Semi Feral

I'm finding this time of self isolation suits me just fine.

I'm not thrilled. I don't love it. COVD-19 is pretty fucking scary.  But we're already self-isolating, so as a collective, I think we are doing a collective exhale.

I'm listening to the boys talk between themselves, and I think this unexpected hiatus from having to figure out what is and what isn't socially appropriate, while not exactly convenient, has some unexpected silver linings.

Like not having to people.  Or keeping the peopling to a minimum.  We've been hiking in the woods and geocaching the last week or so, but now, with the new stay at home orders, we're limited.  I send them on their own around the neighborhood for walks (that "There's the mom and her retards" comment stinging all these years later) (No, I will not get over it. You don't call my kids or ANY kids retards. Ever.) I keep my sorties to the bookends of light each day to minimize my own contact with the world.

This unexpected hiatus in the everyday has given me a little time and space to reflect on my own autism journey. It wasn't all that long ago that my own gullibility led to someone claiming my work as her own, and then being gaslighted for it.  Led to decades of psychological abuse, only to have my sanity called into question. Goodbye. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

My younger guy's first job interview kind of brought me here unexpectedly. It didn't go great, but in this time of scary health crises, I'd rather him not being a conduit of this virus, either coming or going. But that aside, I had observed to hubby that the person who interviewed G was, and I quote, "a social clod."

So elder, who was on the other side of the house but has ears like a bat, materialized in the kitchen. "Mom, what do you mean social clod?  What does that mean?"

After dad and I busted his shoes for eavesdropping, we asked him what we possibly could have meant.  He shrugged, "I dunno, socially awkward, doesn't know what to say?  Makes social mistakes?"  We agreed that these things qualify, and he went back to whatever it was he was doing in another part of the house.  And I observed to hubby, "He's trying to figure out what we already know."  And in saying that, I realized that I came about all my knowledge about the social contracts in pretty much the same way--asking questions.

Except....I had a shit ton of relationships end because I violated some unspoken social rule and whatever friend had dumped me didn't have the time, patience or interest in our relationship to tell me what it was I did wrong. Or how I could have fixed it. So a lot of my knowledge came by making mistakes. Lots of them. Over decades.  The trail of carcasses stretches for miles over multiple jurisdictions.

Work, too. The same applies to work relationships and situations I had come across over my decades working (now in my 5th and counting, having been working in some way or other since age 11). I had to screw up an awful lot to learn all the things I know now.   I could probably fill a book. And maybe I should.

So even though I worry about these two and wonder if they will be okay and eventually find their way, I remind myself of everything that I needed to learn on my own, and am comforted in the fact that I am still here to guide them and coach them. And while I know they will both need to make their own mistakes and learn their own lessons, I also know that they won't be doing it alone.

They have us. And they have each other.

And that is a beautiful thing.