the toys are broken

To start, it is Prosper’s 3 month birthday according to my totally arbitrary date I gave him by counting down from how old the shelter thought he was when I adopted him and then fudging the number a bit so his birthday coincides with the date most commonly celebrated as Shakespeare’s birthday. The kitten doesn’t speak a lot of English yet–mostly his name–but I guess he knew something was up when he got two new toys (a kitten version of a kong, a dog chewing toy, which I’m hoping will save my arms from further destruction, and one of his jingle toys tied with elastic to the underside of my loft bed) last night, and a few treats for no good reason this morning. The elastic toy is really helping his jumping skills, of which he has none.

The idea for the toys came after I had my first meeting with my new therapist yesterday afternoon, a meeting that went so well I ended up spending far more money on my kitten than I had really intended to because I was still pleasantly letting the few words we’d said tumble about my head.

I hadn’t expected something quite along those lines, after nearly two months of struggling with a psychologist who was not a good fit. I came in to him alone, sad, frustrated, knowing full well that I have Asperger’s syndrome and wanting confirmation and someone to help me come up with coping strategies, to help me become less defeatist and self-isolating, to help me stop making patterns in my friends’ interactions with me that aren’t true. I was coming from a perspective of neurodiversity, and with some perspective I think he was coming from the view that any ASD is inherently disabling. The patients he normally saw with Asperger’s, from comments he had made, must be men more profoundly affected than I, and while it may not be fair, I’m not certain that either intellectual curiosity or professionalism had ever prompted him to ever pick up even the simplest Attwood book for assistance; he expected my behaviours and, later, test scores to match these men, and while they might have a similar pattern, I’m a 24 year old woman, extremely intelligent, who self-diagnosed because my masking skills are good enough to have escaped evaluation previously. He didn’t want to give me a diagnosis of Asperger’s as he felt it would limit me; I felt it could only help me grow. We could not see eye to eye–I was, in fact, so frustrated with him I could not make eye contact at all. We did not part on good terms and I cried with Kitty for a while in the car.

The reccomendation for this new therapist came from the old, which put me on edge, but I had liked him as a person, just not his ideas or attitude. She was kind, polite, and read my written summary of myself and why I was there–I so greatly prefer written words to spoken ones I had prepared a five page document, including the DSM criteria for Asperger’s and how I fit them–while I filled out the forms I needed to do for her, answering questions as best I could whenever they came up.

It was the first therapy session I can remember having that I enjoyed. I think I probably enjoyed the ones I had as a small child, playing with toys while being reassured that some change was necessary, like the birth of my brother, but I can’t recall those with any clarity. So it is with great relief that I have found this lady, even if I must drive half an hour each way to see her, and I will see her again next Tuesday.

One of the last things she said to me, which has been on an echolalic repeat in my head–and mouth, sometimes spilling over into the air–was so calming, so reassuring, perhaps what many an adult aspie looking for a diagnosis and some help needs to hear I shall repeat it here: “This is just amazing, that you’ve compiled all this together, done all of this research, and self-diagnosed like this. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I’m glad to be the person to help you however you need.”