Autistic Am I

 This may be a post that a lot of people can relate to.  Back in 2020 when everything was shut down I decided to buy a bicycle for exercise and to get me out of the house. I hadn’t riden a bicycle since I was a boy (I’m 53 now). It was hard at first but it was instantly exhilarating. It took me back to when I was a boy. Things were different back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Parents would let their children ride away from their home with little fear that anyone would mess with them. They may have set parameters but they would never really know exactly where you were once you were around the corner. That freedom was so exciting to me at the age of 6. I could ride to the park , corner store or elementary school all by myself. I loved being alone. As an autistic child the sensory experiences that came with always being around people , whether at school or in the home I grew up in with 7 plus people, could be very overwhelming. I would get on my bike and ride until there was n...

 I’m at a familiar place mentally. I’m experiencing burnout and I fear meltdown isn’t far away. I will fight that as hard as I can. It seems the older I get the more damaging meltdown can be. I’m dealing with a lot of social interaction at work combined with a lot of contradiction . A “these are the rules” but they’re not really the rules ,kind of thing. I recognize where I’m at and what may be coming from long experience yet I still feel helpless to do anything about it. I probably could go to HR and ask for help but doing that will mark me as someone who can’t get along. It will also put a target on my back. Any mistake I may make at work would be exploited . I have this thing in me, that’s what it feels like. It’s autism. It positions itself between me and the world. Distorting everything in the same way a kaleidoscope does. My perceptions don’t seem to match what the rest of the world sees. I’m experienced enough to recognize what’s happening , but still unable to change it. No...

 I started this blog shortly after being diagnosed as Autistic. That was a very strange time for me. I felt as if I’d finally figured out why I was so different from most otheres. It felt profound. I wanted to tell the world about it. Looking back , I would have done things differently. The way I feel right now is that diagnosis wasn’t something for me to shout to the world, “I knew it, I knew along I was different.” It was for me more than anyone else. I had a grand idea that I would share with the world all my struggles and maybe someone could benefit from my experience. I still think that is a grand idea but I’ve come to understand the blog is more of a benefit to me than it ever could be to anyone else. I come here and work things out that I struggle with. I write , I read and I rewrite ,until I feel I can understand or at the very least reconcile all these stories of my life that are hard for me to deal with. To that end I offer the following story. It will probably read more ...

 I wrap a cocoon around myself for protection. A cocoon usually symbolizes change.  Without mistake , change is my stated propose . I mean to change the fact that I let others decide what kind of person I am. My quality doesn’t depend on whether or not I would help those that would ask for that help just because of their need and shared circumstance. Those I do help will not be out of some imposed obligation but love. I no longer accept another’s definition of what love is or to whom I should apply it to. I will love , or not, without guilt because if guilt is in the reasoning for my action it can’t be love. A cold pill to swallow and serve but if my offering is born of guilt then there is no love for whomever I may offer help to. Questions of right and wrong will no doubt linger , my burden to bare.  I need to be honest with myself. It’s not the fault of the snake that bites you, because that is what a snake does, the fault lies with the fact that I tread where snakes li...

 I am not the person people see. Every word I share with people is not scripted but the feeling or the emotion behind those words are. I want to show people a good version of me. One they will approve of or even like. Whenever it’s my perception someone doesn’t think well of me I try to change their mind. How nice it must be to actually not care what people think of you. What’s that even like? Presenting an agreeable person has been a goal of mine since I was in 6th grade. Long time ago but the intent was very , well , intentional . The previous year I had  been invited to attend a school for advanced or gifted children because of how well I always scored on the standardized tests. Full disclosure , in the second grade I was put in the trailer outside the school with the kids that rode the short bus because of my poor reading comprehension. The year spent at the advanced school was one of the worst of my childhood. Most of the other children were advanced in social aspects as ...

Change has always been difficult for me. Nothing more so than abrupt change. When a thing changes suddenly it’s like I’m not really sure what to do. There will be a time of cognitive struggle with anger ,then after some time has passed, adjustment. I say that as if it’s no big deal but ,in the moment, it can feel catastrophic to me. Perhaps my schedule at work changes or the area that I am assigned to cover. My reaction to change is not always a rational thing. Once my employer changed the Wednesday menu at the cafeteria and looking back it felt so horrible to me at the time. I wrote an essay on the company website about the comforts of employees having the food that they enjoyed and have come to expect. In all actuality I was the only one so torn up about not being able to have fried chicken wings , turnip greens , sweet potatoe casserole and dressing every Wednesday for lunch. These few things I’ve described seem different to me than the most profound change I’ve ever felt. This is t...

