The Life Autistic: “That Was Fun!”

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I don’t know what it is with my oldest daughter, but she finds new ways to amaze me.

We’re all at Cold Stone, about to leave, when she asks:

“Can I go up and ask for a lid?”

I double-taked for a second, since, 1) she’s 3, and 2) she’s willingly volunteering to go talk to strangers.

That’s so foreign to me on The Life Autistic – wanting to talk to people.

It’s not that we hate it; it’s not that we can’t; but that’s definitely outside the scope of our wants — and if we can avoid it, we do.

There’s only so much in the tank that we can spare on a given day.

But oh, not my Mo, who’s somehow becoming an extrovert who gets energy from others.

She goes up and politely asks the workers for a “like it-sized lid,” and after they’re accordingly smitten, they oblige and hand one to her.

Mo runs back.

“That was fun!”

Fun, I thought.

I don’t know what it is with this kid. Maybe she’s not the normal one.

But she gives me hope, a jolt, and a new way of viewing interactions. They may not always feel fun to me, yet someone sees the fun in it. Perhaps my eyes can yet stretch to see it someday.

 

 

The Life Autistic: We Need Exit Strategies

Glass_exit_sign.jpgI completely lost the plot this past Monday.

After just one too many days in a different house, with 10x the amount of people I’m normally around, doing only 5% of what I’m good at, and feeling the walls figuratively closing in, I snapped.

It took me a while to cool off and reflect on where I’d tailspun out of control, devolved into an incorrigible mess, and both shut down and shot back at every living thing around me.

And here I thought I’d become more enlightened this past year, in command of reason, existing in an astral plane above the fray.

But no.

You can’t enlighten your way out of autism.

My attitude is my own, and so are my reactions.

I should have better owned how to handle and navigate around them.

We need exit strategies. 

There are some situations, setups, surroundings where we just can’t simmer down. Too many people. Not enough rooms. Too loud. Too quiet. Too boring. Too busy.

If I’m not doing something I feel has purpose or progress, I get cagey, irritable, and eventually explosive.

If I can’t sneak away and take some quiet time relatively alone to reset, I shake out into a rage.

It’s as if the small pressures build into an overload, a meltdown.

Yes, a meltdown, even as a grown adult.

****

The Life Autistic sucks sometimes.

I’m embarrassed by not growing out of it, not yet unlocking a level of conquering that makes me feel like I can be above every fray.

And while I’ve worked hard to adapt, some situations shred away the armor, tear off the mask, and goad my core in spiteful reminder that, yes, I’m still much the same Hunter within.

But that is the life indeed.

While I discover the ways through, the ways forward, I’ve always got to keep read the way out. 

Sometimes that’s the only way back in.

The Life Autistic: Why We Don’t Do ‘Resolutions’

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It’s New Year’s Eve, and if you haven’t started your parties yet, you should do those and come back to this.

But if you’re here: we autistic folks are not ones for ‘cheap, tacky, trendy resolutions.’

“Gee, that’s odd,” you might think. “I thought you all loved routine!”

We do. At least I do.

Which is why we’re pretty much set in our ways, and resolving to do things differently is a carefully measured choice and long-term effort.

For us, resolution is not a “thing to do” to ring in the New Year.

I’ve carried out two major, life changing actions as an autist, and neither of them could wait until some popular, traditional point in time.

See, we like being unique.

Undergoing (and often failing) some annual ritual of life change is too mainstream, popular, and the wrong kind of normal. For me, I need more successes, and a New Year’s Resolution isn’t giving me good odds on one.

When I resolved to cut down from being a whale to a moderate walrus, I needed to make it personal, not popular – and I needed it on my terms.

By New Year’s, I had something better than a resolution.

I had a habit.

If you’re the type for resolutions, good on you. Maybe you’ve done well. If so, awesome.

But if not, take a page from the autistic playbook:

Snap. Change. Continue. Forget about when and just go with what. Be different, personal, private, but purposeful.

Happy New Year.