Smock Blogs

It’s been five years since someone else’s therapist and a close personal friend pointed out that while I’m not counting toothpicks or wearing hearing protection to fast casual restaurants, I’m definitely on the spectrum. Took another couple of years for me to figure out what that meant, and while there isn’t an official diagnosis in the paperwork, when I’m at my most unmasked and I take one of those quizzes, I end up anywhere between “Yup” and “Autistic AF”.

Which means navigating a lot of new territory in understanding what my brain’s doing without notifying me or getting my consent. I know that’s going to be an ongoing process, and I thought at the outset that understanding why what’s happening would be this freeing experience akin to those dreams I have about flying. The ones where I’m nudging skyward with little flicks my fingertips, not the other ones with the monkeys and the garden gnomes.

And there is freedom in understanding what’s happening in my head, and manifesting in my emotions, and the sudden urge I have to turn the nearest inanimate object into confetti, maybe with the help of the nearest animate object gripped by their ankles like the flamingoes-as-croquet mallets in Alice In Wonderland. You know, the Hulk and Loki in Avengers 27 or whatever that was.

Except there’s enough ego left in me that I hate having to explain things. All. The. Time. Hate having to spell out that if I’m told we’re going into a crowded store for one item and a decision gets made to find more items it’s best to check in with me on that and either revise that plan for a later date, or give me the option to retreat to the car, or let me find a space in the store that won’t make me actively wonder how heavy that TV set is and if it would make a good hammer for the washing machine next to it.

Because it makes me feel like I’m a temper throwing six year old, incapable of regulating his emotions, to spell out to whoever I’m with what’s happening. Particularly if I’ve shared that information before and I feel like I’m not being heard. And to have what’s happening in my brain dismissed with phrases like, “It’s just a few things,” means I start thinking about other ways to communicate that will get me what I want, which is safety.

What they don’t tell you about vulnerability is that it’s not always affirming. Or encouraging. Not always received well by those in the audience. And when you’re vulnerable into a vacuum what’s going to be left in those moments is that kid you were the first time something like this happened, embarrassed in the aftermath of feelings too big for you to contain or understand, and the temptation is to wall that up somewhere and never let it out again.

I know I’m not alone in this, but in those moments, that’s the only feeling left, because no other Man Of A Certain Age is holding his shit down like you are. Or you don’t think they are. Sure, there’s one over there having his wife dress him like he’s a stroke victim (he’s not) who can’t dress himself (pretty sure he could) so at least you’re not that guy.

No, but I’m this guy. The guy working it out. Refusing, despite the evidence to the contrary, to believe that this is all there is. That it’s progress, not perfection, and that’s all life really is: staying afloat, sometimes working with the current, others, just letting it take you. And some days, just staying out of the Costco.