 When I have interactions with other humans or when I’m scripting possible future interactions, when I think ,I use words. I will hear the words in my mind as if I’m speaking them. When thinking of things in the natural world that don’t include other humans all my thoughts are images. I’ve read this is a typical way of thinking for autistic people.  I much prefer the images. This quiets everything for me inside my head. Alternatives or possibilities are much easier and faster to work through without being hindered by language . Here’s the thing with that though. I may understand a thing in detail but not be able to share it with others because of my inability to translate my thoughts to language with accuracy.

I’ve written for as long as I can remember. It’s always helped me  communicate with others and myself .I’ve come to believe it’s a form of scripting, writing what I might say to someone about any given subject. It also helps me sort and understand my emotions. I think I’m much better at writing what I think others want to hear than I am at expressing what I want to say. I’d like to accurately express to others what I am , or rather what it’s like to be me. Admittedly I don’t know how others think so the way I am ,inside my head, may be exactly what others are but it doesn’t feel that way to me. I feel separate, as if I’m something different from those around me. There’s been a great shift in my reality this year, apart from the total knee replacement I had in the spring. My mother passed ,it’s been difficult for me to deal with. I struggle with emotional regulation. As a result of that struggle I’ve learned to assign emotions that I may not feel in place of the ones I don’t recogni...

 I struggle with most all types of reciprocal communication, especially live conversation. If given the opportunity I am comfortable with communicating via email or text but this means that there can be no innuendo or other attempts at manipulating a conversation with improper suggestions by the person I am communicating with. In other words , the person I may be communicating with can be held accountable for what they write in an email or text. This also removes a persons ability to use tone of voice or body language to express negative emotions they may other wise try to inflict on me. I work for a very large organization. Manipulation through threat has been a popular form of communication and or motivation by most of my superiors here.  Typically done in ways or language that can’t be accounted for. My employer touts they are inclusive to all people regardless of race , religion , gender or disability , and have shown this to be true through accommodations they have given ...

 One of the things I find myself struggling the most with when trying to have someone understand the way autism affects me is that it’s not a choice. Because I am autistic I struggle with  anxiety when dealing with people, no more so than when having to interact with my siblings. Our mother passed earlier this year and there are estate matters that I have to communicate with them on. Each time this happens my anxiety is heightened. My wife tells me I should “just not let it get to me”. I have no problem with doing the right thing when dealing with the estate . I’m not avoiding the matter.  If I could make a choice in my mind to not ever suffer from anxiety again I would make that choice. I know that my anxiety can be irrational. I can absolutely hide (mask) my emotions . I’ve told myself  many times in my life when faced with situations that cause anxiety, this is it, it’s going to be different this time, you can do this, and I will for a time.  Turning a bli...

 A friend in an online peer group that I participate in posed an interesting question this morning. The question was asking anyone in the group if they watched TV with subtitles. I found this amusing because it’s a frequent topic of discussion at my house. My daughter watches with subtitles and I don’t care to. I’m such a slow reader that if I take the time to read the subtitles I miss the content of the show and for whatever reason if the subtitles are on I can’t not read them. My wife and I recently started watching a new episodic show on a popular streaming service. In the opening scene a murder was committed. The music that was playing in the background was light hearted . I told my wife they were playing the wrong music. Later in the episode a husband was sleeping with a woman that was not his wife. His wife was aware but despite the fact of her husbands infidelity she was still very loving to him. The consequences didn’t match the action. As in life , I watch peoples reaction...

 Autism isn’t always this horrible thing for me. In fact most of the time I love being exactly how I am. There are the times that can feel horrible in the moment but more often than not things can just feel like they are a bit much. Today my son and I are at our local neurodivergent hang out , aka, local gamer store (we’re nerds) . There is a Pokemon tournament today with a large prize so there are ALOT more people here than normal. Saving the explanation of how that affects me I will just say the situation can cause me to have less availability of my cognitive function. So I have to be careful and weigh any reactions or interactions before communicating with someone. The last two nights were spent on concrete bleachers at a football game and a marching band competition. My son plays trumpet in the band. I am so proud of how much he enjoys playing in the band and it gives me great joy to see him having fun and participating. Because I am autistic large crowds in close quarters can ...

