I want to talk more about neurodiversity. Yes, again. Deal with it. Did you know that part of ADHD is hyperfocus? It’s OK if you didn’t because many people don’t. Rightly so because it’s always talkead about as if it’s just a lack of focus or the inability to focus, but it doesn’t have to be either of those.
I have lived all my life knowing there is something wrong with me. It has been said to me over and over again in so many different ways. I was talking with my Taiji teacher today about this. One of the reasons I liked her from the beginning is because she was very honest about her own weird childhood. She grew up in bumfuck, South Dakota to parents who were not the most supportive. We could relate with each other on this level.
She was bullied as a child as was I. She told me that it reached the point where she realized that she could do nothing wrong–so she might as well do what she wanted. She added that she never thought she was a bad person so that helped her push back.
In may case, I thought I was a stain on the world and that it would be better off without me. This is something my parents imparted on me, mostly implicitly, but in a few explicit ways. No, not that they actually said that I was worthless, but the way my mother nitpicked and criticized (still does) everything I said, thought, felt, had the same implied message. I was wrong as I was, and I better not let the real me show.
Here are just some of the things that she has made very clear she does not care for one bit in me:
1. My sexuality. I’m bisexual. I realized that when I was in my early twenties. When I told my mother, she did not take it well at all. For many reasons.
There were several times before then, though.
2. Me being a tomboy. This was something that early on, had I recognized it, should have clued me in on how the rest of my life was going to go.
My brother has sterotypical male symptoms of autism and I’ve known this for decades. I never mentioned it to him because I just assumed he knew. It was extremely obvious to me, and his middle child had it as well. And that was even more obvious (and acknowldeged).
When my brocher was a kid, he didn’t speak until he was four or so. My mother, who is a psychologist, did not recognize that he was on the spectrum, but she did have a hard time with him. Any time she took him anywherne, he had to be the one to turn on the lights as they entered the room and the one to turn them off when he left. He would scream incessantly if she forgot. He was constantly fidgeting and running around, and anything electrical, he would try to take apart. There’s a picture of him roughly at one years old biting on an alarm clock.
When I was very little and my brother was a little bigger (he was almost 3 years older), my mom would take us to the State Fair. I would cry and hate it because I don’t like crowds, noise, or heat–not to mention other sensory overload. My brother, on the other hand, thrived on all that stimulation.
I asked my mother much later why she made me go to those when I hated them so much. She said that my brother loved them and she could not afford to get a babysitter for me. She did not say it, but I got her implication–what my brother needed/wanted was more important that what I wanted/needed.
Look.
My mom had it hard when I was a kid. My father was never around; she might as well have been a single mother. He insisted she work full-time, but she also had to do all the chores as well as look after my brother and me. What did he do? Go to work and fuck around. Literally.
But…it stings that she chose my brother over me. Repeatdly. I expected her to choose my father over both of us because she had made my father her God early on in their marriage. He was the most important person in the world to her, no matter how much she protested.
But the way she put my brother before me, constantly, hurt. I know it’s because he’s a man (at the time a boy) so I am automatically lesser, but it’s not easy to put that aside.
Because of theway autism is portrayed in the media and talked about, I never for a million years thought it could apply to me. What are the things you hear about it? Meltdowns, repetitive motions/thoughts/words, nonverbal, not able to empathize, not able to lie, not having good social skills, not being able to make eye contact, and having some special skill in one area. Basically Rain Man, writ large. Oh, and male. Always male. Until Temple Grandin. Even then, though, she skews to the more stereotypical ideas of how an autistic person looks.
Also, the flat affect and flat voice. Those are definitely two other things that people with autism are supposed to have.
It’s important to point out that women and other non-men are taught at a very early age many of the social skills that are supposed to be lacking in people with autism. My mother made me her emotional support person when I was eleven and I am damn good at it. Am I inherently empathetic? No. Am I very good at mimicking it? Hell, yeah. Better than many neurotypical people, actually.
I have no problem with small talk, though I do not like it. I can lie with ease–as long as it’s not about something I hold to be morally true. meaning I can easily tell someone that a dress looks good on them when I think it looks like shit, that their baby is so cute when the baby looks like a troll, or in the case of my parents, that everything is hunky-dory and, no, I don’t have any issues in my life.
I don’t fidget; I don’t stim; I do have meltdowns, but not in public; I am extremely verbal; and people really, really like me. In other words, I’m charming. Very charming. I can put people at ease and then they think we’re best friends.
In the world of autism, this is called masking. I am so good at it, I don’t know if I could take the mask completely off.