What matters

 A little over a week ago, I got together with fellow women at my favorite place and played a game. It's White Elephant meets the Hunger Games, everything hinges on a roll of the dice and how fast you can move to claim someone else's stuff. At one point, I had three things;  I walked away with one, but that was only because the owner declared it safe from swapping.

(It was a framed, hand-painted pic of a bird with a real feather incorporated in the piece. K declared that the universe wanted me to have it, so I was allowed to take it off the table.)

So there we were, rolling the oversized foam dice and seizing these same few items from one another over and over (the tinsel trailer, deer pong game and wine purse were the heavy favorites, but I was happy to see the oversized Goofy mug I brought made a couple passes around, too.)  I had the beer pong AND the wine purse in my possession at one point, but both eventually became someone else's booty....

....which was actually fine by me, because I had just gotten rid of four contractor bags worth of stuff, plus four boxes and barely made a dent in clear out. I could afford to not bring more stuff home. Plus, I had the awesome artwork, so that made me happy.

But, the young lady who won the wine purse came over and apologized after.  I laughed, and said she had nothing to apologize for (she really didn't), but she insisted on paying for one of my flights. After a little back and forth (because she really didn't have to do that), I finally said sure, why not?  The flight meant more to me than the wine bag, anyway.

I wandered way out of my way after to drop another gift off. I needed the drive. I needed the silence. I needed to see the holiday lights. Anymore I need time and space to process things....some of the things are in the here and now, and some of the things are way, way back in the past.  But it's all of a piece of some big puzzle I'm working on right now that has no boundaries or edges, just a whole lot of pieces that don't seem to fit together in any logical way. 

It's been a wet and rainy week. Another holiday spent alone, but not so bad since we were able to spend some time with friends ahead of the holiday. The boys are ok. And I think they will be okay. I mean eventually, altogether.

Because the stuff doesn't matter, was never really important or relevant.  My younger guy is creating his own timeline, making sense of his own world and asking me to help where he thinks I can (why?  I don't know--he has a better handle on a lot more than I do, but he's also been my otherworldly one who sees and hears and understands things the rest of us don't--or can't).

I don't want to put too much on him, but he's always been better connected to the universe than the rest of us. I wish I had a little of that. 

Too Many Thoughts

 I'm having trouble picking a topic. My head is all over the place.

Let's start with the present moment. I am in front of my tree, Younger to my immediate right, sprawled out and watching videos on his laptop. Elder is in the other room, watching one thing on TV and another thing on his laptop (trying not to turn myself inside out with all my angst here).  I took them both to iHop this am, and then made a side quest for younger to relive an early childhood moment or two, then off on a little road trip to get us all out of the house. 

Elder graduated.  He has his associate's degree, made dean's list, and now we need to figure out his "what next". (I've agreed with dad to give this all a rest this week)(Hasn't made the angst go away. I'm just not talking about it.) Younger is enjoying the quiet. I'm looking around at all the stuff that needs to get done and suffering task paralysis. 

Everything needs to get solved now, so nothing is getting done.  Feeling overwhelmed. Which is pretty much my steady-state.

I can't even enjoy the quiet.

I need to stop torturing myself. 

(Un)Masking

 NOT a COVD post.

Anyone familiar with autism is familiar with the term 'masking.'  Healthline here has a good summary.

Healthline says in a nutshell, "Masking is a complex and costly survival strategy for autistic people. It generally involves intentionally learning neurotypical behaviors and mimicking them in social situations."

Not for nothing, I had to figure out early how to cover my perceived crazy. I didn't have any language for any of this growing up; all I knew was that I was different and had to figure out a way to "not".

Not be different. 

It's been somewhat torturous watching elder, because he is me, in a lot of ways. The main difference between us is that he is out there with his differences, a brave sort of crazy. People who knew me from high school who know me now say I was a lot more like younger (we're twins now, so I wonder how much conflation of looks with personality there is). Younger is my stealth guy.  With his long hair and tie-dye shirts and jeans, he looks like any other kid his age. He walks around with his hood up if he's wearing a hoodie.

He has learned how to blend.

Elder, not so much.

And I'm a weird hybrid. In latter days, I accept me and if I am having an autistic day, I have my day and don't lose much sleep over it. But, it's taken me decades to get to this point.

My husband has called me various things, but iconoclast is the word he uses most.  I just looked up the definition and think it's the funniest juxtaposition of ideas this week. It's not like I set out to be the destroyer of norms or anything that interesting; if anything, I've been spending my whole life trying to shut off the screaming aura that seems to surround me and draw fire from folks who don't appreciate differences of any kind. 

I've spent a lifetime of learning the rules so I can beat everyone at the game. 

