Al Porotesano
Nov 1 · 3 min read
Hi, I’m the kid with my kindergarten and 1st grade teacher and McCloud.

What happens when a friend or relative I’ve known for a long time vents his or her frustration at a painful situation and unnecessarily adds a series of defensive stances? Does the words they say to build a comprehensive argument become a deal-breaker by deflecting counterpoints with an ignorant stance? A situation where my friend or family member knows about my Autistic history and decides to build a fortress to fortify their point to the point where it becomes relentless banter. It’s an unfortunate situation that’s inevitably dealt with when Adulting with Autism.

I won’t bother with the details, but it begins with a justifiable worry. Someone I know and hold dear to my heart whom I’ve supported through all the trials and tribulations we went through together stops to tell me how stressful things are. A situation from the rising costs of health care, unaffordable costs of living, and unexpected circumstances that can exhaust energies with built-up stress and anxieties. Somewhere within our conversation, the stress my friend or relative goes through reveals an ugly transformation of irrational exuberance that can render me silent.

It’s that kind of situation where someone I know dearly puts argumentative firewalls with uncomfortable levels of tone and attitude. I can’t speak for any high-functioning (I hate that hyphenated word, but i’m only using this once for contextual purposes) Aspies like myself, but this conflicting situation I had would put me in a frozen state of silence. One where I can’t make a rebuttal or counter-argument unless I can find a safe space. A safe space where I can be comfortable with a coping mechanism.

However, if that person creates deflective and defensive language barriers with the words “I don’t care about your autism” and continues with the rambling vent in the form of a suffocating volcanic cloud, I can’t really say anything else. It tells me that person I’ve known refuses to listen to me. It tells me that person has a vested interest in putting me in an invisible box with vicious repetitive cycles around me until it’s evaporated after a heavy length of echoes and reverberations from vented anxieties us Aspies can understand but not fully grasp. It’s a situation where I have to absorb the data to survive while it loses the weight of understanding.

That’s the worst thing to say to an aspie: “I don’t care about your autism”. If anyone I’ve met in my lifetime tells me my Autism doesn’t matter in an argument, whether if it’s a tangent remark or not, It tells me I’ve never mattered. Why would anyone, neurotypical or not, say that? Imagine if I said “Black or Brown or Yellow or Gender lives don’t matter” or “All lives don’t matter”? I’d lose everyone that mattered to me and I’d feel dead inside.

I’ve struggled with Autism in my life and it’s just something I have to deal with til I die. I’ve had these situations in workplaces to relationships. I’ve had to find a coping mechanism by running away from the maddening crowd until I felt better. This included occasional visits to my Psychiatrist and regional counselor.

I’ve had to deal with different coping mechanisms from long bike rides listening to the same song on repeat for hours, or work on recursion and looping I scripted in an object-oriented language to see how it works before adjusting the frequency of it’s working patterns, or something else that’s a mechanized pattern, or sometimes drawing doodles til I draw the idea on a canvas. Everyone has different ways of escapism; it’s just that Autism makes me see reality as an abstraction, which I can’t tell if an answer is an answer. It’s a gradual process of mental exercises balancing deductive reasoning and emotional readings until it makes sense.

I didn’t want to write this, but If it helps me cope before my visit to the psychiatrist — so be it.

If you have a friend or relative in the Autism spectrum, just understand and explain in brief to help us make rational decisions because our voices matter. Aspies can render decisions differently and Deflections are poison. Deflections gives us the silent treatment and it takes time to recover.

Adulting while Autistic is hard.

Thank you for understanding,

Al

Al Porotesano

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