Acceptance or Rejection

Faced with the evidence of possible Autism. I decided to take a while to research before I came to any conclusions. 

As usual, my first stop was the library. It helped that I was working at one at the time. I found and checked out books by Temple Grandin, one of the most famous autistic persons with a successful career. 

Her books were enlightening. As I mentioned in a earlier post I had misconceptions about the abilities of people with autism. I knew of her from a book layout I had done for a publishing company years earlier. 

What I didn't realize was how little her autism really affected the way she lived her life. If anything, it was the people around her and their preconceptions that made her life difficult. But she navigated her way around them and proved her differences and focus made her just as valuable as any member of their team.

Her inventions made the beef industry more humane and ensured that the animals were not harmed or unnecessarily stressed. And her insights learned from her autism are what enabled her to see a better way.

This was the beginning of a journey of revelation and new understanding. I began to see stories of people who, had they not told anyone, would never have been suspected of being autistic. 

I watched an episode of a favorite science channel on YouTube where the host simply sat and described what it was like to be autistic and have a career on camera. 

Another video by a filmmaker explained the challenges of meeting new people when all he wanted to do was run. 

There were also videos by people who learned late in life that they were autistic and never knew. Many described how difficult their lives were before and what adjustments made a difference. For them, the diagnosis explained years of confusion and alienation.

There is a surprising. Buy Occasionally, a YouTuber would make a, "You Know You're Autistic When...." or a "Top 20 Traits"  video and I could sit and tick off the ways I matched what they described. What surprised me most were the people who, if they had never said anything, would not seem autistic at all.

That is one of the challenges of "low needs" autism. It presents outwardly like anybody but the internal world is so much more chaotic. Many people can mask the symptoms enough to function in the regular world but it takes a heavy toll over time. Especially for those who don't realize they are masking.

At first, I didn't think I was masking at all, and that made me think I couldn't possibly be autistic. But as I learned more and saw the ways I mask, I began to understand better.

The revelation hit me one day after I had spent 3 years generally researching and I finally accepted the thought. For a few weeks I went around discovering all the little internal and external tells. I began to look back at my life and childhood and could point out specific events and times when I should have been clear.

Then, with the realization came the grief for living for so long not knowing and being lost and confused by the rest of the world. I was angry for the lost time and profoundly sad. My akward interactons and strange behaviors suddenly came into glaring focus.

It is a common miscomception that autistic people lack emotion or compassion. That is not true. On more that one occasion I have been accused, by family no less, of being too sensitive. I once lost a favorite stuffed animal at a swapmeet. It made me sad to think about it sometimes and that emotion was used as an example of my "weakness".

My compassion keeps me from getting too involved in issues because I become to emotionally affected. I once considered Native American studies for a minor but found myself more and more depressed by the history of the native tribes after European contact. By the time I finished my first class I was distraught and extremely angry.

Sometimes songs or movies get me. I once cried because a baby giant monster was reunited with it's even larger parents. I was blubbering so much nobody could understand what was wrong with me.

        The offending scene from Gappa: the Triphibian Monster. (Sniff sniff).

With the sadness there was also a profound sense of peace. I had finally found my answer. Before, my life was like assembling a puzzle with vanishingly small pieces without any idea what the final picture was supposed to look like. 

I had finally found the beat up and scratched box with the completed picture. Now it was up to me to put it all together.