but lately, part of me just crumbles
every time I hear that melody

I have not gotten into the choir for which I auditioned. This is an unprecedented thing, with the exception of a middle school all-state choir that I knew I wasn’t getting into in the first place. I don’t know how to react to it. I was counting on that choir to be a place where I could make friends. A friend. One would be nice.

There’s a choir here in town that I would love to be a part of, but whose audition requirements essentially make it impossible for someone like me to join. I’m not being euphemistic about autsim stuff, though–I’m talking about musical experience. I am a chorister. I don’t sing solo pieces and never have. So requiring that I have a prepared aria means, well, I won’t even audition, because I have no means of preparing; my sheet music reading skills are substandard for the sort of music I’m capable of performing. Further, I’ll own that my voice often sounds reedy and thin alone, but I can bolster a chorus and blend well–and how can a director tell that from me doing a solo piece? Surely one doesn’t want a chorus entirely made of strong soloist voices? There need to be those like me who can shift from part to part and provide a depth of cover.

I hate it here.

Despite the loss of spoons and almost inevitable migraine that will have me in bed tomorrow afternoon through sometime on Tuesday, I have to say that this weekend has been incredible.

I drove up to Staunton yesterday (Saturday) morning, taking a long route through a national forest and over many pretty streams. Lots of wildlife. Last night I saw Kate in a private gig in Charlottesville with Stina, Dylan, and a few other friends (and about 50 strangers), where Keir kissed my cheek/ear and I got sweaty hugs. I’ve just returned from Vienna, Virginia, and another Kate gig. More hugs. A new t-shirt.

Oh, and the part where Kate dedicated Shoebox to me on a whim, explaining how she felt like she should dedicate something to me because I was an American who had been in Melbourne when they were taking any gig they could get, and I’ve seen all of these songs thousands of times, but at least it’d been a while since then.

There was also the part where the audience was so genuinely enthusiastic that she did a real encore, not at all like in Melbourne, where it’s just expected. She was genuinely flustered and pleased, asked for suggestions. After rejecting mine (For The Hundredth Time or Apartment), she accepted Dylan’s early birthday wish for I Got The Way. It was fabulous. I’ll post a video once I have my camera cables. Later, she let him buy her a beer and promised I could pick out songs in the future, as long as I gave them a bit more warning than that.

I will sleep when my insides stop feeling electric.

Damn. I missed Autistic Pride Day, due to the fact that I was driving back from a visit to Staunton and Stina and Dylan, and then there was family and small children here.

So, thanks to stark. raving. mad. mommy‘s post about it, I’ve been inspired to do my own top ten list.

The top ten advantages and disadvantages to my being on the spectrum:

Disadvantage 10 – I’m not always good at communicating clearly and with words other people understand in face-to-face or other spoken conversations, and often miss details because of it.
Advantage 10 – I’m very good at being precise in writing.

Disadvantage 9 – Tiny incongruencies stand out to me, which can be very distracting when reading books with little plot holes or talking with friends.
Advantage 9 – I make a really awesome fact checker and editor.

Disadvantage 8 – My palate is limited by both tastes and textures that I like and dislike, so I end up eating a lot of the same foods over and over.
Advantage 8 – Those foods are often green vegetables, and it makes cooking and grocery shopping low-stress when they could be overwhelming.

Disadvantage 7 – I have trouble picking up on body language that isn’t exaggerated.
Advantage 7 – I can read cats’ body language fluently.

Disadvantage 6 – Large groups of people are overwhelming and likely to make me be very quiet.
Advantage 6 – I make a good listener (when I can hear!).

Disadvantage 5 – When things don’t go exactly how I envisioned them or follow the rules, I quickly progress from annoyed to downright upset.
Advantage 5 – I can plan out how things should go and even plan when I need to be flexible and when I don’t.

Disadvantage 4 – I become obsessed with topics, sometimes quite briefly, to the exclusion of all else.
Advantage 4 – I know a lot about a lot of things.

Disadvantage 3 – My memory can be tricky–I remember things I don’t need to save, and forget why I walked into a room.
Advantage 3 – The semi-photographic quality makes it easy to remember visual information like puzzles, maps, and book layouts.

Disadvantage 2 – I do things the same way over and over, even when it’s not necessarily the best way.
Advantage 2 – I learned to draw by redrawing a picture from a book hundreds of times.

Disadvantage 1 – I have trouble making friends because I’m never quite sure when the right time is to say things or volunteer information.
Advantage 1 – The friends I do make are very close and like me anyway.

In conclusion, here is a slightly blurry picture of my cat wearing a bow tie.

