Far Removed

I'm just good enough at faking neurotypy that, at first, most people ignore or fail to notice the ways in which I'm demonstrably not neurotypical.  I can pass, but only for a moment in most cases.  Pressed to sustain my pretense, I become so self-conscious that my mask slips and I have to shrink away.  But, with no mean effort, I'm able to play neurotypical for long enough to interact with cashiers and most customer service people.  This is as good as it is bad. If people think you're neurotypical, they're less likely to help you.  It appears to me that NT people are generally pretty comfortable tricking each other, dismissing each other, and leaving each other out in the cold.  When I don't seem like I need special help, I find that I don't get any help.  But obvious disability activates what could charitably be called compassion but is perhaps more correctly called pity. I don't see myself as at war with NT people.  I want to be in their t...

I don't know how relationships work.  I've tried to figure it out and I've tried to tell myself that I know, but I just don't.  I've never felt comfortable being a friend.  The fact is that I just don't know anything about how to do it.  Whenever I try, I feel clueless and confused, even if things go well.  I have no faith in my ability to describe what it feels like to be so alienated.  I'm not even sure that "alienated" is the right word.  "Alien" might be better.  Put simply: when it comes to interpersonal relationships, even after 38 years, I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like I've absorbed very little from my culture.  I'm just on the face of that deep.  The people around me are suspended in it, saturated.  This is the nature of my neurodevelopmental disorder.  Left to my own devices and allowed to be honest with myself, I'm disinterested in society and disinclined to participate in it.  Any time my intere...

I was a lonely kid.  I had few friends and was not well liked.  I was bullied and ostracized.  I struggled, I felt alone and confused, and I was unhappy.   The same people who saw my struggle - adults who should have nurtured me and offered insight - denied that anything important was happening.  Everyone insisted there was no way in which I was different than anyone else, adding to my confusion and isolation.  People dismissed my struggle across the board with the mantra that teenage angst was both temporary and something to be ashamed of because it was immature.  The adults I confided in showed a disdain not just for me but for anyone who wasn't them.  They were certain that one day, when I was a fully functional member of their society, I would look back at my childhood and laugh at the fact that I thought I was having a hard time.  Because that was what everyone did, and I was the same as everyone: forgettable and wrong about my fee...

Right now I am experiencing high anxiety.  It's 5:30 am and I'm just about to go to bed.  I'm thinking about birds.  I love birds, but I'm also scared of large ones.  I'm thinking about finding a pelican or a heron in my living room.  That would be frightening and chaotic.  The poor animal would flap around, trying to get out.  The image fills me with fear.  I'm failing to find the courage to leave the bathroom and cross my darkened bedroom to the bed.  Even having the bathroom light on isn't helping. I don't believe in the supernatural.  Nonetheless, there are things that seem magical to me.  Birds are among those things.  They seem to come from another dimension.  They represent the danger and the wildness of the Other World which I feel so close to sometimes.  Perhaps, like me, they stand between this world and the Other, their spirits split.  Perhaps touching a large bird would bring me closer to that plane...

Sometimes I feel that my autism is very obvious.  Most of the time, it isn't.  I was diagnosed at 37.  Before my diagnosis, I was heavily invested in appearing normal.   I thought I was a neurotypical person with irritating quirks.  I worked hard to suppress what was different about me because I thought I was a failure as a person.  I believed I was just like everyone else, but it was obvious to me that I wasn't.  That contradiction hurt and it made me very confused and unhappy.  Since my diagnosis, I have started trying to look at myself with more understanding.  I'm not a neurotypical person with attitude problems I must necessarily correct through self-flagellation.  I'm not a failed person.  I've started trying to be myself more often - to accept myself more.  Of course, I should have been doing that all along, with or without a diagnosis . Allowing my pretense to slip is difficult and scary.  I relied for so lo...