November 11th, 2010

 *I decided to bypass my scheduled posting and put this out there a day early*

I've been thinking about what the last four posts on "Female Asperger Syndrome Traits" mean to me, and what I'm going to say about them as a whole in this blog entry. The answers aren't easy ones to flesh out, but I hope you'll stick with my ramblings while I weave through them.

I found Aspergers 36 years after it found me. So while the last year has been very freeing for me in so many ways, and while I'm incredibly grateful for that, I still struggle with bitterness on occasion. There's a desire to reach back through the years and throttle the people responsible for my early development. A mother who ignored me and gave up, a school system that ignored me and gave up, a father who did the same and many other adults I was told wouldn't abandon me. Those are very painful things to face. While the diagnosis wasn't available when I was a child, I now have children and do everything in my power to shape and mold them and assure they are equipped for adult life. I was failed on so many levels by so many people it's ridiculous.

It's not in my nature to be a negative person--the people who have known me will tell you that I'm actually a really great cheerleader. But when you've gone through three and a half decades of finger-pointing, name-calling, blame; when you've not been taken seriously when you tell those who are supposed to be able to help you that there's something wrong; when you've finally given up because you must be nuts and dysfunctional and it's all in your head (which is the greatest irony), well, a person can fold into a little ball and hide in a corner and never want to come out again. That was me, and it still is me in some ways, no matter what the rest of the world thinks they see in my smile.

Finding out I had Aspergers wasn't a Get Out of Jail Free card. It's going to take a lot of work to heal the wounds and peel off the the trunk labels glued all over me. If I had to give you a mental picture of what my emotional state looks like, it would be just that~

A nine year-old child zapped of all it's energy, full of big stickers that say "Bitch, Mean, Snob, Anti-social, Trouble, Argumentative,  Stubborn, Cry-baby, Loser," and 100 more. A child who looks like it got hit one too many times with a bat and ducks every time someone raises an arm. A child that finally crawled into a sewer grate to save itself as a last ditch effort and lives alone in the cold and muck and stench, and thinks that's perfectly fine and safe.

Does that sound like the type of thing a person would choose to feel about themselves? I sure hope not, and my heart now goes out to any person who readily believes that type of negativity about themselves. I have a very hard time believing that sort of severity in judgment applies to anyone anymore (Hitlers and Dahmers of the world aside). If I'm anything at all, I'm a fighter, and I will find a way to get those labels off and crawl back out in the sun. It's not a question of "Can I do it?" but "When will I get there?" 

Do I think the bats are all gone, or that no one will ever raise one over their head intending to strike? Not for one damn minute. The world isn't going to be any kinder just because there's a better sticker laying on a table, another term to slap on my forehead when I resurface--I'm not that naive. Now, I realize that in itself may sound defeatist but it's not meant to be at all. It's a mental preparation akin to shin guards for my frontal lobe and a helmet for my squishy cortex. I doubt that the rest of my life is going to be shiny and happy and easy "all of a sudden" just because there's finally an answer. I have 36 years of cracks in my psyche to Spackle up, and while many people would say "Look ahead, let that stuff go, it doesn't matter now," I am incapable of compliance with those types of statements. 

Another visual if you will~ Let's say a line of dump trucks drops tons of LEGOs in a field and tells a farmer to build three silos. So the farmer sets to building his three grain silos out of LEGOs. Well, 36 years later, the men with the dump trucks come back, shake their heads, and say, "Sorry sir, we meant missile silos. Didn't know you were a farmer."

That may seem totally defeating as well, but it isn't. No one in their right mind is going to spend another 36 years trying to build something they have zero experience with. They're going to go out and get blueprints and find some people who know what the heck they're doing. It's also likely they'll realize that these things are a lot easier and a lot quicker if you don't build them alone.

My peace will come from research, analyzing the data I have, and applying new methods. Honestly, I've been very reluctant to dive in and do the reading I want to do on the subject or get involved in the communities that can help me to start rebuilding, but that in itself is also a process. I know that once I commit it will mean exposing all those soft places I've learned to heavily guard. I'll have to deconstruct many of the world views I've taken on to use as buffers between me and the "real world" (whatever that's supposed to mean). I won't be able to blame "them" anymore. And those are all very safe things for me. My inability to function in, and interact with, the world around me will fall onto my shoulders because I already know it's not a "stupid place filled with idiotic people." That's just the 8-track I allowed to play in my head until it became my truth. If I take the time to think about it instead of throwing a dirty blanket over all of humanity, I've met more nice people than I've met nasty ones.

Some of the best/worst conversations I've had involve that enormous concept called potential. Yes, I do know what I'm capable of on an intellectual level, but to be honest with you, who cares? If a person isn't functioning well enough socially/emotionally/mentally to be able to apply that to anything, what does it matter? For every person who ever said, "you'd be rich and do great things if you would just apply yourself," I have news for you...that isn't always true. I have applied myself and failed miserably. But my future isn't ruled by the patterns I lived in those first three and a half decades. I can do anything I set my mind to--once I discover a way in which I can do what needs to be done to accomplish the task--and I will find the tools I need to accomplish those things I want for myself. My future requires me to find a way to deal with the aspects of Aspergers that aren't so shiny, that aren't quite so easy as the next guy saying, "Hey, I'm going to college to be an engineer," and then, you know, just doing it. I'm not over thinking things because by nature I'm an over-thinker and that won't change, nor do I ever want it to. That ability to break things apart and roll them around and analyze each piece of information makes me a great puzzle solver and also a person who can see every side of a thing/situation/issue/etc.

Basically, finding Aspergers has given me the one vital thing my life was missing when you talk about something like unfulfilled potential: Hope. 

Before I knew, those labels were there and I let them be. Before I knew, I was living in a sewer. Now? The best parts of me have permission to come out of hiding and shine. It's definitely going to take some time to reorganize how I interact with the world around me, but there's hope now and the knowledge it can be done. I realize Aspies are like snowflakes and no two people who have this particular syndrome are the same. This blog entry isn't meant to be a treatise on the experience by any means; I can only speak for me and my experience. But I also know my journey is not hard to understand because this diagnosis wasn't something that happened for people back in the 70's. I'm certainly not the only one sitting back and thinking, "Finally! A formula!"

I said to a friend recently, "We only get one trip on this spinning mudball--and to spend one second of it afraid or hiding is a disservice to the human experience and to that light that still fights to live in the darkest parts of us," because that's the mantra I've taken on. It would be an egregious disservice to myself and the gift of life I was given to hide away from the world and never try. There is definitely a light that still shines in the darkest aspects of my years of neglect and abuse and subsequent failures, and I want that faint spark to grow into a blinding light. There are so many amazing talents I was given that are typical to someone with Aspergers. My inability to communicate properly with the world around me translates into something beautiful on the page (I could never have spoken this to someone). The way I see the world around me makes for wonderfully unique abstract art. I am very intelligent and I've done some amazing things with it in my lifetime. There may be weakness, but there is also incredible strength and tenacity and a burning desire to discover and absorb faster than I can read or click a link or watch a program.

To wrap things up~ The four pages on Female Asperger Syndrome Traits I talked about are not a definition of my life, but a mode of living I've used up until this point. I had to understand my nature before I was able to clearly see the things that do work for me and the things that have worked against me. Traits that may have been obvious for another person to recognize in themselves had to be worked out and approached in a way I could see them in conjunction with each other and for what they are. If those pages are anything, they're a map. I plan to draw a new map for myself, on my terms, using the best tools I can find--because somewhere in all those rocky paths and seemingly insurmountable hills, is a Wonderland waiting to be discovered.