 I don’t want to be angry about people not being aware of how autism really is anymore. I was angry , after diagnosis. If it could have been known that I was autistic when I was a boy my life may have turned out very differently. The thought that help could have been had but wasn’t was upsetting to me. I don’t want to be upset about that anymore. It feels like the more I am angry or rant about how the system isn’t built for autists the worse I feel about myself. I want to be okay with being myself. I want to not really care when someone looks at me like I’m an idoit. I want for people to not occupy as much space in my head as they do now. It is my head after all. Shouldn’t I be able to invite whoever I want in there?   Starting  to see the lesson in that. The value of not letting what others think of me matter. Perhaps it was me that wasn’t ok with autists. Maybe self loathing , but I don’t want to be hard on myself either. I want a space where I can exist being my true s...

 For as long as I can remember I’ve looked for a reason for the way I am or a description that would provide me with that answer.  I found a description when diagnosed as autistic. Autism accurately described so many things about myself but there were still questions or things about my behavior that didn’t seem to fit. I believe that is because like the majority of people I was ignorant about what autism is. I am intelligent, that fact alone seemed , to my mind, a contradiction to my diagnosis. I’ve since learned that autism plays no part in a persons intelligence. My “symptoms” such as social anxiety aren’t even, they come in peaks and valleys. That seemed contrary to my diagnosis as well. I’ve also learned that how well I can cope with being autistic greatly depends on my state of mind at any given moment. When well regulated I can seem as neurotypical as anyone because of my high masking abilities. If recent events have already affected me it’s like a snowball affect on my ...

 Isolation is perhaps the thing that autism gives me that I struggle with the most.  I’m a bit disregulated right now so I will do my best to describe the feeling of isolation that always accompanies the disregulation .  I’m in a situation that’s causing current and ongoing harm. It’s a harm that no one can see or detect but is very real to me. To much detail to explain but the harm comes from certain social interactions that seem to be ordinary to the rest of the world but so very complex to me, so much so that I put such a great deal of mental energy into following all the possible paths of the situation that it greatly reduces my cognitive abilities. Sounds like horse shit , right? It certainly does to me but the truth of it is as real as any physical thing I can touch. I can’t explain this to anyone other than to simply say I am autistic. I’ve learned that means absolutely nothing to most folks. In this state I feel totally disconnected from the rest of the world. My ...

 I don’t believe in magic like when I was a child. Magic could fix anything when I was a child. There was this mysterious force that only the likes of shaman , the Dali lama ,Santa Claus and the Easter bunny could wield . It could make everything ok. It could make my parents not fight , it could make the lights come back on when they were cut off for lack of payment , it could make food appear in the pantry and if I was lucky enough it could fix me too. Ofcourse these were the observations of a child. Soon enough I learned that there was no such thing as magic. With that realization the hope that everything would just somehow be ok went away. I taught my children all these same fairy tales too. An odd thing when you think about it. Giving children all these fanciful stories knowing that one day they too will know are not real. Last night I was watching a game show with my wife and daughter (21) and I suggested that the game was rigged. My daughter told me that I take the magic out ...

 Therapy time, for me that is. I’m always hopeful that someday my posts here might reach someone and help them make sense of things in their life. Hurt, thats a word that has different functions . A noun to describe my feelings and a verb to show the action of my feelings. I feel hurt (the noun) from long ago as if it was yesterday. If a hurt cuts too deep and I can’t make sense of it I will put it away. That type hurt always comes back to me. Each time I feel it as if it just happened. It will sting, burn and  break something inside me and quickly becomes something I can’t look at anymore, it’s just too overwhelming. I write about things to help me sort them. When writing I have the time to think about a thing and describe what I feel about it in detail. This process seems to help me look at and reconcile things from my past that I’ve never been able to put away for good. I don’t write seeking pity , my stories can be hard to believe. I understand because sometimes it’s hard ...

 I looked back on my life and all I saw was a vast trail of wreckage and I had to know ……… why? Things were going better in my life than they ever had. I had a loving wife and two children. We were a happy family. I had a good job with benefits including healthcare. At 50 years old I was 20 years removed from the hellish landscape of my youth. I looked back at that life and all I saw was a trail of wreckage and I had to know why. Why did I do all those things that make me cringe now?How could I have made those choices? There were drugs and alcohol, a very familiar story but there was something else. Some need I had to fight every system that I felt had failed me. Screw them is what I always thought. In my youth I was always so confused at the world around me. All the things that people said were right and just were not available to me. My mind could never connect with those things because I did not fit. When “they” would say everyone is welcome , it felt like everyone was welcome b...