In my head
I repeat our conversations
Over and over
Till they feel like hallucinations
You know me:
I love to lose my mind

It’s less than a week before I have to leave Melbourne, and so much has changed.

I landed and was whisked away to the Windsor Hotel, a beautiful, historic bit of miniature castle, where we had a gorgeous view of Parliament and breakfast in bed and high tea.

We’ve been down to the beach…

And I’ve taken lots of photos of flowers around our neighborhood:

We learned a valuable lesson (and watched a damn lot of Glee):

We went to the zoo.

And then I learned about a medical program that will want me, no strings attached, in Sydney.

I want to go, very much, and could apply next year and sit the Australian version of the MCAT in February. We need to speak to immigration lawyers, I need to get Prosper cleared for immigration. Everything is suddenly on an impossibly fast timeline. I’m in a mild panic.

I wanted to maybe move with the wonderful Sarah to Baltimore, but I’m concerned I won’t be able to get a job that pays enough in just a few months in a new, big, expensive city. I wanted to move to Atlanta, though less than I did a couple months ago. I wanted to live with my mom, even though the idea mildly nauseates me, because it’d be cheap and require little effort. I’m not sure what I am going to do, but it’ll be something. So at least I’ve made the decision to act, and not let the inertia get to me–and that’s the most important step.

I’ve been trying to write a post since I landed in Melbourne. The city feels like home–well, maybe “feels” isn’t actually the word I want there. “Looks” is more accurate. I often have a difficult time noticing that I’m having feelings, let alone identifying them, until they’re big and overwhelming and scary. Melbourne looks like home–and the pieces that have changed were immediately noticable. A slightly modified tram map posted on the stop bench enclosures. A new poster. A finished building or three where I’d left unfinished wrecks. My favourite Safeway is now a Woolworths. Still, most of it is the same. Roses, endless gardens of roses. Cats and unfamiliar-familiar birds, and Kitty. Coffee. Friends and parties where I can’t understand a damn thing because my auditory processing is not up for the task of dozens of conversations at once–and friends who understand that, and seek me out to have quieter (or louder, to drown out the noise) talks. Friends. Plural, and more than just two.

I’ve been trying to write, and utterly failing.

I’ve been thinking about inertia, and how even though I want to write, I can’t make the words come together in any sort of order that makes grammatical sense, let alone sounds like me.

So. I’m well and happy. We’re going to the zoo! I may be able to take photos, if I can just get over the inertia.

ETA: Combined inertia plus spoons plus lack of funds means zoo later. Maybe tomorrow.

I have an invisible disability. You can’t tell by looking at me that there is anything neuroatypical about me. You might guess when I speak, though I put a lot of effort and spoons into keeping the conversation going and my tone appropriate (volume sometimes escapes me, but I’m usually WNL). If you do notice anything off, it will be in a complete inability to keep small talk going for more than a couple back-and-forth rounds, or the regurgitation of trivia only marginally related to the situation at hand (“Scots have red hair because of Viking settlers…”).

Up until a couple years ago, I had no real awareness of autism. My first introduction to the topic was in 8th grade when the county-wide “special” school was piecemealed out to the elementary and middle schools by group. My middle school became host to an autism-only classroom, placed in a trailer (about half the school was trailer classrooms) and only interacting with the rest of the students by sharing a lunch period. The students were all boys, and all non- or minimally-verbal. I was pissed off that I wasn’t included, because I misunderstood–I thought it was an artistic classroom (thanks, auditory processing!).

It wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I really learned about autism and had the terrible moment of self truth: shit, I am autistic.

You see, I grew up knowing there was something different about me. I was a target for bullying even through college, and work. I did not make friends easily and held the few I did make jealously. I was upset if my friends made other friends, because invariably they would not want to play with me anymore. I was exceptionally bossy because I needed to be able to control the interactions; playing with kids is hard because they do unexpected stuff and I could not handle the unexpected. Being bossy was my attempt to eliminate that element of anxiety. I was a very picky eater, both in texture and taste. I was gullible with peers and could be goaded or encouraged into bad behaviour very easily; I had no sense of what made a friend different from a bully if both were being nice to my face. I probably would have benefitted strongly from a visual schedule, as I needed multiple reminders to do things like chores (and, later, when I was in high school and college and had more control over my scheduling, homework and papers), but chafed against verbal reminders. I exasperated my parents with apparently selfish behaviour and a lack of social graces. I was distractable in classes and made numerous “careless” errors on work I knew and understood because something else caught and held my attention.

