Today is my birthday. I was diagnosed with ASD over 8 years ago, in the psych ward at Bellevue Hospital. I had just begun a doctorate at a school in NYC, and I was having trouble adjusting. So I went to student health services, to see if I could find budget-friendly counseling. Well, they ended up sending me in cuffs to the hospital, and I was put on observation. I spent two days there; the doctors determined that I was on the spectrum, and referred me to NYU for follow-up. I did call NYU, but the cost was so far out of possibility that I decided I didn't really want anything with a name anyway...definitely not anything abbreviated...I just wanted to see a therapist to work out my concerns.
I found a great therapist, who helped me so so much. But a few years later, as it came time to begin presenting my research and soon, defend my thesis, I realized that my inability to answer questions without a script wasn't getting better with practice. My advisor would ask me a question, and my brain would be full of answers but no words whatsoever.
Around the same time, I began teaching at a school for gifted art students (painting, sculpture, etc). I had been experiencing so much frustration in one of my classes; I just couldn't transmit any information through what seemed to me to be chaos. There was so much motion in the classroom, I just couldn't keep track anymore...students standing up to throw something out, sign out for the bathroom, coughing, throwing pens across the room to one another, asking questions, talking to or fooling around with deskmates, not doing their work. When I tried to answer student questions, they all seemed to come at me at the same time, without any time in between so that I could hear the questions. I'd nod my head yes to one student, and three more were calling my name. Fifteen more had already found their way to some distraction so they wouldn't be doing their work. There were times where all I wanted to do is walk out, but I wanted to keep the job, because only one out of my three classes truly caused me distress; the other two were much more well-managed and thriving.
I wanted to keep pretending that I would improve with more practice. But my frustration seemed to only grow, and I was feeling exhausted. At some point, I began researching ASD, and realized that my difficulties in the school were a result of sensory overload, and that my need to script responses in public Q&A sessions was also something common to other ASD people.
So, the reason I'm telling this story today, on my birthday, is that I'm grateful. I'm grateful for all of the conspiring forces in these past two years which led me back to that buried but haunting diagnosis of eight years ago.
I'm grateful that I am not the mean, undeserving person who is nice in some contexts but is really scarred underneath, and is destined to lash out at any moment at anyone who dares get close.
I'm grateful that this is the first birthday in my whole life, where I truly feel compassion for my difficulties--difficulties which, until a few weeks ago, seemed not to exist for any other human on the planet! Difficulties which have caused massively frustrated responses which I couldn't explain at the time and can't take back; many of which I can't even apologize for, because people have either passed on or left in pursuit of their own self-preservation.
Finally, I am grateful that I am spending my birthday alone, with my cat, and I'm not feeling as if I've failed at this thing which is supposed to be so natural and so human, called making friends.
I can finally, and in peace, realize that I too am human, and that I've somehow chosen this quiet world, and I can finally not apologize for it.
Thank you for reading!
Last edited by fluter on 26 Apr 2016, 9:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.
26 Apr 2016, 8:37 pm
