The Truth Will Set You Free

“The truth will set you free” is an adage in which I firmly believe. I have only to look back at the evidence in my own life to see where this has applied. Time and again it has released me from the frustration and futility of blundering on in the wrong direction, pointing me in the right one, and endowing me with a clarity of vision that would draw from me an oft-heard exclamation along the lines of, “But that’s so obvious. Why couldn’t I see it before?!” Unfortunately the answer to this plaintive question is not so obvious and continues to elude me. I make very slow progress along the path of enlightenment, but now I have another truth I’ve realised, to add to my list of truths, which explains this: I am autistic, and progress means change, and autistics HATE change!

It’s been almost a month now since I was formally diagnosed as having Aspergers, and it hasn’t fully sunk in as to what that really means. It doesn’t quite compute. I haven’t yet managed to process it. It’s still just a word and, as I’m now finding out, whilst I am very good at understanding the literal meaning of words (English was my favourite subject at school) the actual significance of them often eludes me or takes a very long time before understanding dawns. And then it’s just like seeing the truth, as described above: “Why did I not see that before?! That’s so obvious!”

It seems a little illogical to me that, having discovered the truth about myself last year, I should be having some difficulty coming to terms with the formal diagnosis. I do understand that there is a process of acceptance which has to be gone through, but perhaps I have taken too literally the idea that we autistics come from another dimension, and so therefore are a completely different species to the rest of society, immune to all the strange emotional processes that neuro-typicals have to endure. It appears that we are not, which is a bit of a bugger. They just take longer in us, it seems, like everything else!

Perhaps, too, it’s down to the fact that, unlike some aspergers, I haven’t always felt or been aware of the fact that I am odd, that there is something so different about me that sets me apart from other people. My oddness has been masked and hidden (from me at any rate!) behind labels. If I were a suitcase you wouldn’t be able to see me beneath all the labels signposting where I’ve travelled.

Now labels, I know, can be useful. After all if no-one had given a name to the condition we now know as aspergers and autism then people like me would still be being treated with varying degrees of ignorance, not to mention intolerance and the like. And had I not been given the label alcoholic then I would never have found a solution to my drinking.

But they also have their limits, and they can often turn from being an aid to self-knowledge and freedom into a prison cell, especially when you have aspergers and you take everything so literally. So the labels which seemed to pinpoint what was “wrong” with me gradually became barriers to progress and understanding, until it finally became obvious that they did not encompass and explain all of my peculiarities, and the boxes into which I had tried to fit myself were now confining and constricting any growth.

The other barrier which exacerbated this lack of self-awareness was the fact that my life was not exactly “normal”, a fact which seemed to give me a genuine and rational cause to feel different from other children. My mum left when I was seven years old, and I was raised by my dad, a man whom I now believe had aspergers too. He taught my sister and me how to do all the domestic work, and we became his little housekeepers, having to take care of him and ourselves because he couldn’t do it himself. Our daily life involved having to come home from school and do housework and cooking, ready for when he came home from work. Week-ends and holidays were more of the same, with the added “joys” of shopping and laundry. None of my friends lived like this, and nor did they live in houses full of stuff that their parents would not get rid of. By the time I left home there was hardly any room for us to move about, so extreme was my dad’s hoarding.

What I believed was that there was something wrong with my life, and not that there was something odd about me. And the moment I came into contact with therapy (via the psychiatric unit and a rehab unit for my drinking) they added fuel to this fire, and off I went on a journey of self-discovery and psychobabble, ending up more lost and at sea than when I started out! I don’t know whose “self” it was that I discovered, but it certainly wasn’t mine!

And so now here I am, with another label, one which finally fits. Or should I say two, as I have also been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, which also fits. It’s a bit like finally finding a pair of jeans that fit perfectly and are just what you were looking for, after years of frustration never finding exactly what you want and having to make do or go without. Now I just have to adapt to the fact that they are the right ones (another change!), stop looking for the flaws in them, and stop trying to compare mine to everyone else’s!

