Aah, thinking: that problematic coping strategy
It doesn’t help that I over-think, over-mentalize… One of the benefits of watching Netflix’ “Love on the Spectrum”, is realizing that a big source of difficulty for people on the autism spectrum is the very thing which they rely on to navigate the world, ie their intellect. Their reasoning through things, trying to find patterns and apply rules, as opposed to just perceiving, being, FEELING(!), going with the flow, seems to be what trips them. After all, life is rich, unpredictable… Sooner or later, things don’t go according to plan, according to what you base your mentally-concocted strategy on. If you rely too heavily on your pre-ordained procedures, when changes occur, you’re thrown off, disturbed.
Seeing this displayed very clearly in the show, makes me better understand my parents… For the longest time, I’ve suspected that my dad is on the spectrum. But what is more striking, is realizing in the last couple of years that my mom is probably on the spectrum as well. Overly sensitive to several stimuli. Planning to the point of obsession. Easily thrown off by changes of plan… Autism is indeed more difficult to detect in women vs men. My mom’s is a case in point.
Of course, and unfortunately, I have to recognize it in myself. My honey-badger-like tendency to latch onto plans. To experience confusion and frustration when things don’t work out accordingly. And many more tell-tale signs… As convenient as they sometimes are, I dislike labels — more so when they are applied to me(!) Because I strongly believe that my particular ways of acting in and seeing the world are mutable, changeable. I can learn other ways of interacting. So the labels feel temporary at best, constraining at worst.
Perhaps I should extend the grace, take the cue from my own dislike of labelling, and refrain from making free associations between my parents and a still-evolving-clusterfuck of symptoms…
In any event, I know that my tendency to try to know as much as possible, to supposedly help me survive and thrive in this life, is also what is hurting me — autism or not. My strength be also my weakness.
The affect overwhelm: the “kids” at school
I am a sucker for novelty. Tho I go about it in a tug-of-war kind of way. I will claim to love novelty. But when it’s unplanned, things I truly hadn’t foreseen, then I am quite thrown off, and mildly regret wishing for the change (until I come around, with time…)
One of the things that really shook me this year is being with “the kids”. And by kids, I mean folks who are approx 30yrs my junior. I could easily, easily be their parent — and not even a young one at that!
School started in mid-August. Took me a good 2 months to start getting my head out of the water. To brush the rust off of my brain’s study gears… To say I hit cruise ctrl speed by mid-Oct is exaggerated, but maybe something along the lines of starting to float, keeping my head above water and breathing in actual air?
Around this time I also realized I had regular “amphitheater buddies.” They came about naturally. People I could reliably sit with. Who’d reserve me a seat, and I’d do the same.
Then a month later (mid-Nov), it hit me. Near to American Thanksgiving, my own private moment of grace and gratitude. During an otherwise ordinary weekend, I became aware that I was attached to my amphitheater buddies. It was the weekend, no classes to attend, and I missed them. I wondered what they were doing.
The wonderfully confusing thing that would come about this year for me, is the multi-fasceted feelings I would develop for my new colleagues, dare I say friends. For sure, a mixture of culture shock and misunderstanding — not unlike the inevitable feelings of inadequacy and nervousness which I get when dealing with most people, tho a hundred-fold in this case. I’ve also experienced much admiration for their overall swiftness, and the brighter aspects of their generational wokeness (tho I have also suffered alienation from the darker aspects of this exaggerated propensity to judge.)
The strange thing is, this affection doesn’t feel like the usual, friendly liking. There’s also been an undercurrent of caring, of attachment — dare I say, a mother-hen-like feeling thrown into the mix! (Recall that I never had kids of my own.) And what makes this so confusing, is that on several aspects, they are stronger, more advanced than me. How can I possibly be a mother hen, an experienced life advisor to people, who for the most part put me to shame, performance-wise?
To make matters even more confusing, they are all so beautiful… I refrain as best I can from going into romantic territory here(!) yet I cannot help noticing the shininess of these brand-new-models.
“Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh never mind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.” (Baz Luhrmann)
Mine has been an eclectic mix of cultural-generational misunderstanding, fear, admiration, attraction, caring… no wonder I am feeling somewhat blown away by these characters I have had the priviledge of meeting, this past school year.
I don’t think I can autistically completely think, or reason myself out of this latest overwhelm of feeling…
Neither do I completely want to.
What was Hamlet’s question, again?
To be, or not to be...
I’ll go with the former — for 100 points, please.
