Everyone Thinks I’m Autistic Except Me
Exactly how many people have to make note of something before you reassess yourself?
When I was four years old, a psychiatrist told my adoptive parents that I was a sociopath.
That wasn’t his exact verbiage, of course, but you don’t even have to read between the lines of that report. It’s right there at the surface: No empathy. Manipulative. Will never bond with anyone. Reading through that file in my teens, I found myself thinking: That’s harsh language to describe a preschooler.
Best as I can tell, no one in my life actually believes that I’m a sociopath, but they all agree with that first doctor on one point: I’m a little off. I’m not what the masses would call “normal.” I make people uncomfortable in ways that they struggle to articulate, and this has been true since I was very young.
Every so often, one of those people tries to put those uncomfortable feelings into words. Inevitably, those words are some variation on: “Andrew, do you think you might be autistic?”
To which I always respond: “No, I just dislike small talk.”
I don’t hold any ill will toward any of those people because I understand where this comes from. Over my lifetime, I’ve watched people grow more familiar (if only superficially) with diagnostic labels and more eager to apply them to anyone whose behavior falls even slightly outside of the norm. If you get bored easily, you must have ADHD; if you keep a very tidy desk, it must be OCD; if you’re quieter than most people, it’s Asperger’s. It’s nonsense, but I get it.
Then I left my own culture, the one with that great love of labels, and entered a completely different one. It’s a world where people don’t discuss mental health or even really think about it. It’s a world where people speak about personality in a completely different manner, with a little less tact. On several occasions, I’ve had people from this very different culture describe me as they see me. They never use the word “autistic.” Other than that, the description is the same.
Exactly how many times do people have to make the same basic remarks before you acknowledge the possibility that you’re wrong about yourself?
It’s not that I deny having issues, you understand. As I said, I am aware that I’m weird, I just don’t think that it rises to the level of a disorder. On the other hand, I did spend half my life convinced that I was about to die. I also developed paralyzing anxiety around driving after a mystery virus gave me an attack of extreme nausea while behind the wheel, leaving me unable to get home; that one took years to overcome as well. I’m not lacking in self-awareness, here.
What I will deny to the hilt is that I have any social anxiety issues. If I don’t talk much, it’s because most conversations are boring to me. I don’t like sports, I rarely go to movies, and I guarantee you that I have not seen whatever trendy prestige TV show you’re currently infatuated with. This pretty well leaves me out of most party chatter. That’s not meant as a judgment on anyone, merely a statement of fairly self-evident fact: If I neither know nor care about what you find interesting — and vice versa — then conversation isn’t in the cards.
Is that really such an alien mindset? It wasn’t always. There was some point in my life when the general consensus went from “That Andrew is such a quiet boy” to “That Andrew seems like he has a neurodevelopmental irregularity.”
To be fair, though, it’s not just this one point. I mean, am I better with numbers than with people? Arguably.
Did I grow up preferring the company of adults to children my own age? Absolutely — they were less likely to beat me up.
Do I have a resting expression that’s difficult to interpret? I’ve been told as much.
Am I prone to fidgeting with small objects? Sure, but no more so than a lot of other people.
Do I naturally avoid eye contact? Funny you should bring that up.
I’ve lived in the People’s Republic of China for a bit, and in that time I’ve learned a few things — both about this culture and my own.
Due to a combination of a group-oriented outlook and a general lack of contact with foreigners, the Chinese are highly prone to forming strong national stereotypes. Their stereotype of Americans is that we’re a nation of physically aggressive, sexually provocative wise-crackers who talk about ourselves constantly. Considering the television shows we export to the world, that’s perhaps not all that surprising.
On a regular basis, I find myself in a room full of people who are not getting what they had anticipated. They were expecting a real-life version of a Friends character — someone chattering away about nonsense, making clever little remarks that they might not understand but can appreciate all the same. Instead, they have me. What a disappointment.
I know all this, by the way, because many of them have told me. That whole “saving face” thing you may have heard of applies mainly to things like breakups. The same people who won’t give you bad news will, without hesitation, ask you questions that would be considered unspeakably rude back home — your age, your income, just to name two common ones.
Now, none of them have ever actually used the word “weird” to describe me — not to my face, at least. But boy, have I seen it hidden in the comments they do make. You’re different. You aren’t what I thought you’d be like. You don’t act like you do in front of a class.
The big tell came from a stunning young woman who is the antithesis of whatever Chinese national stereotype you have tumbling around in your head at the moment. We were in a bar, speaking over this and that while she challenged me on every belief I’ve ever had (See? That’s the kind of conversation that’s engaging to me).
Eventually, this turned to work, as she was a former employee of the people who employed me at the time. She relayed a few comments from my students, things I’d never heard from them in person. The most interesting one? Andrew doesn’t look at us very much.
And I thought: This might be a sign.
Let’s just agree for the moment that the first psychiatrist misdiagnosed me when he called me a monster in so many words. Let’s say that he missed the signs of a condition that, at the time, was relatively new and poorly understood except by specialists.
Would receiving a different diagnosis have affected my life? Presumably, though I couldn’t tell you exactly how. Maybe it would have opened up new paths of understanding, but it also might have just been another vaguely intriguing fact for me to dig out of a file cabinet years later. Counterfactuals like that might make for interesting fiction, but as thought experiments they leave a lot to be desired.
Besides, underneath the labels, I can only be me. Sorry if that makes you uncomfortable.
