So, I have decided to write on each day of Autism Acceptance Month and talk about my journey from a weird but intelligent kid who learned how to hide in plain sight among everyday Neurotypicals, through my first awareness that I was really different than most people around me, to acceptance of my autism and, finally, my embracing of my differences from those around me and my ability to see outside of the box that most neurotypicals tend to get stuck inside.
I always remember being different. My parents told me that I learned to read at two years old so I could read my own dinosaur books. This, on its own is a whole other post, but I will probably write about it at some point. At 3, I was running down the sidewalk to our front door and fell flat on my face. My mom says that she was waiting for the scream and crying, but instead, I got right back up and continued running to my destination. At 3 and a half, I remember watching Mickey Mouse on a TV in a house that my parents were seeing (they bought it, and I grew up there). He was in colonial dress and celebrating the Bicentennial of the US in the show (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, I believe). At 5, I had a favorite rock in the yard that I liked to sit on…until I got stung by a yellow jacket on my chin while sitting on it. I still look for that rock when I visit my parents (they’re still in the same house), but it was moved long ago. I always had a couple of very close friends, and was a doting big brother to my siblings (although I DID try to suffocate my older sister (older as in older than my other sister - I was still the oldest…). But I never liked change. I was also very trusting of my friends (or people who I considered friends) and this got me into some trouble. I didn’t feel different, but I somehow knew that I didn’t fit in with my peers.
My first awareness of my difference was when I was in college. I commuted all four years as an undergrad, and had no desire to live on campus. When I did my masters degree, I lived in a single dorm room my first year (although I went home often). My first apartment was with someone who was a total slob, and I lasted about 3 months before moving out. And I was always looking at people around me, wondering what they were thinking and feeling, and trying to figure out what that difference was that I saw between me and them. Did it have a name? Or was it something that everyone thought about? Little did I know that, in my Junior year, as I was in Florida doing an internship at Disney World, the DSM-IV was released by the APA (American Psychological Association) with a new psychological diagnosis called Asperger’s Syndrome. This funny sounding “disorder” was to shape my life from then (1994) on (so it’s been 30 years…).
Finally, in 1995, I received my BS in Applied Math from UConn, and, two years later, I received my MS in Geological Science (I tell people it’s in paleontology, since that’s what my thesis was about). I was still aware that I was different, I knew my difference probably had a name, although not what that name was, and I could identify people who were like me in some of their behaviors, and probably had the same “thing” I did. I had learned to “mask” it, and was pretty good at blending into a crowd, but in smaller groups, it was much more obvious. But I still hadn’t accepted that I was truly different than most of the people around me.
From 1997 to 1998, I was in Grad school in New Jersey, and I had found a place watching two young boys for their moms in the afternoons when their nanny went to school in exchange for room and board. I really loved watching those kids, and became a part of their family for that year. In the summer of 1998, my fiancee and I moved into our own apartment, and she took the NJ Bar exam. We got married that August, and I started a new phase of my life. I still was aware that I was different, and was on my way to accepting it, but not quite there yet.
Acceptance came a few years later, when I was in my second teaching position in 2003. I was at a boarding school for students with Asperger’s Syndrome, and the kids kept telling me that I was just like them. My 1-year old daughter was a quiet, content kid who was happy just stacking things and then unstacking them to do it all over again, and my wife was a stay-at-home-mom taking care of the household and my daughter. Finally, in 2011, I had fully accepted that I was different, and seemed to think it was similar to the kids I taught, so I sought out a diagnosis. When I did, and the psychologist told me that I fit the DSM-IV-R definition for Asperger’s Syndrome, I finally had a label for that thing I had felt all along. I had finally accepted myself as different, and started looking at my difference as more than a disability, but as a set of strengths and weaknesses. For 8 years, I had worked with kids who were just like me, and helped them become comfortable in their own skin, all the while trying to hide those very same differences in myself. And now I had a name to go along with it.
But I was quickly to find out that my own acceptance of Asperger’s Syndrome would not be so easy for everyone around me.
Now that I have rediscovered Substack, I would like to mention their model. Substack is a subscription based service where one can subscribe to different authors and receive notifications of when they publish new articles, kind of like an RSS feed. Most authors on Substack publish their stuff for free, which is a great deal for many of the content creators on this platform. However, you always have the option to pay for your subscription to a creator’s stuff, and in many cases, you get access to things that free subscribers don’t. Now, I don’t really like those “pay -to-read” models that a lot of newspapers and other places use, and I decided early on that I would not do it, but in the past year, I have found that having a (1) full-time job, a (2) part-time job (at Nature’s Art Village’s Discovery Depot - if you EVER find yourself in Montville, CT, and see a T. rex dressed up for a holiday just standing in a parking lot, do yourself a favor and stop in; this place is AMAZING, which is why I work there part-time even though I don’t really have to…), and keeping up a regular writing gig is really time consuming. So, even though I will not put my stuff behind a paywall, it would be nice to be able to stop at a coffee shop once in a while to do some writing and order a small coffee while I write. If you would like to support my coffee habit, and maybe even start a DONUT habit, please consider getting a paid subscription, even for just a month. If you do, I promise to take selfies of me drinking a coffee with your name on the cup (can you imagine me putting up a picture of me drinking coffee that belongs to “Daisy” (don’t laugh, I used to call myself that!)?
Also, I have a special sale - get a paid subscription and get 20% off FOREVER!
One part of my life:
A mysterious disease called Reyes Syndrome. Was in a coma, and had multiple blood transfusion. Tubes in my arms, my legs, my brain was drilled to relieve pressure.