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diff --git a/content/entry/coming-out-as-autistic.md b/content/entry/coming-out-as-autistic.md index 90b9cb8..77d344b 100644 --- a/content/entry/coming-out-as-autistic.md +++ b/content/entry/coming-out-as-autistic.md @@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ At bowling, me and my then-girlfriend's friend were debating about religion. She Along with intellectual gifts, I also have deficits. The most obvious is my poor working memory. ### Poor Working Memory -My earliest memory of this deficit comes from middle school. My class was sent to the hall outside the English classroom. All us students got in a circle. We were trying to learn each other's names. I knew I wasn't good at things like that, so before the exercise even started, I asked the teacher to skip it. She told me to try anyways. +My earliest memory of this deficit comes from middle school. My class was sent to the hall outside the English classroom. All us students got in a circle. We were trying to learn each other's names. I knew I wasn't good at things like that, so before the exercise even started, I asked the teacher to skip it. She told me to try anyway. So one person began by stating their own name. Then the person to their left stated their own name and the name of those who stated their name before them. So on and so forth until one person stated everyone's names. @@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ All throughout my life there were times I was quickly given a set of verbal inst ### Abstracting I also want to explain the trouble I have with abstraction. I'll explain how this difference makes it hard for me to keep a job. Let's start with an analogy. -A kitchen is an abstract idea composed of a stove, usually some chairs arranged around a table, a refrigerator, cabinets, and other things. For neurotypicals, when the kitchen chair is moved, that's just the kitchen with the chair moved. Low-functioning autistics have trouble putting objects into larger, abstract contexts. For low-functioning autistics, a moved kitchen chair can be very distressing because to them, it's not the kitchen any more. +A kitchen is an abstract idea composed of a stove, usually some chairs arranged around a table, a refrigerator, cabinets, and other things. For neurotypicals, when the kitchen chair is moved, that's just the kitchen with the chair moved. Low-functioning autistics have trouble putting objects into larger, abstract contexts. For low-functioning autistics, a moved kitchen chair can be very distressing because to them, it's not the kitchen anymore. It's the same thing for me, except with tasks and goals instead of a chair and a kitchen. When I worked manual labor packing shipping containers, it took a while to understand where the container was headed. It took me a while to figure out that the reason I was cutting the cardboard boxes was so they fit in the commercial recycling unit. I know it's normal not to understand the purpose behind every subtask related to one's job immediately, but it takes me so long that I get fired before it makes sense to me. @@ -59,7 +59,7 @@ So I entered the auditorium, sat down, and shielded my ears with my hands the en On many occasions when I found myself sitting in someone else's car, I had to ask them to lower the volume on the radio because I couldn't handle it. I didn't like being the uncool guy, but I couldn't help it. If I didn't ask them to lower it, I would've been so overwhelmed by the time we arrived that I couldn't function socially. -I went to exactly one homecoming, prom, and football game because I had a girlfriend who insisted on it. Otherwise I never would've went. Homecoming, prom, and the football game were overwhelmingly loud. I suffered a lot on the inside, but I pretended to enjoy it for the sake of fitting in. I couldn't imagine how others found watching football interesting. I wanted to do calculus or code instead. +I went to exactly one homecoming, prom, and football game because I had a girlfriend who insisted on it. Otherwise I never would've gone. Homecoming, prom, and the football game were overwhelmingly loud. I suffered a lot on the inside, but I pretended to enjoy it for the sake of fitting in. I couldn't imagine how others found watching football interesting. I wanted to do calculus or code instead. Children have always made me anxious because they scream unpredictably in high-pitched voices. Lower-pitched sounds are less overwhelming. If I know a loud noise is coming, it bothers me less. Loud noises are jarring if I don't expect them. If I socialize a lot in a day, I have a lower tolerance for noise and lights. @@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ In terms of clothing, I'm not sure whether it's an autism sensitivity or I just The fact that people judge others negatively for how they dress boggles my mind. It makes me feel like I never left high school. I couldn't care less if everyone walked around nude. I'll probably show up to court and to my own wedding in comfortable casual wear. -I wear my clothes until they fall apart. I don't care if some have small holes or stains. I practice good hygiene, but I don't put much effort into my appearance. It helps me filter out people I don't wanna talk to anyways. Case in point: Me, my then-girlfriend, and her friends went to take prom photos. Her friend told me the top button of my shirt was undone. I said I didn't mind, but she kept pestering me. Later that day, we went to a classy restaurant and she badgered me about holding the utensils wrong. +I wear my clothes until they fall apart. I don't care if some have small holes or stains. I practice good hygiene, but I don't put much effort into my appearance. It helps me filter out people I don't wanna talk to anyway. Case in point: Me, my then-girlfriend, and her friends went to take prom photos. Her friend told me the top button of my shirt was undone. I said I didn't mind, but she kept pestering me. Later that day, we went to a classy restaurant and she badgered me about holding the utensils wrong. A lot of people like to play dress up and pretend following all these arbitrary high society social norms makes them more sophisticated or important or decent than others. I prefer not to encourage that petty one-upmanship through my involvement. I think the need to be seen as better than others is driven by insecurity and a failure of compassion. @@ -113,7 +113,7 @@ One of the drawbacks