Autism Acceptance Day 15
TL/DR: WOW! This IS long. This is a rambling piece about my journey with emotions through my autism.
I’m sitting here in the early hours of the AM writing this for tomorrow (which will be your today, dear reader). I am doing this because I will be spending most of my day working my second job. My primary job is a 5 days a week, 8 hours a day full time position where I am allowed to work from home by my supervisor and manager since it is all computer based work. My second job is 5 hours a week, every Sunday, and doesn’t provide much in the way of income or benefits. However, it is at Discovery Depot, and I get to work with kids and families doing earth science activities. It is a passion of mine, working in education, presenting information to adults and kids, and seeing my excitement for geology spread like wildfire in their eyes. However, it is a very draining job, and I always come home exhausted. Then, trying to write my post for the next day when my brain just wants to sleep just doesn’t happen. So, as long as Leo woke me up to go out, I figured I would take advantage of the peace and quiet now that he’s sleeping.
One aspect of my Autism that I don’t speak a lot about is my emotions. This is mostly because, as a young kid, I would go from totally calm to extremely upset in about…1.3 seconds. Of course, as I got older, and I developed the ability to control the release of that nuclear energy, my meltdowns happened less and less frequently. For example, there was the time I was 14, playing Monopoly with my brother and sisters. I am very competitive, and from what I recall, I was actually doing rather well. My sister landed on one of my hotel properties, and couldn’t pay the entire amount, so I offered to take some of her properties in lieu of the remainder of the rent. She declined, and that confused me. Why not take the offer and stay in the game? Then my other sister offered her $100 for all her properties and she accepted it. I was totally flabbergasted at this. She handed him all the properties and get out of jail free card, took the $100 and then handed it over to me. So, rather than accept it gracefully since, of course, I was ahead of the other two and it was only a matter of time, my anger boiled to the surface. This was the way the whole game was being played by my siblings - they were teaming up against me, making it a 3 on 1 game, and my brain had had enough! Next thing I knew, I was hurling the dice at my sister’s head (they missed - my aim was never really good) and that was the last time we played Monopoly together. I was surprised that I had been able to keep myself under control for even that short amount of time, as I had been stewing for at least half an hour as they regularly got the better of me in deals and buying properties. And, there was the time that my sister and I were in the driveway riding bikes, and she said something that upset me. So, being the big brother, I did what any brother would do…I tried to run her over…
It wasn’t just anger that popped up like a piece of overdone toast. Other emotions like sadness and frustration would just appear like they were David Copperfield performing an illusion. But, as I got older, I started trying to understand why people would do the things they did, and why they would sometimes react with their emotions rather than logically. I started in this phase around the time I turned 18 - I had some friends that I hung out with from the next town over (they were still in high school - which just goes to show that I was really socially delayed), and we started doing stupid things. One time we found the key to a small camp in town, and went to hang out in the cabin. We had a nice fire going in the fireplace, and were just shooting the breeze. The others had gotten some bottles of cheap wine (Boone’s Farm, I think) and were just enjoying themselves. I, on the other hand, had a soda and was trying to be a responsible older kid. Plus, it was my car that we were using, and I didn’t want to ruin it. One of my friends, let’s call her Kay, was dealing with some major problems at home (her dad was that kind of dad who was scary, but not really in a mean way). So, I would try to talk to her and listen to her stories about what was happening at home, and I felt really bad for her. The next day, one of the crew and I called Kay up and asked her what she was doing.
“Nothing,” she said. “My dad’s being a real jerk! I just need to get out of the house for a while.” (She didn’t really use the word jerk - Kay had a mouth on her that would make a sailor blush!) So my friend Sean and I decided we would go get her and go out driving for a while. We got our stuff together and went out to my car to go pick her up. When we got there, she wasn’t out on the porch like we expected, so we went to the door to get her. As we were going to knock, Kay’s dad came to the door and opened it.
“Hi, Mr. G. Is Kay available?” I was always so polite to adults.
“No,” he said. “And she will not be hanging out with you two ever again.”
Then, he got his rifle from behind the door. “If I ever see either one of you here on my property again, I’ll shoot you.” and he then closed the door.
Well, Sean and I weren’t going to be messing with her dad after that. We got in the car and I left that driveway as fast as possible.
A few hours later, Kay called us. “I’m sorry about my dad,” she said. I had no idea that he was listening to me on the phone. He’s gone out to work now if you want to come pick me up.”
We went to get her, but parked along the road and got out. Kay came to the door and beckoned us to come to the door, which we did. As we were approaching, her mom came to the door and apologized to us. “I’m sorry about her father. He’s not the best person at telling people what he’s really thinking.” (He seemed pretty clear to me…) “We just are worried about you three hanging out together.” It turns out that Kay had been rebellious at home and her parents were beyond their ability to deal with her. A week later, they had her committed to a psychiatric hospital, and when her mandatory time was up, her parents refused to let her come home and stay with them.
Most of my teen years was spent trying to control my reactions to my emotions, and by the time I was 21, I had successfully tamed those reactions, but I had gone too far. I was at the point where I could not really feel any of those negative emotions. And when they did pop up, my body would react, and I would try to stop that reaction from taking away from my logical thinking ability. I got married at 25, and my wife, who has anxiety and ADHD, started getting anxious about money. I was a graduate student on an assistantship, and the money I made from that had to be supplemented with two part time jobs. My wife had a law degree and took the bar exam two months before our wedding. She passed with flying colors, despite thinking she was going to fail and would never get a job. And little things would trigger anxiety attacks. We lived in an urban area with four different grocery stores within a half hour of our apartment. A few weeks after we got married, she would plan the grocery trips, and every week, she would buy the maximum number of 2L Diet Cokes she could from whatever store they were on sale. After a short time, we had probably a warehouse full (OK, maybe a small one…) of 2L Diet Coke bottles. So, I mentioned to her that this seemed a bit excessive, since it was on sale every week at one store or another. She just lost it. Earlier that day, we were folding laundry, and she would fold my socks by turning one inside out around the other. I asked her why she did it that way (I had been taught to fold them in half, one on top of the other), and she got upset. Her anxiety over money was causing her to believe that she was a failure and would never get a job, and now her skills as a stay at home spouse weren’t good enough.
