I got bored with my way of titling (and numbering) my posts so I’m switching it up. I will be talking about the same thing I was talking about yesterday, but I slapped a different title on it. Here is yesterday’s post. I was musing about how gaming helped me realize (agonizingly slow over time) that I had actual disabilities rather than just flaws or something wrong with me.
Side note (yes, already): It boggles my mind that it took a friend gently mentioning that several of the things I had told her sounded like autism to her (not that directly, but that was the meat of it). Why did it boggle my mind so much? Because I had never even considered that I might be autistic. ADHD, yes, but autistic? No way! I had the stereotypical image in my mind that everyone has: male, jittery, constantly stimming, not able to make eye contact, not emotionally connecting with people, not liking to be touched, etc. In other words, my brother. Who, ironically, I must say, did not realize he was on the spectrum until I pointed it out to him months before I ended up in the hospital. I just assumed he knew because he fit the stereotypical description so neatly and his son was also autistic.
But for me, I never considered it. I’m highly empathetic (because I’ve been forced to do it since birth), don’t stim, can look people in the eyes, and I am good in social situations (mostly). My friend, A, and I have several long discussions about it, and what she said really opened my eyes. I had mentioned how as a kid, I felt like an alien among the humans. I paid close attention to everyone around me to see what they were saying and doing. And reacting. I couldn’t know how they thought, but I tried to estimate as best as I could, anyway.
She said it was common for autistic people to feel as if they weren’t part of the human race. She mentioned masking, which I knew about. I hadn’tquite made the connection, though, between masking and feeling like an alien. I thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t automatically intuit what I was supposed to do in all and every situation. I felt as if I hadn’t been given the manual on how to human that everyone had gotten. A told me that was a common feeling for autistic people.
Side note: I get why Harris and Waltz are emphasizing the weirdness of Trump and Vance, but I wish they (and the other Democrats) would give it a rest. I’m weird. I have been weird all my life. I feel somewhat diminished when the Dems harp on how weird Trump and Vance are (especially Vance. The word you’re looking for there is ‘creepy’). And I get it. It’s pushback on Trump and Vance (and the Republicans in general) trying to portray Harris and Waltz as weird. Which the Republicans have been doing ever since I started following politics. Trying to portray the Dems as out-of-touch, elite, limosuine liberals, etc. Weird, though, is a new-ish one. Yes, they pulled it first on Harris and Waltz.
So I get it. And it’s a smart choice. Doesn’t mean it’s not alienating. I have been a weirdo all my life. I don’t want to have to give that up, damn it. Even clarifying good weird and bad weird doesn’t really sit right with me. Yes, it’s a small thing, but i’s emblematic of what it’s like to be in the minority in almost every category.
Another misconception is that autistic people don’t have empathy. For some autistic people, this is true (like my brother. But he’s much better than he used to be because he’s consciously working on it), but for many, it’s not that they don’t feel for others around them–it’s more that they don’t know what to do with those feelings. I’m grossly simplifying, but it goes like this. Autistic people may actually feel other people’s emotions more strongly than neurotypical people, but they don’t know how to contextualize it or divorce themselves from the feelings.
I have known for some time that being highly empathetic is not a good thing. Feeling other people’s feelings all the time is overwhelming, and it can be appropriative. It’s also exhausting, by the way. When I was in my twenties, I was not able to put up any defense against other people’s emotions, especially negative ones. I felt as if I was constantly being physically battered by other people’s emotions. This was also partly because of my mother’s demands that I be her emotional support person and that I put everyone else’s emotions (especially men’s) ahead of mine. It’s also one of the reason I was so deeply and chronically depressed in my twenties.
I learned, slowly and painfully over the years, how to put up that shield–but it’s not perfect. And I still let emotions through much more often than is good for me. I can do better in crowds than I used to, thanks to Taiji (and therapy). All the time I’m interacting with other people, though, I am well aware that I’m putting on an act.
It’s exhausting.
It’s one reason I don’t like being around other people. I have to pretend all the time. Well, that’s a bit harsh. I just can’t be me. For several reasons. I don’t have anything in common with most people. I am not married and do not have children. More to the point, I do not want either and never really have. I am not interested in other people’s children just because they are children. I like some children and do not like others–just as with adults.
I always feel like I’m not reading the same book as others. I can fake it, but it’s not something I wish to do. I don’t like most popular media. Hell, I don’t like movies and TV in general. Which is another thing I discovered was common with some autistic people. When I confessed to my brother that I did not like movies or television, he laughed and said of course I didn’t because it wasn’t real.
He was being glib, but he was right. I can’t escape into movies and/or TVs because none of it feels real to me. There have been very few movies I’ve watched that I can forget for a moment that it’s just a movie. That doesn’t mean I don’t like a half-dozen of them, but that’s just facts. For whatever reason, books are better. Probably because they have much more space and time to elaborate on things that movies have to do in a few broad strokes.
More tomorrow.