considerations?

What if the infraction from another party was unintentional or "an accident." How many times do you allow for "Accidents" of this nature before disregarding this distinction?  I have always said something to the effect of: "I don't care if it's an accident. If you shot me and aimed at the guy behind me, i'm still shot. I'm not LESS shot because it was accidental."  

Who's wrong/right in that scenario?

If you honor all your agreements with a friend/relation and they repeatedly fail to honor theirs, how many "Chances" do you allow them before deciding to remove them entirely from your life?  Living up to one's word is very important to me. I am deeply honest, and rely on honesty to communicate with others in a world in which i experience a high degree of social blindness. I rely on my honest communication of my intent and feelings because i cannot reliably read the subtext and social ques of others as a communication mechanism.  When others fail to maintain honesty in actions AND in a words, the disconnect is deeply disconcerting for me, and i feel slighted, and disrespected when i am lied to.

You may justify it as a "Small Thing" ("I forgot to pick you up when i said i would. Come on, it's not that big a deal.") but i wouldn't agree to do something, and then "Forget." and THEN be nonchalant about it. If i make a commitment, i stick to it.

I'm still trying to learn, everyday, about how to have better interactions with others in a world that is full of invisible pits for me to stumble into that others see perfectly.

In the meantime, i'll keep asking questions, and carefully analyzing answers.  So i'm not being funny, or sarcastic, or rhetorical when i ask you,

"How do i know when to give up?"

The unbearable heaviness of being.

I had an odd lucid dream some days ago, and it was transcendently depressing. 

I've long experienced a profound frustration with other people.  That manifested in my mid teens as a palpable rage about the incompetence and idiocy of others, but grew to be a begrudgingly accepted truth as i grew older. 

It was embodied by a phrase i used to describe how i felt about the phenomena, 

"You can't fault a dog, for being a dog." 

I've read so much in my life between those age goalposts, and seen my initial feeling echoed out in the idea space by pained and tortured scientists, authors, artists and intellectuals throughout time.  Expressing a persistent melancholia about being so removed from others.  

The issue of autism acceptance can cut both ways you see, with you not wanting to accept me for my unique abilities being the most common manifestation, but also with me not able to connect to yours. Even though my desire to connect is sincerely genuine.

When you are truly gifted at something, be it language or science or art or music or even building a cement foundation, interaction with others attempting that same thing look positively oafish.  Co-mingling with them is irritating, there unfinished gangly attempts brushing up against the polished surfaces of your very skin. 

The bricklayer who is a true master see's idiots and imbeciles in his fellow bricklayers and takes no joy in it.  The initial swell of ego often pursued vociferously by others is long gone for these masters.  It's unwelcome replacement is this untenable disappointment that moves in to fill the void. 

You want to be surrounded by people of equal competence, not merely accepted but integrated with communication that flows in both directions.  However if you are superior at a given thing, that communication is always unidirectional.  You are always having to advise, correct, repair, and refurbish the efforts of the average people that comprise the majority of humanity. 

It is, in a word, unsatisfying. 

And this ANGST, this ineffable thing that i've detected in written works for so long that these masterful sorts express, is a result of an unfortunate conundrum they find themselves embroiled in.  

A good person can not HATE or DISDAIN a person of lesser ability simply on the grounds that he or she may be in one or many dimensions, inferior to him or herself.  

"You can't fault a dog for being a dog."

You can't fault a human for being, average. 

But this offers little to no comfort to the gifted, as now there is no grounds to expect or have hope for the average party to mysteriously metamorphosize into a gifted person.  Some abilities and gifts are inborn, genetically encoded, and no amount of push up's or reading of Proust will change that.

In my dream i was a father like figure, teaching someone how to ride a bike, with training wheels.  And while i am happy for the person i have taught, and this achievement is certainly worthwhile and significant  in their development, i and overwhelmed with sadness at the gulf that this reveals between us. 

"You can't fault a dog for being a dog."

And it wouldn't make me feel any better, if i could. 

I am "Gifted" this angst, this profound and deep sadness, and there seems to be nothing anybody can do about it. 

I wish to be with you. I wish to be like you. I wish to be inside, looking out at the grey drizzle.

And if wishes were horses,

beggars would ride. 

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.