This Autistic Life

I think it's safe to say, in retrospect, I was more autistic than both my kids at their respective ages.

During my therapy session last week, I told my doctor this. He seemed somewhat surprised. He, like many people in my life, don't see autistic me. They see ME.  I'm quirky, smart, funny, and quick with a comeback.

I wasn't always this way.

In fact, the me that exists now is a fairly recent creation, or re-creation, of the self that I always aspired to be.

I would have gotten on my own nerves, the child, teenager, young adult, middle-aged mom I used to be.

I'm not sure how my own mother didn't kill me in my sleep. Oh, right. I didn't sleep.

Neither did she.  I didn't let her. I thought my insomnia would kill me, so I made sure she stayed awake, too. I didn't want to die alone.

My memories take two tracks, I told my doctor. I remember things as I experienced them; viscerally, sensorily, if that's a word--sights, smells, touch, sound, taste--but I also see them now as an adult with language to wrap around those memories, and make sense of all the emotions I felt.

I spent my whole life watching other people, wondering why some people got away with murder, socially, for some of the crap they pulled, whether they were chronic liars, or chronically late, or (to be bold here) overtly plagiarized my work, while I seemed to run afoul of everyone for the slightest infraction--usually not meant in any offending way. I remember one former friend telling me all the stuff I did wrong after the fact, and then saying we couldn't be friends any more.

I wondered at the time why that person didn't stop and correct me at the first infraction. I hadn't realized I was doing anything wrong.

I had another call me on the fact that I didn't send her a sympathy card. At the time I was a young(er) mom who didn't sleep, had a very colicky baby and was trying to balance work, baby and life and not doing any of it well.

Instead of apologizing, like I should have done, I threw the card out. I'm sorry I did that. But that was 20 years ago.

But that's okay; I had internet friends. I fell in with a bunch and some wanted to write. I made the mistake of sending my novel off to them.  One of them published parts of it (like, whole passages of dialogue), plus title under her name. And I was gaslighted and banished from the group.

She and another writer used mine to pad their own writing. I saw scenes I wrote show up in both of their books. In a way, it was kind of flattering.

But I stopped the fiction writing at that point. I had one story to tell, and that was it. In a larger sense, they did me a favor, because I could never have published that story in a million years. The whole point to me writing it was therapy, because by that time, I needed it and wasn't getting it.

So I stuck to scientific and medical writing, because I could and because it paid a lot better, and because by that time, I had two kids with diagnoses and couldn't really afford to fuck around.

In the meantime, there were real life challenges. I deleted Sharon's taunting emails without reading them because I had people who were brave enough to be assholes to my face, and I needed to spend my energy on defending my kids from them.

At some point, I stopped caring about what other people thought of me. I hated the fact that people were kind and praiseful to me one on one but gave me their backs when they were in a group. I hated that they spoke well of my kids to my face, but their kids excluded mine.

Sometimes, I imagine myself in warpaint doing a haka on my kids' behalf.

I wish things were better for them. On the other hand, neither of them are afraid of being themselves, or of standing apart.  They know how. Because they learned from the best.