In my attempt to write about how I’ve struggled to be normal all my life, I got massively derailed into delving into my family dysfunction. It’s related, but not what I really wanted to talk about. I ended the last post by noting that old people sometimes cite their age as an excuse for retro behaviors/beliefs. I mentioned how I hate that because they neatly skip over the fact that they’ve been alive in the decades since that birth and have had every opportunity to update their beliefs.
That’s not what I want to talk about, though. One reason I realized that I might be neurodivergent is…well, let me take you through the steps.
I am extremely adept at reading social situations. As I have mentioned before, this is because I had been groomed by my mother to be her emotional support person. She expected me to listen to her complain for hours at a time about my father and to soothe shattered emotions.
I was talking to A about how I was way-too-empathetic, but it wasn’t natural. I explained how my brain worked when someone told me something highly emotional (or just any big event). Let’s say it was getting a new job. This is how it would go.
Friend: Hey, Minna. I have news.
Me (thinking): News. What does that mean? How do they sound? Happy or sad.
Friend: I got a new job.
Me (thinking): New job, new job, new job. Is this a good thing? A bad thing? Have they mentioned this before?
(My brain frantically trying to remember if friend has mentioned anything about their job in the last few months while not showing any outer turmoil.)
Friend: It was rather sudden. It only happened in the last three days.
Me (stil thinking): Am I supposed to know about this? It happened suddenly. Does that mean good or bad?
Me (out loud): That is quite sudden! (Hoping they will reveal more.)
Friend: It comes with a 20% pay increase and double the PTO. And full insurance! I’m so thrilled.
Me (in relief, scrambling to come up with an appropriately enthusiastic tone): Oh, that’s great! I’m so happy for you. What thrilling news!
The whole time, I’d be cringing in my head because I sound so fakey to me. I’d be worried that I did not sound sincerely happy for my friend or that I might have gone overboard. I would actually be happy for them, but I felt as if I was kept away from my emotions by an electric fence. It was deeply ironic that I felt other people’s emotions too intensely, but had difficulty accessing my own.
I’ve discoreverd that this isn’t unusual for someone with autistic, either, but I always assumed it had to do with my depression. The fact that I could not access my emotions, I mean. Which, I mean, it could be both. I was certainly depressed about not being able to display any negative emotions. I pretty much had to block off my entire personality when I was around my parents, so it made sense that I was depressed. And that the two were linked.
However, I learned from my friend, A, and from the internet that it was quite common for autistic people to feel the same way–and to feel as if they were not part of the human race. I told her I felt like an alien who had landed in a bewildering foreign society, and she said that was how many autistic people felt.
I really wished I had known this decades ago. I went through the first forty-plus years of my life feeling like I was wrong simply for existing.
I have to say that it complicated matters that I was a minority in almost every category–except in one rather big category. Money. My family is wealthy. It hasn’t always been that way, but by the time I was a teenager, we were comfortably middle class. Now, we are wealthy. And I am extremely privileged in this category. I do not want to dimiss this because not having to worry about meny is such a HUGE privilege.
In almost every other category, though, I’m in the minority. Asian, bisexual, agender AFAB), areligious, aromantic, polyamorous, etc. Also, not being married and not having children puts me in the minority as well. Add to that my sensory issues, my allergies and food sensitivities, and you’d think I was a badly written fiction character. Neurodivergent, for sure, even though I don’t know how exactly. Probably somewhere on the spectrum, though, to be honest, I’m not sure I want to get tested. Why? Because it’s arduous and I don’t know how much an actual label will help. Also, I’m tired. I’m tired of all this self-analysis. I know the latter is a spurious reason not to get tested, but I’m running with it for now.
In discussing auism with A, it was like a jigsaw puzzle sliding into place. A corner piece, even! Oh, you mean all of these things added up to something other than me just being a lazy, oversensitive, whiny bitch? That’s such a relief! I mean this nonsarcastically, by the way.
I’ve talked before about the medical model versus the social model as it pertains to disabilities. In the former, anything related to neurodivergency is seen as something to be fixed. So, someone not being able to look people in the eyes, for example, would be considered a failing. To that end, autistic people have been taught to look at someone’s forehead or nose or somewhere similar. It’s close to the eyes so the person being looked at will feel comfortable in the interaction and for most autistic people, it’s far enough away to not feel uncomfortable. Well, not too uncomfortable.
The social model would posit: What if we didn’t force people to look each other in the eyes? Shocking, I know. There are some cultures in which people don’t look each other in the eyes, and Westerners find this sly or suspicious.
It’s interesting because I have never felt comforatable looking into people’s eyes. I did not know why this was. I had half-formed ideas about it being cultural, but it was sometimes physically painful to look people in the eye for too long. I did the glancing off thing as well as the look at the nose thing.
The problem with the social model is that it’s too radical. Much like fat acceptance is too radical. What if instead of promoting this very popular and deeply entrenched idea that says something is bad (fat and/or autism), we simply accept people where they are?
I’m done for now. More later.