 I’ve been thinking about how I experience emotions this morning. It’s my perception that I feel emotions much more intensely than most people. From what I’ve learned about autism and my own life experiences, struggles with emotional regulation is a common trait of autistic people. My emotions can be so joyful , reaching heights of what I assume is bliss , I can also reach extreme depths of despair. I’ve been grateful in my life when I look at a simple thing like a sunrise or hear a beautiful instrumental and be moved to tears of joy. I’ve cursed life when at the bottom of an ocean of despair feeling its crushing weight. Is it better to have felt such joy and fallen to such depths than to never have felt that joy at all? The path in between the two opposites is so long that I can’t see or feel the other end from whichever point I’m at. While on that path I never contemplate either end, then when the trail stops I am lost and consumed by whatever emotional location I’m at. Sometimes...

 When I was a boy ,  When I was a boy, 5 or 6 years old , My mother had an allergic reaction to penicillin. She had large welps rise up all over her body. She was very sick but didn’t want to go the hospital at 1st. I felt so helpless . My momma was sick and there wasn’t much I could. I got a bowl of water and a wash cloth. I would dip the cloth in the water , ring it out and lightly rub her welps and face. This seemed to my young mind to give her some relief. This week I stood by my mother’s bed in her last hours . My momma was sick and there wasn’t much I could do. I caressed her hair lightly just like I did when I was a boy and for that moment in time I was that boy again. The man I am knows this is the way God intended our life here on earth to be. One day my children will bury me, but the little boy in me will always miss his momma.

 I’ve been thinking about life a lot lately. My mother is at the end of hers. Too many ailments to list , she’s 82 years old so it would seem that old age is the cause. I’ve been reflecting on my relationship with her , as well as all the other relationships in my life. Everything about me is reflected through a lense of autism, because I’m autistic . This can’t be that much different than the lense all peoples experiences are reflected through. On my journey of understanding myself and how autism has affected my life I have made declarations and statements that must seem so absolute to the reader, as was my intention. I’m not thinking in absolute terms right now. I’m thinking more compassionately and with more open mindedness. All the reasons I have  seen and reported from my past ,weird , unconventional life have lost a lot of their gravity on my psyche. At the end of our time here what does the why of it all really matter? Maybe it doesn’t or shouldn’t.  Maybe the love...

 As an autistic individual, participating in large organizations has always been difficult for me. Perhaps Church has been the hardest for me.  I dont attend church regularly, never have. My parents would tell me to believe in the Bible and its teachings as if it were fact . The only time I would attend church with my parents was around holidays ,mostly Christmas and Easter, these being the two biggest in Christianity. On the sparse occasions when I would spend the weekends with my paternal grandparents at their home in the country (rural area) they would take me to the church they attended before  returning me home on Sundays. It was a Methodist church, so if ever asked what denomination I was raised that’s the answer I will give. The part of the country I live in has been nicknamed “the Bible Belt” because of the large percentage of churchgoers. The church or churches hold great sway in their perspective communities.Even the drunkards would claim Christianity as their o...

The following is a post of mine  from another social media app that I made in response to a question posed about the affects of masking in autistic individuals  There is no place in society for us to not mask, no place for us to be ourselves, even when we disclose our disability, we can’t help but feel everyone’s eyes on us, real or perceived. It’s not the fault of anyone, not society, not NT’s ,not us. It is because of our disability , our mind gives us erroneous information ( which , like a broken clock may sometimes be correct) about social interactions. We are alone, even when we are not. We cannot understand what people are thinking or trying to relay to one another with body language or innuendo, so for us to interact with most people takes a great deal of energy, and I mean real calorie burning energy. Masking exhausts us. Lucky ones , like myself , have a safe harbor with loved ones to be themselves, goofy , eccentric, super emotional and just blank when necessary. Unl...

 I live in a region that often has violent and deadly storms. Super cell thunderstorms that spawn large tornadoes are a common occurrence. Our local weathermen attempt to forecast these storms, to help save lives. They have computer models that will help them predict where and when these storms may occur. Predicting these storms is troublesome at best. We have false alarms , perhaps more often than we have actual storms. These storms typically approach from an area west of where I live known as “Tornado Alley” . Where I live is right at what may be considered as the direct path of this so called alley. I’ve learned that the best predictor of eminent danger is to monitor the approaching storms and look for a recent history of these storms spawning tornadoes. If there has been a recent history of tornadoes then there’s a good chance my area will be in danger. I’ve noticed a parallel with predicting these storms Mother Nature produces and the “social storms” that are man made that I s...