of being able to focus so intensely on one thing for extend I also quickly become frustrated by the way other people have conversations. People barely scratch the surface on every topic and never dive in. They never stick to a subject. I don't know how people can stand to have boring shallow conversations about nothing all the time. -I met an autistic person at a hackathon once. I let him ramble on endlessly about his special interest. His interest wasn't even remotely related to programming, but I enjoyed listening anyways. Even though it wasn't my special interest, he was so passionate that it became interesting. +I met an autistic person at a hackathon once. I let him ramble on endlessly about his special interest. His interest wasn't even remotely related to programming, but I enjoyed listening anyway. Even though it wasn't my special interest, he was so passionate that it became interesting. He was more enjoyable to converse with than neurotypicals because I didn't have to worry about him judging my social skills and he didn't often change subject. It was like we were on the same wavelength. @@ -125,7 +125,7 @@ A combination of self-acceptance, mindfulness, and compassion has helped me make ## Atypical Sleep Pattern Somewhat related to my hyperfocus is my atypical sleep pattern. Atypical sleep is apparently common in people with autism. I've had it for as long as I can remember. I went through my whole formal education and every job I had sleep deprived. In high school, my friends thought I was high every day because my eyes were always red. I was just sleep deprived. I had to rely on family members to wake me because no alarm would. In university, my career advisor kept telling me that I needed more rest. -The only times in my life when I've felt adequately rested were when nothing was required of me. When I don't have a defined sleep schedule and I can sleep whenever I need, that's when I'm mentally operating at 100%. If I go to to school or a job every day, I can't catch enough sleep. When I'm sleepy, my working memory gets drastically worse too. Sometimes I'm late for appointments because I can't schedule my sleep. +The only times in my life when I've felt adequately rested were when nothing was required of me. When I don't have a defined sleep schedule and I can sleep whenever I need, that's when I'm mentally operating at 100%. If I go to school or a job every day, I can't catch enough sleep. When I'm sleepy, my working memory gets drastically worse too. Sometimes I'm late for appointments because I can't schedule my sleep. ## Alexithymia The last autism-related thing I wanna mention before the social difficulties is alexithymia. Alexithymia is a difficulty in identifying and describing one's emotions. @@ -156,14 +156,14 @@ Later, I was walking on the playground with friend A as usual. Then I saw friend I once took part in a school spelling bee. The problem with the spelling bee was the instructions. The teacher overseeing the bee gave us all the instructions at once. My working memory couldn't fit them all. One of the instructions was to say the word, spell it, then say it again. I messed that up by starting out spelling the word. -The teacher tried to correct me, but I was so busy remembering the other rules that I made the same mistake again. The teacher gave up and allowed me to continue anyways. After the second or third word, I caught on. None of the other students seemed to have the same difficulty though. +The teacher tried to correct me, but I was so busy remembering the other rules that I made the same mistake again. The teacher gave up and allowed me to continue anyway. After the second or third word, I caught on. None of the other students seemed to have the same difficulty though. ### Middle School Fast forward to middle school. At one point I had an alright friend group. I still struggled socially and wasn't sure how to interact with others though. Even though my friends didn't share my special interests, having them around was better than being alone. Maintaining my friends was hard work though. I'll give an example. I was jogging around the gym side-by-side with a friend from that group. He was into dubstep at the time, so I told him I'd been listening to it and flailed my arms around trying to imitate the genre. He quickened his pace so he was far ahead of me. I realized I'd embarrassed him. He slowed down so we were side-by-side again and told me "use your words" in a tone indicating I was mentally retarded for expressing myself in a socially non-conforming way. -I was once taking a test on the computer with a friend of his. We weren't supposed to talk, but we did anyways. The teacher thought we were cheating, but we were just bored because the test was too easy. So she called us up, one at a time, to investigate what happened. We both told her the same true story and she bought it, so she only scolded us. +I was once taking a test on the computer with a friend of his. We weren't supposed to talk, but we did anyway. The teacher thought we were cheating, but we were just bored because the test was too easy. So she called us up, one at a time, to investigate what happened. We both told her the same true story and she bought it, so she only scolded us. When she was scolding me, she told me to look at her while she was talking. That made me very uncomfortable. I found it impossible to listen to what she was saying because I had to focus all my energy on eye contact. It took a lot of effort. I faked an expression of remorse so she would think I was already punishing myself and go easy on us. @@ -193,7 +193,7 @@ After moving away to a new high school, I had a Spanish class where the desks we As far as high school goes, that's all I recall. I spent my last year of high school in community college instead because high school had become so intolerable. I didn't care about starting college early. I just knew I couldn't go another year in high school. ### Community College -In community college, I had no problems with bullying or teasing any more. The environment was different. People were more mature. Everyone there was paying to be there. It was an adult environment, not a hormone-driven teenage popularity contest. I enjoyed it much better than high school. +In community college, I had no problems with bullying or teasing anymore. The environment was different. People were more mature. Everyone there was paying to be there. It was an adult environment, not a hormone-driven