In the last post, I talked about how I had basically found ways to work around my own brain. I don’t know if I have autism and/or ADHD, but the signs are there. Or at least they would be if I let myself react instinctively rather than how I have learned to deal with them. I have so honed my reactions that they are almost instinctual to me. That makes it difficult to say what my real response would be.
For example. I have a constant commentary in my head that I would never voice out loud. I learned at a very young age that no one was interested in what I had to say. Not really. Well, i shouldn’t say that no one was interested, but that most people were not interested. I would actually go further and say they were upset/offended/bothered when I did voice my opinion.
Wow. I’m reading a list of things that a non-male person with autism–well, ok. It’s about women. I’m AFAB so it relates to me, but I take issue with the fact that the article I read pathologized AFAB people who did not feel that they were women.
That aside, holy shit, I fit almost all the ‘symptoms’. They even include hyper-empathy as a possible trait. Also, hyper-focus, naivety about social interactions, and an uncommon interest in sex. By the way, I felt like some of the traits/symptoms were laughable. They said that someone who was straight, gay, transgender, or nonbinary could be autistic. Um, that’s basically saying anyone can be autistic. They also said someone who was asexual could be autistic as could someone who was hypersexual. In other words, come the fuck on with covering all the bases.
The point is, I am fifty-two years old. I have been on this earth for over a half-cetntury. I have found ways to deal with my weird traits and issues, but I never considered that I might be autistic. I knew it ran in my family, but I never once thought it could be my. Why? Because the symptoms/traits were foreign to me. “No empathy.” Well, nope. I have an overflowing of empathy. It was fornced upon me, but it was there.
Another was “No eye contact”. I didn’t like eye contact, but I knew that it was expected. I could do it, but at a cost. “Self-stimulation”. No way in hell I was going to do that. I knew better than to even try. I was a girl* and I had to sit quiet as a mouse. My father believed that children should be neither seen nor heard, especially a girl child.
I can’t tell you how deeply misogynistic he is, but I’ll give you a few examples. One, when I was fifteen or so, I had not had a date yet. I was fat and awkward, and I did not know the ways of the Americans.
My family was insular and insulated. My father was very pro-Taiwan and only liked Taiawenese everything. People, culture, and food. He did not want to be in America. He came for education–an MA and a PhD and I assumed he intended to return to Taiwan. Then he met my mother when they were both in Nashville and attending grad school.
Did he fall in love with her? I don’t think so. He doesn’t do love. He’s a narcissist in the old-school meaning of the word, which means he only cares about himself. I would not even say he loved himself, but he had a deep interest in self-preservation.
Because he was so pro-Taiwanese and because he was very serious about saving face, my guess is that he married my mother and had children because it was what he was supposed to do as a Taiwanese man.
Was he that calculated about it? I’m not sure. i don’t know if he actually said to himself, “Hm. I need a dutiful wife who will give me children so I can be a good Taiwanese man.”
What I believed happened was that he just on some level felt he needed all this. He is a very rigid person with rigid beliefs of what is Right and what is Wrong. My parents should not have gotten married and they should not have had children. Ye,s I knew this means I wouldn’t have been born, but that probably would have been a better outcome all around.
I’m not saying I’m unhappy that I was born, mind. I used to feel that way and more to the point, I used to think I didn’t deserve to be alive. this is such a wild thing for me to think about now, but I truly believed that I had to earn my right to live every day, and that I started in the morning being in the negative. That meant I had to claw my way to zero before I could even think of being in the positives (which I never reached, by the way).
I had arorexia twice and bulimia once (with the first time I had anorexia). I had issues with dissociation, and it was the worst when I was driving. I was deeply depressed from the age of seven until my medical crisis, and throw crippling anxiety on top of that.
I am saying this somewhat flippantly, but after dealing with all that, being autistic would almost be a relief. Like, all that shit wasn’t just me?! Just me being a fucking weirdo and freak? Who didn’t belong anywhere? You mean, it’s an actual thing? Most of what makes me me is…ok?
Taiji has saved my life. Before my medical crisis, I meant that mostly metaphorically. It helped me set boundaries, become more centered in myself, and improved my relationships with people. It’s wild when I look back at my teen self and my twenties self and see how utterly fucked up I was. Like, I should have had MUCH more intervention than I did. Which was basically none. My mom took me to a therapist when I was fifteen, to her credit. Unfortuonately it was a therapist at Bethel College, which is an extreme Christian college. And a man. I did not like men at that time. I had many bad experiences with them. There was no way in hell I was going to open up to a man. He was a nice guy, but he was not a good therapist.
Quite frankly, I’m surprised that I survived my teens and my twenties. I was passively suicidal and wanted to die. Now that I have (twice!, Died, I mea), I can confidently say that life is way harder than death.
I think I may get tested. It was a relief to know that I had depression and anxiety. It probably couldn’t hurt to find out if I am or am not autistic.
*Girl was how I was raised and treated.