I have tried to write this at least half a dozen times, not really knowing what to say or how to say it. I have thousands of words stammering around about my childhood, my struggles, my epiphany, never really hitting the right note. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was procrastination; me being unwilling to come to grips with the inevitable conclusion. I realize now that is not the case. The time and care I am taking with this message has nothing to do with apprehension and everything to do with respect to the issue at hand.
I will eventually get around to a deeper assessment of how I got to this point, but suffice it to say that I have never felt fully comfortable in my own skin. I have always marveled at people who just own themselves. It isn’t about arrogance or even overt confidence, rather, it is about calm existence. I have never enjoyed this peace. I have always felt too young, too old, too wimpy, too intimidating, too creepy, too caring, too emotional, too angry, too weird, too opinionated, too quiet, too talkative, too drunk, too sober, too persistent, too ambivalent, too ruthless, too dispassionate. I hoped I could think my way out of it, but that was never possible, in part, because I am always thinking. I thought that the fact that my brain seemed to be managing dozens of threads of thought made me some sort of savant. I never realized that it was actually a survival mechanism.
I made it about 48 years propping up an unsteady facade, putting on a face that seemed capable, confident, intelligent, caring, and strong. I had hit a stride where I was so convinced that me being abnormal was normal that discomfort was just the way it was meant to be. Then I had an event that changed everything. Seemingly minor, and likely so for most people, it shook me far more than it should have. I could not come to grips why this likely unintended questioning of my integrity had such a profound impact on me. I sunk into a deepness I had not experienced before. I monitored every interaction and tallied every affront. I started to obsess with how I was treated by others, and how I reacted to everything. The harder I worked to achieve success, the more I seemed to fail. Granted, this had occurred before, but never in the triumvirate of my life – family, occupation, self. I sought out the advice of a therapist, which was a momentary boost to my morale, but failed to identify the root cause of my distress. It was actually one of the people I seemed to consistently fail who broached the potential reason for my crisis.
When the possible cause was first mentioned, I had the immediate reaction that I was too smart and did not show any of the signs. For a kid growing up with Rain Man being a favorite movie, I always viewed the two characters as halves of the perfect being – Tom Cruise as dashing, charming, and supremely confident while Dustin Hoffman as the brilliant, regimented, focused, and sensitive. I guess as a kid I would have always said Charlie was my favorite character, but I also had this odd reverence for Raymond, not because he was nicer, but because he was special. It always stuck with me that I had some sort of connection with Raymond and found Charlie so distant, like an unobtainable goal. I shared this movie with my daughter recently while I was journaling about this and it struck me that I had little in common with Charlie and so much that I could understand with Raymond. Of course, I am thankful that my condition does not manifest with the severe challenges depicted in the film, but I realized that I was embarrassed by my initial reaction to the amateur diagnosis. Having watched Atypical during my acknowledgement of this was a bit like an instruction manual for life as neuro-diverse, whereas, Rain nan was a bit deeper to the heart of the matter, the struggle to really gain acceptance of a condition while also being who you are.
While I have not sought out an official diagnosis yet, I have taken tests, followed TikTok accounts, read innumerable posts on Facebook, and poured over many other accounts of what makes up the conditions generally described as Autism Spectrum Disorder. For those of you more versed in this, I apologize if I have not fully grasped the appropriate terminology. I am still struggling a bit with whether Aspergers, which seems to best fit my situation, is the right term, or if I am just in the “highly-functional” range of the spectrum (quotes intended to demonstrate my discomfort with that nomenclature). Once I discarded any shred of embarrassment about this condition, I was able to absorb and accept the information with growing glee. Every time I read a symptom or hear a story about an experience from someone on TikTok, it was like drinking the freshest water on the hottest day. I could barely believe how the symptoms described me. Clumsiness? Check. Preferring solitary activities? Check. Hypersensitivity to noises that don’t seem to bother others? Check. Frequent monologues on a subject? Yes, and anyone who knows me would whole-heartedly agree. I have never understood why my intense black and white view of right and wrong, my easy ambivalence to situations that make others emotional, my utter confusion over office politics, and my inability to read the emotions of others put people off so much. Rather than a world of questions, I now seem to have answers. I always felt that somehow my incompatibility with others was my fault, that I was forever destined to be misaligned with others, and I was responsible. While it is reassuring to know that this may be something inherently beyond my control, it is far greater relief to have a reason for my behavior and thoughts, because now, rather than exerting myself to hide, or mask, my nature, I can invest my energy into understanding myself, and offering that explanation to others.
So, yes, I am weird, clumsy, anxious, and dismissive of certain rituals or personal politics I don’t understand. I am also honest, loyal, direct, and persistent. I will bore those I care about with the most mundane details of local politics or the MCU, but I will also defend and support those people to my last breath. While I can be a painful adversary, I am also a dedicated friend. I am certain I have perplexed, or outright pissed off, anyone who has read this far at some point in our relationship. I write this with a couple of intentions in mind. First, my hope is that it brings a bit of understanding. I am not normal. I did not start on the same path as most of you, I was on my own path. I have not diverged into oddity, I was always there. My way is as natural for me as yours is for you. Of course, I will have to realize that there are far more people in my life who are deemed NT than ND, so I will have to adjust my interactions if I wish to have any. These adjustments will no longer be an effort in building a false representation; rather, they will be an effort to blunt some of the more bracing aspects of my nature. Second, I hope that, in some small way, I have given some pause to consider that there isn’t really one right way to be. Of course, no condition that inflicts harm on others should be accepted, but I encourage people to consider the value of what they may not understand. Appreciate that those who are different are not necessarily incongruent to normalcy, but complimentary. There is a lot of controversy in the autism community about the original emblem for the condition, the puzzle piece. Some view it as those on the spectrum contorting themselves to fit in with NT’s. I do not agree with this perspective. I view the puzzle piece as an apt description of what it is like to mesh with each other in society. I fit in a way that is different from others, but I still fit.