Today has been... amazing. I can't think of a better word, although I'm sure there is one. Every time I caught myself tapping or flexing or scratching, my first reaction, "don't do that, Penny! That's bad!" would immediately be replaced by "wait, no it isn't. It's perfectly normal." Suddenly, I didn't have to spend all my energy trying to keep my fidgeting under control, and I could just enjoy being me. I went to the movies with my mom and sister, and it was an action flick. As a scene got dramatic or dangerous, I would find myself ticking like a clock, and when I told myself that it was okay, I could just focus on the movie. I enjoyed it a lot more.
Sitting there, in that movie theater, I suddenly got this overwhelming feeling. I've always felt so out of place in the world, and I didn't know why, and now I do. It's because I'm autistic. I've known for two days, and it finally, finally sunk in. I am autistic. I have an identity. Nothing anything anyone has ever called me, including anything I've ever called myself, has ever quite fit. I was a little bit of that, and a little bit of this, and mostly not that and thankfully not much of this. But that was just parts. Nothing ever quite encompassed who I am. Autistic. It just feels right. It feels like home. It's like Clark Kent, finding his space ship in the basement, and his parents explaining to him that he's really a Kryptonian, not a broken Earthling. I know who I am. I know who I am. Do you have any idea how huge that is? It's like I've been carrying this burden, my whole life, and finally somebody came up to me and said "you don't have to carry that, Penny. You don't need that anymore." I almost started crying, right there in the movie theater, while Channing Tatum was running after some terrorist with a machine gun. I wanted to run around the room, shouting at anybody and everybody, tell them "I'm not broken! I'm not stupid or slow, or weird or wrong or bad. I'm autistic!" Even thinking that I had OCD didn't compare to this, I suppose because I've suspected that I had OCD ever since I was a kid, watching Monk. But there are no TV shows about autism, or at least, not that I've seen. The closest is the character Sheldon Cooper, from the Big Bang Theory. But they paint him as annoying, selfish, and completely ignorant of his idiosyncrasies. I didn't identify with him at all. So, learning what autism really is, and why I do the things I do came on so suddenly, like it fell out of the sky. I feel like I'm waking up from a strange and confusing dream, where nothing makes sense, and you're too tired to even try to figure it out.
Afterwards, we went shopping. I've always hated shopping. (Thankfully, it wasn't for me, this time, it was for my mom. We were getting her a bathing suit) We walked down the isle of the store, and I tapped my feet and wiggled my toes, for the first time in my life, I didn't try to stop it. It's always driven me crazy that I couldn't control that, because, even though other people couldn't see it, because normal people don't do that kind of thing. But I'm not a normal person, and normal people aren't me. I never realized that before.
Sometimes I've wondered if maybe I saw the world a little differently than other people. But I never once believed that that could actually be possible. But walking around today, looking and listening and smelling and feeling, I kept saying to myself "This is why. This is why you act different. It's because you are different. They don't see what you see. They don't feel what you feel. And that's okay."
I looked around at the clothes. I liked them on the rack well enough, but every time I even imagined putting them on, I would instantly hate them. Now I know why. It's because of the garish patterns, colors, sparkles and glitter, glowing and flashing before my eyes. Usually I can focus on what's going on, even if people are wearing these things, because I make myself get used to it. But wearing them myself? It would feel like a neon sign, strapped to my chest. I always assumed that everyone saw why I saw, but they don't. It doesn't bother them, to wear something bright or shiny. That's why they wear them. I always wondered at the bravery and focus of everyone around me. Granted, sometimes I like to have people look at me, like when I'm performing. But I can't stand it when they stare at me, and I'm not doing anything special. I've always felt that if I wore something like that, it would be too distracting to everyone around me, (not just myself), and I couldn't bring myself to do it. BUT IT WOULDN'T BE. It doesn't bother the Earthlings! Only us Kryptonians. Man, I can't believe it.
