My horrendous experiment at living away from home and going to a large state university is almost at an end. It is going to take a long time for me to heal from that trauma plus the three others I endured last summer right before I started school.
This morning, I was just going to send a concerned friend a quick update on how I am doing, and it turned into this (modified to make sense for WP):
Quote:
All I have left at school is a fairly easy final on Friday morning. Then I will work Fri., Sun., and Mon., and be home for good Monday evening the 10th.
Then I get to begin the work of healing and putting my mind, body, and life back together again. It is going to take a while. I have learned several huge things from this. It's mostly stuff I already knew in my head, but I had to have it beaten into my heart over the past year:
1. I am not going to live my life for other people anymore. Even in major decisions that I made freely, the underlying reason was ultimately to please others. I did not see this at the time, but now I know better.
2. I am going to avoid situations that I know are bad for me, even if they are OK for most people. I should have learned my lesson after that disastrous entire week I spent doing a massive river cleanup tent-city event, but I still really felt that if I tried harder, I could be like "normal" people. ("Normal" is in quotation marks because we all know there actually is no such thing, but you know what I mean.) I really thought that if I immersed myself in a large university, I could learn to deal with it. I even had an advisor that believed that I wouldn't be so miserable if only I "just tried harder." Now I know that it's EXACTLY like telling a paraplegic that he could walk if he would "just try harder." I have my limits.
3. I have to accept the fact that I need more downtime than most people do. If others refuse to understand or believe that, screw 'em.
4. I have finally hit the point where I truly am too old and too tired to care what other people think of me anymore. I'm sick of putting on this big social act when I am exhausted inside. It's no longer worth it.
5. I am going to stop working on trying to act "normal." My therapist pointed out yesterday that perhaps the reason I was so popular at my community college wasn't because I was putting on a facade of normalcy, but because I had confidence that showed through. So now I need to figure out how to be myself, strange traits and all, and still have that confidence. And if people still want to look down on me or become patronizing because I am different, see #4 above. I'm too tired to care, and I'm too tired to put up with any more BS.
6. There are a lot of areas in my life now in which at this point, I have absolutely nothing to lose. If I've been doing the same damn thing for almost 45 years and it hasn't worked, it's not ever going to work, and it's time for a change. For example, some people are concerned about my declaring my Asperger's syndrome to employers and using voc rehab, for fear that I won't get a job. To that I answer, well, I've gone all these years without that stuff and have had a totally crappy employment record, so it can't get any worse. That goes for anything in my life. If a given behavior/practice/etc. hasn't worked for me by now, even if it has been proven to work well for "everybody else," I am getting rid of it.
7. I have learned that I confuse "wants" and "needs" backwards of how most Americans do it. This past year, I have been dismissing many things that are vital to my physical and mental health as being mere "wants," because that is the way "normal" people see them. I now know that they are "needs" for me. Examples would be regular exercise, extra downtime, a slower-paced schedule, etc. For me, these are NOT luxuries, and going without them is a good way to end up in the ER. Been there, done that, don't want to do it ever again.
8. My health comes first from now on. Period.
9. This doesn't mean I'm going to turn into one of those spoiled brats from the Willy Wonka movies, use my AS a a crutch or excuse, or stop trying to reach my full potential. It does mean that I am going to stand up for myself, stop worrying about my being different, practice self-acceptance, and learn to be confident about the person I really am (as opposed to the fake neurotypical persona I spent several stressful years cultivating).
People wonder what I'm going to be doing for a summer job. My summer job consists of getting my health back. End of story.
05 May 2010, 10:04 am