It seems that I have grown so used to being uncomfortable in my own skin (and my ill-fitting jeans!) that I can’t quite get used to the idea that I don’t have to fight any longer to make myself heard, and to find a place for myself in this world. I don’t have to become neuro-typical, or a pale copy of one, in order to be accepted and to be happy. Hell, my misery has always been caused by my constant attempts to fit in and become one of them, whilst the truth was I never did want to be just like everybody else, long before I ever became aware that I wasn’t. I inadvertently lived a lie, which kept me a prisoner.

And the ultimate truth is that God (whoever or whatever you might perceive that to be) accepts and loves me for what I am, because He/She/It created me this way, and if They wanted me to be neuro-typical then I believe that I would have been born that way. But what a boring world it would be if it was only full of them or us! So who am I, or anyone else, to argue with Creation and the infinite variety that springs from It?

Don't Be An Ass!

It’s my birthday today. You wouldn’t think so, the way I’m feeling, and behaving. More like someone’s funeral. I am as happy as Eeyore sitting in his gloomy place. But, apparently, this is the way I am every year, and at every celebratory event. My best friend tells me that this has been so ever since she’s known me, which spans the last thirteen years. I have no reason to doubt her any longer. I know she’s right. I know I’ve been like it for a lot longer than that. It has something to do with the aspergers.

I don’t know how to celebrate but, unfortunately, I seem to have this ingrained belief that I have to do it, that I have to mark each celebratory event in some way, even though it actually has no real significance to me whatsoever. My friend tells me that it’s just another day, and that I should just enjoy it as such and not put pressure on myself to make it symbolic by trying to do something special. This is how she does it, how she approaches life: she sees that every day is special, none more nor less so than another, and that all of this hype that surrounds events like birthdays and Christmas is just part of the societal pressure and conditioning that we are subject to in order to make us conform, and spend lots of money!

I get this. I agree with it. I like the way she lives, and have tried to copy her (taking it to the extreme at times, of course, not being able to make the distinction between the differences in our personalities, and the need for me to adapt what I see in her to suit me, rather than trying to copy outright her whole way of being in order to become almost a carbon copy!) Unfortunately I just don’t seem to be able to do it, and so every year is the same – a whole load of heightened unrealistic expectations, followed by a massive plummet into disappointment.

The thing that makes it worse is the fact that I keep thinking that I’ve got over being like this, because I no longer do exactly the same things, nor do I consciously think much about my birthday in the run-up to it. But, apparently, this doesn’t matter because this thing is buried deep in my subconscious, and we all know how difficult it is for an asperger to change anything, and how long it can take to let go, no matter that the thing may well have been proven to be ineffective, not to mention downright harmful.

And it’s not just events about which I have unrealistic expectations. Oh no. It’s things, too, and people (which I am now beginning to see are often confused in my mind as being one and the same – yet another delightful autistic trait!) I think this is probably part of the reason why I hate having to buy anything new, or get to know anyone new – it takes me so long to get used to one thing, after the initial period of finding fault with it and, if applicable, comparing it to the old one that it’s had to replace, and then I’ve got to go through the whole process again: is it really worth the effort, not to mention the stress?!

So, basically, everything in life is a disappointment to me until I get used to it, and manage to reduce my expectations to the level of something vaguely resembling reality. Of course it’s never going to resemble anyone else’s perception of what you can realistically expect, what with being autistic: and it is rather difficult to know what is realistic when you have nothing against which to compare it, what with being from a whole other dimension! But then this could ultimately turn out to be a blessing in disguise, a gift from God as it were – if only I could find the right circumstances in which to use it. Failing that I could always complain to Him/Her/It (delete as applicable!), and ask for an exchange for the life I’ve been given or my money back, ‘cos I’m just not satisfied with the one I’ve got!

Just to end on a happy note, Eeyore did eventually cheer up and enjoy his birthday, after he’d started out with heightened expectations. And you know what cheered him? Being given an empty honey pot from Pooh (it was meant to be full of honey but Pooh had eaten it on the way!), and a burst red balloon from Piglet (it had been a blown-up one before he’d tripped and fallen on it!) And there he sat, like an autistic, putting his bit of balloon in his empty pot and then taking it out again. Bliss!!