Eurogamer had a stream today with donations going to The Autism Self Advocacy Network in part because Zoe (one of the video producers) is autistic. I jumped in after they met their first goal of $2,000 and raised it to $4,000. They were roughly seven hundred dollars short when I hopped into the chat. I related my story about my brother, how I mentioned to him a few months ago that he was on the spectrum. I thought he knew; I honestly did. It was so obvious to me, so I thought it would be to him as well. Especially since one of his sons is on the spectrum as well, which he knew.
Anyway, he didn’t have much of a reaction when I said that to him, but several weeks later, he brought it up. He said that it hit him like lightning and opened up his eyes. So many things came together to make sense and it made such a difference to it. He’s mentioned it more than once since and said he’s mentioned it to other people. In other words, it’s really made a difference.
Anyway. Part of the stream was dropping a link to the online test you can take to see if you’re on the spectrum or not. You need to score 14–I got 16. Here’s the thing, though. The traits listed were, how shall we say it, poorly defined. They would make a statement and you had to choose between not true, true now and then, true then, or true now. I hate multiple choice tests because I can think of how each answer would fit in different instances or five different meanings for each statement. One of them is “I focus on details rather than the overall idea.” Why does it have to be either/or? I always get tripped up with either/or because it’s both/and for me more often than not.
But the worst part was that the statements were polarizing. The one about textures bothering me when they don’t bother other people? 100%. The ones about not understanding other people’s emotions? Not true at all. I understand them all too well. The one about needing to cover my ears to block out some noises? Oh, hell yeah!
I know I’m neurodivergent in some ways, but I don’t think I fit any one category–which is like me in general. And, I’m not sure I want to dive into it at the moment. That’s my life journey. When I realized that I found women hot as well as men (back in the ’90s), I put it on the shelf because I had just discovered racism as well. Look. I can only deal with so much shit at one time.
Thirty years later, I’m down with being queer, genderqueer, and Asian. I’ve never cared about age, and I’m religiously apathetic. I’ve dealt with depression and anxiety all my life. Six months ago, I died and came back to lie–twice. I know I’m some flavor of neurodivergent, but do I really want to figure out exactly the flavor? I’m not sure I do.
When talking to my brother about him being on the spectrum, he said it made everything snap into place for him. So, in chis case, knowing the actual flavor made it easier for him to deal with life. For me, learning that I’m a 16 on the autism test raises more questions than it answers. One thing is that traits can be symptoms of several different diagnoses, not just one. The stimuli/texture thing, for example is also indicative of ADHD. Plus, there is Sensory Processing Disorder/Issues, which is exactly as the name suggests. Here is an article about SPD. So while I have points on the autistic spectrum, I doubt I’m actually on the spectrum. It’s just crossover.
I’m not sure how much I want to explore my neurodivergency. I already know I’m different than most other people. Does the exact difference matter? I mean, it probably would to me in the end, but at this moment, I just….can’t. I have so much other shit on my mind. I have recovered remarkably well from my medical trauma, but it still has been quite the time.
Going back even before that, there was the pandemic. While I personally didn’t have a terrible time with it, it’s still quite the adjustment. Not going out at all and worrying about COVID. It’s been quite the last two years. It seems as if we are moving on, but the pandemic isn’t over–no matter how much we wish it were so.
Anyway. I don’t want to parse out my neurodivergency at the moment. For me, it’s enough to know that I’m neurodivergent and to make myself be ok with it. I know that I have sensory issues. I know that I look at things differently than other people do. That’s pretty much all I really need to know. The specifics don’t really matter at this point. If I were going to interact more with other people, then perhaps it would matter.
I will admit that I still feel a whiff of guilt that I didn’t mention autism to my brother decades ago. I’ve known for at least two decades that he’s on the spectrum, but never mentioned it because it was just so obvious. When I mentioned that to my brother, he retorted, “Obvious for you!” Which is the truth.
It’s interesting. My brother and I could not be any more different from each other. He is all about facts and logic (well, as much as you can be. It doesn’t mean that emotions can’t influence him, as they do us all), whereas I’m ruled by emotions. He has difficulty reading other people and subtext, whereas all that is immediately clear to me. He was over today and mentioned an argument he had with his colleague. Or rather, a discussion. The discussion was about electric cars–something my brother is passionate about. The coworker was saying how he wanted an electric car one day, and my brother was presenting reasons why the colleague should put in the order now.
I laughed because I knew where this was going. Every time he would make a point, I would say it didn’t matter. Not because he wasn’t making sense, but because what he thought the discussion about wasn’t what the discussion was actually about. The bottom line is that this colleague of his wants to be seen as a good guy by everyone and will change his personality to match the other person as a way of achieving this goal. So he declared his desire to get an electric car to my brother, the known electric car guy. He had no intention of doing it, which is why my brother’s carefully thought-out suggestions didn’t matter.
Once I told my brother what the subtext was, then he understood why they were talking in circles. That’s my gift–immediately making subtext text. The hard part is that I doubt his colleague understood what he was trying to do himself–or could not articulate it clearly because it’s a nascent thought and not a conscious realization.
My brother’s strength is that he says what he means, exactly. He will not prevaricate, lie, or skate around the truth. This is also his weakness because most people don’t operate that way. And it’s not conscious for the most part, either. Even with my brother, there are times when his emotions overtake his rational side, but that’s few and far between.
Oddly enough, my brother telling me that my perception of people is a gift helped me become more at peace with my flavor of neurodivergence. Both a gift and a curse–just like most things in life.