Lately, my life seems to have been a series of inflection points where I made quantum jumps in understanding how "normal" people function, but often those jumps came at a high premium; sometimes relationships fell, and other times my mental health faltered. I remember thinking that I'd be safe in an academic career until I realized academia was full of weirdos like me and its own kind of shark tank.  After a few false starts, I found myself in Corporate America with a lot more to learn about the millions of ways other people could be treacherous beings.

I remember evading a trap from a sharp/k by talking about myself in the third person. Technically, I didn't lie.  And it bought me enough time to plan an exit strategy and leave under the cover of darkness.

And there were other adventures and dangers, and each and every one was a learning experience, which I carefully filed away and stored for future reference. I can run a decision tree based on all my previous experiences faster than a supercomputer AND have people think I have my shit together. 

The truth is, it's all come at a cost. I've been careful to unmask around the boys, especially when anxiety is getting the better of me. They need to see that I understand what they are going through, that I live it, that I get it. 

I'm giving myself permission to unmask more regularly. I have more days behind me than in front of me, and I want to get life right in the time I have left. 

So.  I'll mask up when I have to. 

I'm getting a little more discriminating about what requires it. 

You Can Do BIG Things

 I have so much going on in my head right now. 

I'm still struggling with Elder.  That will be a forever thing, I guess.  I wonder if this pandemic has completely broken him. And I don't know what to do about it. 

One thing I know I won't do is let whatever that is get in Younger's way.  Which is kind of a struggle, because Younger is very conscious about eclipsing his brother, to the point where I can see he will start to get in the way of his own success.

Hubby tells us to take our arguing elsewhere. It's kind of hard when a) everything is an argument and b) Elder isn't going anywhere except within his very limited orbit. 

I still have the FOO stuff, but that will always be going on in the background to some extent. I'm largely putting that on ignore, because I don't have the energy for it. 

So Younger capped his marching band career this past week with a banquet.  We all had a good time, he with his bandmates, and me with a particularly awesome table of parents.  I remember our first two banquets wherein I didn't really know any of the parents with a couple exceptions, then two years ago wherein we were late getting there so sat at a table by ourselves in the the back.  This year was pretty cool. 

Even though we had a much smaller band, it was a lot of fun, and the speeches the student leaders gave were amusing, touching, and full of the usual teenage stuff.  And the kids each got a thoughtful remembrance of the season by the band director as awards were given out.

Hubby recorded G's moment, and I have watched a few times. It was memorable in that the band director (bless her) was looking to be encouraging, and her last line was to "Remember, you can do things."

Then the former director busted his shoes for his often telling him that G was out once he got his letter.  (That got laughs--anyone who remembers G two years ago remembers that about him). And then he went on to say, not directly, but if you listen, it's there--that he was grateful the staff saw he could do more than he, director, thought G could do. 

You see, this is the struggle--people think neither of my kids CAN, so they are given as little as possible to do. This is going to stand in both of their ways. Elder either believes he can't, or he doesn't want to, or he wants to get away with doing as little as possible. I can already see in G's job that the same thing is happening to him (but he doesn't want to tip that because he sees his easy ride as a good thing).

So this makes my struggle to get them both to that "gainful, full-time competitive employment" place really, really difficult. 

I don't know how to make moving forward matter to elder. 

I don't know how to keep that from spilling over into everyone else's capacity to manage.

All I want for Christmas is for him to have a spark of internal motivation. 

He is all about that fucking carrot. 

A Funny Thing Happened......

 So yesterday I was wildly social (for me).

I hosted a happy hour for my work group that I thought *might* attract a person or two for a half hour. Imagine my surprise when 6 people showed up, one stayed the original half hour (having other things to do), three more stayed an hour, and two more hung with me for over two hours. (Kinda awesome, and I think I made a friend, so yay)

Another work person has been asking me to crash her friend's weekly gathering for drinks and darts in his downstairs lair. Last night was the night; less than a mile from my house as the crow flies, I drove slowly to find his hidden house in the hills above my neighborhood. C met me in the driveway to direct me to the entrance at the back of the house. 

I swear, literal speakeasy and one of the coolest things ever with the coolest people ever. I brought a mix pack of my favorite brews from my favorite place and put money in the kitty for pizza and anything else I might consume (I was told I got the idea and am allowed to join them on the regular) (also yay).  I sat at the bar sharing adventures and company with C while others came and went, joined the conversation, played darts in the background, and generally was just old school hanging out and awesome at that.

So C was telling me about her one daughter who works in the IU who works in particular with kids with autism. We somehow got into talking about the holiday parade younger was in last week, and she mentioned one young man who she "could swear, was on the spectrum, not looking happy, and I called out to him and waved, and his face just lit up."

I mentioned G was in the parade and pulled up the picture I posted here the other day.  Her eyes popped. "Oh my God!  That's him!  That's the kid I waved at!"  Then she described how he looked, maybe scared and uncomfortable?  I laughed and pulled up a picture of G staring daggers at me from the parade at the end of the route.  "Did he look like this?"