teenage popularity contest. I enjoyed it much better than high school. In community college, I sat next to a girl in English class. We started talking and became friends. We went places outside class. I asked her on what I now know was a date. She accepted, so I went to pick her up. Before we left, her dad told me not to get her in trouble, not to get her pregnant, and that he would use his shotgun if necessary. I respected his candor. @@ -237,7 +237,7 @@ A separate time, I got a phone call from work. It was the junior manager asking I hadn't even learned how to work the line yet and my job got switched to packing the food into the small plastic bowls. Then it got switched again to doing the dishes. I was told to clean the dishes, so I did. This one dish had lots of crud on it built up over time. So I spent maybe ten minutes scraping it all off. My coworker made a joke about it taking me so long, hinting that I needed to move on already. I didn't get the hint and had to have other employees help me finish up so everybody could leave on time. -My next shift I showed up late to work again. The boss wasn't happy. She took me into the back office and said "I gotta fire you". I was sad about getting fired so quickly, but also relieved that I wouldn't have to be in that overwhelming environment any more. I realized there was no way I'd be able to work fast food. I was too slow. +My next shift I showed up late to work again. The boss wasn't happy. She took me into the back office and said "I gotta fire you". I was sad about getting fired so quickly, but also relieved that I wouldn't have to be in that overwhelming environment anymore. I realized there was no way I'd be able to work fast food. I was too slow. ### Manual Labor After fast food, I tried a job doing manual labor. My trainer walked to our work area, turned halfway around, and stared at me. I knew by the way he was looking at me that he was expecting me to do something, but I didn't know what. So I stood there until he finally told me to come with him. @@ -253,7 +253,7 @@ When I woke up the next morning, I was still in sensory overload. I hadn't even ### Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Fast forward to university. I got a job at information technology services (ITS) working at the help desk. Since I also studied there, it was very convenient. My duties were to answer phone calls and assist students who showed up in person. Socializing with strangers all day isn't my strong suit. It was very draining and I had to ask for help from coworkers often. I kept being told I would "get the hang of it", but I'm not sure I ever did. So I switched to the ITS team responsible for fixing and maintaining equipment in the labs and classrooms. -If you've been following my journal for a while, you might think I was successful in this role. I quit because it was distracting from my studies and I didn't want to troubleshoot proprietary software any more. In fact [I wrote an entire entry about why I quit](/2020/07/02/why-i-left-its/). I never got fired. But what I didn't mention in that entry is that it's basically impossible to get fired in that position. I knew a guy who refused to do any work during his shift and still didn't get fired. +If you've been following my journal for a while, you might think I was successful in this role. I quit because it was distracting from my studies and I didn't want to troubleshoot proprietary software anymore. In fact [I wrote an entire entry about why I quit](/2020/07/02/why-i-left-its/). I never got fired. But what I didn't mention in that entry is that it's basically impossible to get fired in that position. I knew a guy who refused to do any work during his shift and still didn't get fired. When I first started working there, it was obvious that my boss hated me. A coworker even said so. My boss sometimes got very impatient and shouted at me. We miscommunicated constantly. I decided to disclose my autism so he at least understood why we were miscommunicating so much and it turned out to be a wise decision. @@ -275,11 +275,11 @@ So that bothered me a lot. It wasn't just "Oh I dislike some aspect of this job" ### Bus Company After quitting the nursing home, I found a job at a bus company where I was responsible for watching over special needs students of all ages. Socializing with them wasn't too draining since special needs people tend to be more tolerant of differences than neurotypicals. But after months of working there, I still couldn't remember my bus route nor the order the students got on and off the bus nor where each student got dropped off. And the schedule kept changing, so every time I got a new bus driver who didn't know the route, it was a mess. -At first I tried to write down the students' names and the route on paper, but that didn't help me. So I tried using GPS to help new drivers navigate my route, but I was told that being on my phone wasn't allowed. I explained that [I avoid using smartphones for things like texting anyways](/2021/12/26/why-i-dont-have-a-smartphone/), but that didn't seem to matter. I still wasn't allowed to use it. +At first I tried to write down the students' names and the route on paper, but that didn't help me. So I tried using GPS to help new drivers navigate my route, but I was told that being on my phone wasn't allowed. I explained that [I avoid using smartphones for things like texting anyway](/2021/12/26/why-i-dont-have-a-smartphone/), but that didn't seem to matter. I still wasn't allowed to use it. To top it all off, I was very tired every day because of my atypical sleep schedule. Some days I barely held my eyes open. I blame the extreme tiredness for the mistake which got me fired. I think if I'd been well rested, I wouldn't have made that mistake. -I could've tried sleeping pills, but they're not intended for long-term use. I've heard that medicinally induced sleep isn't the same as natural sleep anyways. +I could've tried sleeping pills, but they're not intended for long-term use. I've heard that medicinally induced sleep isn't the same as natural sleep anyway. ### Haketilo A year ago, I made a [journal entry thinking about what career I wanted](/2021/06/16/my-career-path/). I imagined my dream career as one where I got paid to write free software. I was lucky enough to stumble upon a software project called Haketilo, which is a browser extension to take back the web. When I initially ran across it, it wasn't funded. I was just interested in it. |