Autism runs in my family. My tbrother has it (undiagnosed). My nephew has it (undiagnosed). My other nibling sa it (diagnosed). My mother suspects she has it (iffy). I never thought I had it because I have a freakishly high EQ/ability to empathize, etc. I read social cues extremely well (whether I follow them or not is another question), and I don’t have any of the stereotypical symptoms.
On the outside.
So I’m sure you’re asking yourself why the title of this post, then, if I’m so far from autism. It’s because of this. I was talking to a friend about autism in non-male people. How it presents in men and boys, typically, is drastically different than it can present in non-men. Same with ADHD, which was something else I wondered if I had.
Here’s the thing. I have other things that I have to deal with when it comes to my traits. One. I was Asian. Tat’s just a fact. I am a second-generation Taiwanese American, which played havoc on my brain. I’m not Asian. At all. Well, maybe five percent. I am, for better or worse, American. but I definitely look Asian, which has it’s own issues. And, the fact that Asians are ignored when it comes to race? Yeah, I feel some sort of way about that. And the fact thta the pandemic was blamed on us.
Then, there was the fact that I’m bi. that’s another invisible category that people just blithely ignore. It’s also the identity trait that is least bothersome to me. I have no worries about being bi–at all. And this ties into the whole gender identity thing that I’m still grappling with. It’s not that I don’t see gender. I do. It’s not that I think that gender is irrelevant. I don’t (for the masses. It is for me). It’s more that I don’t see why I should let gender tell me who I’m attracted to. I am instantly physically attracted to a specific type–basicall Alan Rickman/kd lang/Rachel Maddow/Michelle Yeoh with short hair. That’s my prediliction, but not the only type of person I’m attracted to.
And it’s never based on gender. Or looks, really. It’s personality and brain. So I don’t care about gender. But I don’t believe that gender doesn’t matter at all. It’s part of the package, and I appreciate it as much as I appreciate other aspects of people. It’s hard for me to oxplain because gender is so diffierent for everyone. I don’t want to be ‘no labels’ because that’s just utter bullshit. but I don’t understand, and I mean this with no snark, why I should treat people of different genders (or no gender at all) differently.
There were other things. But wehn it came to autism, I just assumed I couldn’t be because I was so excruciatingly aware of other peoplee’s emotions. I could feel them, which was unpleasant. But, and this is the point of this post, i didn’t know if it was innate or something that I had made myself become aware of. I mean, I knew I had worked on it because my mother made me her emotional support person, but I didn’t know if I had the proclivity in the first place.
A friend with autism sent me a test for empathy that was used to see if someone might possibly have autism. You could score 80 on it. Anything over, ah, a certain nemubr said you most likely were not autistic. Then there was the middle range that meant you might have autism. Then, a certain number and lower meant you had a high probablity of being autistic. I scored 71 out of 80. Needless to say, that’s very high. So, you would think that meant that I was not autistic.
Here’s the twist. I answered the questions as to how I am now. Meaning, things like, “Can you tell what other people’s emotions are?” They used a five-point Likert scale, and I’m assuming assigned different points to each answer. So I answered very high or whatever the top answer was. On a question like, I can read social cues, I would also choose the ‘highest’ answer because I have made myself able to do all that shit.
But. I recounted to this friend that when I was in my twenties, I would have to go through this elaborate ritual when someone told me something. Say it was, “I got a new job.” My brain. “Oh, they are telling me some news.” Pause. Think. Say in my brain. “How do they appear right now?” Then I would quickly check them out and run through a checklist. Are they smiling or frowning? Do they seem excited or upset? And a bunch of other similar questions. Then, I would make my decision as to which one it was for them and respond in the ‘right’ way. By that point, I had it down to an art and it only took seconds.
My friend said that she did the same thing, and she was on the spectrum. That really opened my eyes because I thought it was just me being defective and a freak. I had been raised as my mother’s emotional support person, and it bled over into my other relationships.
So my empathy is…not real. No, that’s not quite right. It’s more that it’s learned rather than natural. I’ve elevated it to a fine art and now it’s second nature to me, but it’s still not innate. I don’t know how I would answer those questions if I were to go back to before I learned all this. I don’t know if I could because I’ve been doing it for most of my life. If I were to answer with the me I was before all the intense training I’ve done myself, it would be a much lower number. Low enough to make me officially autistic? I don’t know. And I don’t know if I want to go through what it takes to get tested.
I do know that several people I know with autism have been relieved to finally get that label. They had known for some time that there was something different about them, something that they could not put a finger on. When I told my brother that he was on the spectrum, he said it changed his life. Things finally made sense to him, and he was relieved.
Would it be the same for me? I did not know. Since I basically have adapted to acting as if I didn’t have it, well, that was a problem in and of itself. i did not understand sarcasm well sometimes or if people were lying to me–or themselves. I knew the inside of people because i was not put off by their masks, but what did that matter in the end? I’m wrapping this up now, but will talk more about it in the next post.