"Yes!"

I laughed. "That's his pissed off face."

She's still a fan. 

But it is a small world, isn't it?

And a quick pic

 Because this moment was never even a thought back in the day. Proud to walk Senior Day with my Letterman x 2. 

Can't wait to see what you do next. 

Elder Rising

 Do I dare think we are turning a corner?

Having a tough time NOT channeling a certain ancestor with elder because man o man, just because I get the COVD impact doesn't mean I am patient about it. 

I struck a couple deals with him, so we are figuring out his next moves.  He's getting balled up in "rest of his life," and all I really want him to do is think about the next six months.  (I think he gets it?)

So we're converting some of his interests into real-life adventures, and maybe that's where I need to get creative. The universe is lending a hand here;  he got a call this evening to substitute for a bingo caller at one of his regular haunts tomorrow. And he's getting paid for it. He is beyond psyched. 

And he's taking a friend to the movies next week--first time in almost two years.

He's singing to himself.

I have a little time and space to work with him tomorrow on a few things, so we will make good use of that time. 

Meanwhile, younger doesn't need any help creating his own. I do wish, however, he would change his socks. 

A Bone To Pick

 OMG how many times have I been on the receiving end of someone having a bone to pick with me over this or that.

The problem with being the omega in the pack is that you do come to think that everything is your fault.  If you're lucky, you happen into a family of your creation who helps you to see that while you are accountable for what you do, you have little to no control over the narrative that others write for you (and expect you to fulfill).

Word to the wise:  you aren't responsible for that, either. 

Finding language to wrap around this is difficult.  I always felt that I was given short shrift, but I didn't have the words to advocate for myself. Sure, I had lots of words, but never a word in my own defense or on my own behalf. There were plenty of times I felt that someone was dead WRONG, but everyone else fell in line behind dead wrong, so I stayed silent.

Or people called me crazy. I realized that no matter what I said, it would be dismissed out of hand. 

The best thing about these situations is that they taught me how to walk away. 

And they taught me words to stick up for myself and for my kids. 

I'm thinking about another blog that is forming in my head: about the power of words and the sleight of hand; about how when words fail to back up actions, you wonder what else the talker is hiding. I was going to go there today, but the whole idea of being on the defensive one's whole life  is top of mind at the moment. 

I know that by my actions, I say an awful lot.

And sometimes that's better than knowing a whole lot of words. 

Enjoying The New Room

 So we finally broke down and built a deck, and we finally got around to putting a gate around the perimeter of the flat roof, thus giving me two new "rooms" to hang out in. The actual deck, I'm finding, is lower than where I want to be, thus I spend a lot more time outside my office upstairs (which is where I am right now, typing as the sun warms me in my little folding chair).

I'm enjoying the sound of the wind and the birds, and I'm finding this goes a long way to stemming the normal angst that comes with shorter days and less daylight.  The fact that I have been getting more sun is undoubtedly helping my equilibrium (which my elder kid upends on the daily).

I had a good week spending time with friends over coffee, drinks, oysters and whatnot. My friends keep me grounded and help me see the upsides to everything (including my current struggles with elder). (Big wind) I'm trying to figure out a few things and manage the house and the other things that require management.  I'm grateful beyond words that I can sit here and think things through and type it all out. I'm still struggling with the usual FOO stuff but that's not really top of mind at the moment;  right now I'm making sure younger gets settled into the winter programs he's in (throwing shade at me the whole time, mind you).Whatever he ends up doing, he'll be fine. Dad's spending time with elder this am, so hopefully he'll do a better job of communicating with him than I have.

(Fear screams when I try to talk to him. It's a bit disappointing for us both.)

It's a good day to sit outside and listen to the universe.  I'm grateful that I can while I get some other things done. 

Younger Cracks Me Up

 Merrily we roll along into winter sports.  G tries out for bowling.  He already has his Varsity letter, and he just loves it.  Now that he has a smartphone, he can take pictures of his scores and text them to me. 

They are pretty impressive. His average is easily in the 150s (this from my spiky, inconsistent kid once upon a time. No longer. He knows how to roll.) I ask him when I pick him up, "So are you on the team?"

"I'm not sure." This is his standard answer, whether he wants to evade the question altogether or is legit not sure.

When he get home, he yells in from the living room while I'm in the kitchen cooking dinner, "Hey mom, so pictures are tomorrow in the gym."

"For what?"

I can hear the eye roll from two rooms away. "BOWLING. I got the shirt and schedule today."

I stop what I'm doing.  Stick my head in the living room.  "Um.  I thought you said you weren't sure if you made the team."

He looks at me blankly. I continue.

"I'd say if you have the shirt, and the schedule, AND have to go for pictures, you're on the team. Am I right?"

My honor student's (!) face lights up.  "oh, YEAH!"

Yep.