Autism On Parade

Pictured: Autism

I haven't exactly tried to hide the fact that I am autistic, but now the suggestion has been made that I devote my YouTube channel, at least in part, to discussing my life with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It seems like a no-brainer: I have an experience that is not unique but is often misrepresented in the media or in Hollywood and misunderstood by many. Because of the successes I have had in life  (married, two kids, eleven years of continued employment, et cetera), some might say that I exhibit features of High Functioning Autism (HFA). There's a lot of overlap between terms like HFA and Asperger's Syndrome- and I'm not a doctor. I only have what I feel and think.

Some of you might be wondering what it's like to have autism super-powers. It's a burden. It's not just all the interdimensional travel or the hordes of zombie-robot ninjas that you end up fighting; it's the dry-cleaning expenses. It's the cape-maintenance. It's finding a place to store all the keys various cities end up giving you as tokens of appreciation (those really pile up fast).

The reality of autism for me is that I feel like a completely average person trapped in the Mirror Universe version of the reality I come from. All the faces are familiar, they just have goatees. The real problem is in the nuance. For example, I have learned that when people ask me how I'm doing, they really don't care. They are saying something that is "polite" so that they can continue their day feeling morally superior to all the drones who failed to show interest in another human. Sometimes I test this theory with responses that don't fit: "I'm doing time", "preachy", "boots and pants". If I'm lucky, I'll get a quizzical look. I'm thirty-something years old, so I know that people even expect me to use this question as a greeting. As I say, "it's not my first rodeo."

Pictured: Autism

As much as I was not "born yesterday", I still find that I have problems interacting with others. I tend to ask personal questions too early. I reach too much at finding common ground with new people. I am often accused of being judgmental. But even my genuine efforts to fit in can backfire on me.

I was recently told by my therapist (what diagnosis is without a therapist?) that I have an unsettling gaze. Unsettling? I asked him for specifics and it turns out that by avoiding a common social issue found in those on the spectrum, namely avoiding eye-contact, that I was overcompensating. I search faces and eyes while I'm talking to people. Evidently, this is something they may not consciously recognize as being "unsettling", but that the trained observer can pick it out easily.

Another area I've been working on is showing happiness in my face. My therapist recommended that I get a small mirror to practice facial expressions with. He said, and rightly so, that I do not have a natural appearance to my smile. Smiling is hard. Neuro-typical people may not realize just how hard it is to smile, but consider the number of muscles involved in that action. Also, I spend a great deal of time looking at people who are smiling to see if they are being sincere. Context alone doesn't do it. In fact, natural-seeming expressions are so important to social interactions and so foreign to me that I have purchased a number of books in an effort to teach myself how to recognize when someone is being insincere. 

Pictured: Autism

Sarcasm is extremely difficult for me to pick up on. Sometimes context can do it (e.g. if I see someone covered in garbage juice, hair disheveled, and bruises everywhere- even if they say they're having a good day, they're probably not). Sometimes context does nothing for me. I'll be paying attention the whole conversation and I will think it's headed in one direction when in reality it's actually not. That's frustrating. 

I offend many people right off the bat with how direct I can be, but I seem to offend friends and coworkers at odd intervals with how "controlling" I apparently am. I use the word "should" a lot. "You should watch such and such movie", "it should have been such and such way", et cetera. This is, apparently, off-putting. Or to put it differently, I shouldn't talk that way. Can I help it if my understanding of the world is concrete and almost binary? If I didn't have strong opinions about my experience, why would I share them? 

To sum up this meandering rant: autism, for me, is like driving a manual transmission in a world of automatics. It's not like I'm some alien who doesn't feel things, My process of arriving at the same destination is sometimes different. And, as with driving a stick, sometimes you have to grind it 'til you find it.