My label in childhood was "gifted". Not "autistic". And it isn't really difficult to understand why this was the case. There was little understanding in the 80s and 90s of high-functioning autistic girls. My differences and quirks were subtle; especially in childhood. I wasn't a late talker, or a child who refused to make eye contact. I did none of the classic autistic things like spin or hand flap. And so time marched on.
Not only were many of my quirks subtle; many of them were private. No one knew about these private quirks; not even my family members. But also, many of them were camouflaged; as I learned at an early age ways of acting that would help me to get by in society. I didn't do it perfectly by any means; my idiosyncrasies bled through more often than I realize, I'm sure. But for the most part, I was passing in society as "normal", or what I now understand as "neurotypical".
I knew I was strange, though; that I was odd, or, "off", somehow. But I wrote off each and every one of my strange traits to separate explanations. This weird thing? Oh, it's because I'm introverted. This one? It comes with "gifted kid" territory. What about this one, though? Meh; that's just because I come from reserved Northern European stock. And that one? Oh, I don't know, maybe I have OCD.
And that general overall sense I had by the age of 25 or so that I was horribly, horribly failing at "adulting", while everyone around me succeeded? I chalked that up to all the marijuana I'd smoked as a teen. Some type of arrested development; surely I'd outgrow it, just a bit slower than others. No biggie. (Spoiler alert: I didn't outgrow it. The older I got, the more obvious it became.)
Finally, in my mid-thirties, one of my symptoms in particular became so pronounced and life-altering that after questioning my mom about whether there was some unknown childhood incident coming back to rear its ugly psychological head, I began to research. Was there anyone, anywhere out there, who experienced this? And within moments, I'd encountered the words for the first time: Asperger's Syndrome/AKA high-functioning autism.
My immediate reaction was, "Nope. Next!" Of course I wasn't autistic. That was ridiculous. But something pulled me to continue reading. And within the day, I knew. To quote an old church phrase, "I knew that I knew that I knew." There wasn't a single doubt. It pulled together, like a high-powered magnet, every experience of my life, under this giant umbrella. Everything that had never made sense before showed itself in the rearview mirror in perfect clarity. And on top of that, came another realization: I wasn't a normal woman screwing up every damn day of my life. I was an autistic doing pretty well, all things considered.
That was four years ago, and with continued study and conversations with other "Aspies", I have only become more and more sure. This is me. I share now in order to further awareness and hopefully understanding. I've come to my own understanding about literally everything I ever thought was weird about me. Here's a little list.
I now know why I become lost, to the point of forgetting to eat, in my "special interests". (Which is a kind way of saying "obsessions".)
I now know why I am such a black-and-white and literal thinker... why I can't even have a fantasy without injecting it with massive doses of reality. Why I so oftentimes find communication difficult.
This is why I have such a strange lifelong relationship with time and numbers. Why I can rattle off birthdays with lightning speed. Take my cousins, for example. Kristin 9-24-68 and Dan 11-16-69 and M.J. 9-13-77 and Meg 6-28-79 and Christopher 10-31-80 and Jessica 4-29-84 and Jerrod 12-24-84 and Trevor 1-21-86 and Tyler 2-13-88 and Jenna 6-30-88 and Amanda 9-13-89. (Yes, those are in chronological order.) Or the birthdays of my mom's late 80's daycare children. Tara was January 6th and Chris was February 2nd and Megan was March 8th and Amy was May 9th and Katie was November 12th. I know I left Minnesota on 6-6-90 and I got my first period on 12-29-92 and I snuck out of the house with Derek McClelland (whose birthday is August 7) on 7-11-93 and my car wreck was 8-18-97 and eleven days after that was the date Terminator 2 said the world would end.
This is why my first playdate memory involved asking my neighbor if she wanted to "make lists". She was a grade younger than me, and my naive response to her complaint of "this is booooring" was a cheerful, "Don't worry! When you're in second grade, you'll like it." I'm sure she never did. But I sure did. There is no possible way to count the amount of times I have pulled out a sheet of paper and pen (or a computer) and begun: Ariel. Amanda. Alison. Angela. Agnes. Arlene. By the time I was in my teens, I'd learned to pretend I was doing something else, because this hobby was weird.
So was the hobby of whipping out a calculator and carefully figuring out the amount of days I'd been alive. Okay, I'm thirty? 30 x 365... add in all the leap years... my birthday was six months ago... carry the one... okay, got it. 11,138. Now for the real fun. Minus one on the calculator for each new experience I've had. Let's see... I've driven a car... that's one, so 11,137. I've been on a ferry... 11,136. Hmm. Let's count all the different fruits I've eaten. Bananas, apples, strawberries, raspberries, oranges, kiwis, cherries, mangos, that's eight. 11,128.
This is why friendships, any time after about the third meeting stage, are awkward. Conversations, especially those involving emotions, are uncomfortable. I analyze and re-analyze them after they end; so often my experience has been that I said something offensive.
This is why my brother makes fun of how I hug... gosh, doesn't he know, hugs are weird? Doesn't anyone know? Why do humans hug? I don't get it. Patrick Swayze understood. "Your dance space... my dance space."
This is why I am uber practical in matters of personal property and "style". Why it blew my mind that Kriste thought we should put the salad in a crystal bowl instead of an aluminum one. Why I've worn my hair in basically the same way since age 11. Why I showed up at the baby shower Mrs. Lundquist hosted in a black T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, only to have it dawn on me that all the other ladies were in their pretty, feminine summer attire.
This is why a gifted kid became a high school dropout; why my report cards dating back as far as age six had comments about my lack of organization; why I can't keep a room or a car or a house clean to save my life.
This is why I didn't drive a car until the age of 26, or drive on the freeway until the age of 35, and why I'm 39 now and still panic at the thought of messing this stuff up.
This is why I used to refer to myself as a "chameleon". I knew was adapting my personality to the situation I found myself in, but I didn't know why.
This is why. If you've read this far, thanks. I'm just going to leave you guys with this. I saw this picture of my entering-7th-grade self for the first time a few months ago, and all I can think when I see it is, "How the hell did no one know?" The face... the sweater... the awkward stiffness at being hugged... LOL. Enjoy, but don't laugh too hard. ;)