Last night, I was laying in bed, connecting the dots in my mind. A really huge one for me, is walking. I always wondered why people stomp everywhere they go, like they're mad or something, or they just really like to bruise their feet. You can't hear me when I walk. I don't like making all that noise. But they can't hear themselves. Oh, my GOSH, they can't hear it? That's why girls like to wear high heels all the time, even though whenever you walk on a hard surface, they CLACK CLACK CLACK, echoing off the walls, making it impossible to think about anything else, because they don't hear it. And flip flops, oh, my goodness, flip flops. They're so LOUD. And they slap you're feet, too, so when you wear them, you don't only hear them SLAP SLAP SLAP on your feet, you also feel, every. single. step. I never understood how people can handle all the noise they make all the time. Now I do, oh, my gosh, I do now, it all makes so much sense, especially since when I walk up behind people, making a "normal" amount of noise, instead of stomping wherever I go, it freaks people out, and they accuse me of sneaking up on them. It's because they don't hear like I do.
THERE ARE SO MANY MYSTERIES BEING SOLVED AROUND HERE. I'm feel like freaking Sherlock Holmes right now (who, by the way, is a great example of autistic behavior. I don't know if the writers did that on purpose or not, but it's a great way to see autism at work, if you're interested). I can not believe I didn't figure all of this out sooner.
I've also started making some theories about self stimulation, or "stimming." For me, it mainly involves a lot of tapping and twitching. From my reading, it's a way to bring yourself back to center, to remind yourself where you are. So when I'm stressed out, and I touch my face, that action brings my focus to the sensation of my fingers and my face, blocking out everything else for a split second. It's like reverse echolocation, giving myself an instant snapshot of where I am and what's going on inside me.
I could definitely roll with this under water metaphor, (which I'll admit, I've been working on this all day) and take it on to the social world. See, when I was a teenager, hanging out at youth activities at my church, I could only stand "socializing" for a short period of time. I felt like I was holding my breath (and I've described it that way on multiple occasions), and I would have to take breaks, repeatedly. I would leave the room, unnoticed because I'm always so quiet, and nobody had anything to say to me directly, anyway, and haunt the halls of my church. Everyone was off with their different groups and activities, and I wandered to and fro, drifting like a ghost, unseen and unheard. On a bad day, I would find an empty, dark room, and stand there, in the darkness, until I could breathe normally again. Then I would jump back in the water, and see how long I could hold it before I had to surface again.
OH, MY GOSH, that's why everybody drinks their hot chocolate or their soup when it's freaking SCALDING. I mean, seriously, one time, I got a hot chocolate with somebody, and it took me at LEAST twenty minutes before I could handle drinking it, but he downed his right away. This is also why I don't like ice water. There is such a thing as too cold. For me, that is.
Anyway, my life, the future and the present, is always so BIG. I don't know anything and I can't decide what to do or where to go or who to go with, and I can't know, because everything is too confusing, and there's too many possibilities, and reality and choices and noises and pictures are all swirling around me. This is what autism is like. Every time I sat down to try and figure out what college I wanted to go to, I would be overwhelmed by information and possibilities and choices and I would just stop thinking about it. I finally followed my sister out to her school, because I couldn't, I literally could not filter out any of the possible pathways out. In a moment of choice, I am simultaneously living in every possible future consequence from that decision.
You lose yourself, in all of that. The universe is so big, and it sends you reeling, every time. That's why I eat the same thing for breakfast every day. I can't stand the whirlwind on an empty stomach, I just can't. I have a few routines, like breakfast, that are stalwart and strong, like a tree or a telephone pole to rap myself around while the universe swirls around me. At the beginning of my day, I have to have breakfast the same way, I have to have a shower and brush my teeth, I have to check my facebook page (even though there stopped being anything interesting on there months ago), I have to have some idea of what I need to do that day. At the end of the day, I have to watch tv, and then go to the bathroom and change my clothes and read my scriptures and say my prayers and take my thyroid medication. I have to do these things. I have to load the dishwasher the same way, and drive to school and work the same way, and make sandwiches the same way, every day, every time. People think I would be bored, or that I am boring, but I am anything but. There is just too much to try and sort through the chaos for every little detail of every single day. These routines help me keep a grip on reality. They help me keep myself.
I wonder, now, how far off this is from "normal" people. I know everyone gets scared and confused, that everyone has a hard time making decisions now and again. But growing up, I never understood how everyone could know, just magically know, what they wanted to be when they grew up, who they had a crush on, where they wanted to go to school, heck, they even knew what their favorite color was. I didn't, and I didn't know why. On the rare occasion that other kids wanted to have a conversation with me, I didn't know the answer to any of their questions.
But I know one now, one that will help me understand myself and what I need, as well as other. One answer that's made me happier than I have in a very long time.
Hi! I'm autistic. What about you?
Penny
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