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Grieving with Autism and Alexithymia
Losing Someone Close and Struggling to Express it
For most of my life, people have considered me odd. Especially whenever I lost anyone close to me. I never seemed to express myself the way they expected me to, which led to their frustration and sometimes even anger toward me.
My first experience with grief
I was eleven when I came home from school and found my grandmother distraught. She had found my grandfather in bed, eyes open but otherwise unresponsive. It wasn’t until after my mother came home from work that she called for an ambulance. The ambulance rushed him to the hospital while they left me home alone.
While I waited for news, I curled up on the living room couch and watched the series finale of M*A*S*H. When I watched my beloved characters say their tearful goodbyes, I remember crying as well, reacting to the emotion on-screen.
Sometime later, my grandmother and mother came home without my grandfather. He’d had a stroke and would have to stay in the hospital. While I could see they were both wrung out by the ordeal, I don’t remember crying. My Opi was in the hospital with doctors who could take care of him, so I didn’t feel worried.