For the first 3 years of our marriage, I learned a lot about the emotional psychology of others, and I felt like it was my responsibility to teach people how to not allow their emotions to control their actions. But it had taken its toll on me, and I was starting to internalize my emotions too much and not let them show. So, little by little, those emotions caused me to become less and less in control, which affected my ability to be around others. However, when my daughter was born, I started being able to redirect my energies from keeping my emotions in check to making sure my daughter grew up happy. I was often able to determine the emotions that others were feeling, but I could not feel that emotion WITH them (the definition of empathy). My wife has accused me of being robotic and not shaving any emotions at all. But the problem isn’t that I don’t have emotions, its that I can’t understand how I am feeling at any time. Even when I start to react to my emotions, I still instinctively try to suppress them so that I can think about issues logically.
As an example, my dog Leo is 15 years old. We adopted him as a 5 month old puppy in May, 2009. He was close to being put to sleep since no one wanted to adopt him. He had Red Mange and almost no fur:
But he had the perfect personality for our two kids who were 6 and 4, so we took him home. After 4 months of medication and regular baths, his mange went away and his adult coat came in:
Needless to say, Leo has become a big part of the family over the past 15 years. However, in 2021, we found a lump on Leo’s hindquarter. It turned out to be a tumor, and, although it wasn’t causing him any pain, we were told that it needed to be removed. While I was at the vet’s office, asking about the surgery and what we should do if we couldn’t afford it, I started crying. I didn’t really feel the sadness, but I knew it was there. I was trying to keep working on the problem, and the vet was telling me that we needed to be concerned about his quality of life, and he wasn’t ready to be put to sleep yet. So, during the next 4 months, we started a fundraiser for him, to cover the surgery, and within 6 weeks, we had someone donate $1500 towards the surgery. And, once the surgery was done, we were told that we should have him undergo radiation therapy (which was another $4500). My wife and I decided against it, and when Leo went back for his 4 week post operation check, our vet said that his blood work was amazing and that he had the body of a 5 year old dog. The next year, though, he had another tumor halfway down his tail, and he had to have it amputated to prevent it from growing any further.
Leo is now 15, and has undergone two surgeries for tumor removals. He is no longer in the best physical shape, but we had a scare when, a few months ago, he started having trouble walking. We knew he had arthritis, and he was on meds to control the pain, but this seemed worse than normal. At the end of March, we took him for his annual checkup, and he was having difficulty standing and walking, and had major muscle loss in his hind quarters. Many nights since then, Leo wakes up in the wee hours of the morning and has to go out. He paces around until I wake up, and I put on his leash and take him for a walk. Some of these walks, I start sobbing as we’re walking. I don’t know what I will do without Leo around. I know that we rescued him from being put to sleep all those years ago, and originally, our vet didn’t think he would survive past the age of 10, but he has had an amazing life, and has helped me immensely with my autism diagnosis. He has helped me develop a more healthy relationship with my emotions. And, when the time comes, I will be there with him until he drifts across that Rainbow Bridge. He has taught me so much, and it’s no wonder that people have emotional support animals. But if it wasn’t for him, I would still be that robotic person that never expressed any emotions. My journey isn’t complete and, in the immortal words of Robert Burns, “I have miles to go before I sleep.”
So, I want to thank you for reading this, and hope you are a little wiser and more accepting for doing so. And I want to let you know that I want to keep my writing free for everyone and anyone who might benefit from reading it. If you are getting something out of what I write, please feel free to share it with others. I would love for my experiences to help others navigate their own worlds, and the more people you share it with, the more people that can benefit from it. Or, if you are not subscribed and want to get notified when I post, just hit that “Subscribe now” button above. Anyone can get a free subscription, and I will never put it behind a paywall. However, if you really like my writing, or get important information and learning from it, you can always get a paid subscription. It’s always nice to be able to stop while I’m out for a coffee, and if you become a paid subscriber, I might even start a donut habit in your honor.
But, no matter if you’re a paid or free subscriber, or just passing through:
I hope for you to be happy, be kind, and know how much I appreciate you. - Dave
I don’t know if this helps now or not… but I hate Monopoly. I’m not sure how much I ever really liked playing it. Someone’s feelings always got hurt, and that bothered me. The pain to others always ramped up when houses and hotels went up. That’s why I always went for the RRs and Utilities and would buy single properties to make it hard for players to create sets. I played it because you wanted to. I suspect I was the one who sold my properties to her — that’s something I know I did, but I don’t remember this specific game (I also remember that you got so mad, you threw the board at one time). I remember feeling sorry for our sister and thinking she was at a disadvantage because she was the youngest (and 6 years younger than you — I learned during that Red Rover game when she ran into a tree & we were blamed for it that there is a tremendous gap in reasoning when there’s a 4 year age difference). I didn’t see it as ganging up on you, but, rather, leveling the playing field as best I could, although maybe it was a little too much. And, extra bonus, I could bow out of the game that I now absolutely despise.
And, I was a grumpy kid and a good speed bump for your bike. No scars, no foul