I was also hyperlexic, reading and writing by two and a half. I learned early that language helps, and used this to soak up information. I learned as much as I could about whatever I was interested in; my interests could last days or years. I played with dolls well into my teens (and have been carting my American Girl doll around with me still–she came with me to Australia and then to Virginia). I can still sing songs or parts of song word and note perfect that I learned for my fifth, sixth, and seventh grade choir performances, 15 years ago. I only need to go someplace once before I can get there again with few or no reminders or prompts. I could look at a map and visualize my path. I amassed vast amounts of trivia. I spent a lot of time alone, which gave me to the tools to really consider my self-conceptualization. I draw beautifully, and sometimes write well. I experienced the delight of synesthesia, my tastes and textures lighting up with colours.

All of these are things, states, experiences, emotions that I can look back and say “there was probably some autism involved in that.” I cannot meaningfully separate out autism and my personality. Autism has shaped who I was then and who I have become as an adult. Autism meant not looking adults in the eye when being disciplined, and being yelled at for insubordination for it. Autism meant sobbing when the boy I had a crush on “killed” the oil clay cat I made and kept on my desk in 4th grade. Autism meant being perfectly willing to taste pine sap when a girl in my class told me it tasted like maple syrup–twice. Autism meant not skipping a grade. Autism meant being able to hear perfect pitch in choir, even if my rogue vocal chords could not always produce it. Autism meant being teacher’s pet. Autism meant taking an overload of classes every semester in college, just because I could. Autism meant the small, private university I loved over the bigger, public university that had more academic choices–and, because of this, autism meant my best friends.

And yet, I didn’t know about autism.

Growing up, for me, led to a set of beliefs that I have had a very, very difficult time removing. I didn’t know that many of my struggles and achievements could be attributed to autism. Instead, I attributed them to two ideas:

1. I am bad and worthless.
2. I am ridiculously smart.

I grew up feeling frustrated with the world around me, and knowing that the world often felt frustrated with me. I often didn’t understand what was wanted of me, but admitting that and asking for help would mean I wasn’t smart, right? So I didn’t ask for help, and did things wrong, and then I was bad. It was a self-perpetuating cycle. To be not bad meant I needed to be able to do things properly, and I was smart, so I should be able to figure this out! And then I wouldn’t, and then I’d fail, and then my self-esteem would sink another notch. Self-esteem and the appearance of confidence are not the same thing.

Being ridiculously smart meant that it was okay I didn’t understand or particularly like my peers (it was mutual on both points). I desperately wanted friends, and when I was finally working out that bullies and friends are not, actually, the same thing at all, I consoled myself by remembering that I was smarter, better, more likely to succeed. I told them they had smooth brains. I sought out the company of adults and books and the internet–it was still pretty new, then. Being ridiculously smart was the only defense mechanism I had against my classmates, and I hung onto it with all my might. This was not a positive self-image. It was bitter and angry and filled with self-loathing. I could not be normal, so I had to compensate with the only thing I believed was of worth about me.

The thing about defense mechanisms one develops in childhood is that they’re pretty difficult to get rid of later in life. I’ve learned about autism. I make to-do lists and schedules and keep a planner. I write out my thoughts and make more lists and get post-it notes. I rehearse conversations, and try to take advantage of this strange, fabulous brain. I subject people around me to trivia endlessly.

And yet, still, if I miss a dose of my migraine medication, or forget to eat, or don’t call the bank to tell them I’m travelling for a month to Australia and could they please not flag my account as hacked for the fifth day in a row because I couldn’t remember to write the post-it note that would remind me to call, or I make a grave error with my friends, it all comes back and I am eight and I am bad and a failure. I can feel my self-esteem drip away, as if I was a watercolour painting put out in the rain. And if I am bullied at work, or forced to listen to misinformation, or interviewing for a job that I am ridiculously overqualified for, or rejected from a volunteer position because it didn’t occur to me that I could lie (or even just not disclose) about my mental health history, I can feel the irritation and self-righteousness boiling up inside of me. Damn it, I am too fucking smart for this, why can’t they see that and value the one valuable thing I have to offer? (And they don’t, because being smart is really only worthwhile when you can temper it with being sociable, and then we’re back to failure.)

You can’t tell by looking that I’m not neurotypical–not at first. Because I grew up without notions of neurotypical or autism or healthy self-esteem, you’ll get a carefully crafted idea of who I could be, if only I had been aware that I was autistic.

This post has multiple topics because I am too lazy to make multiple posts.

1. I run google analytics on this website. I promise, I’m not tracking you down at all, my meagre readers, but I generally find it entertaining. Originally, I got analytics because I wanted to use it with etsy, and as an after-thought maybe six weeks ago, I realized I could run it on here. Like magic.

The most interesting part of analytics is the search referral terms. The top ten search terms that get people onto my blog are:

1. alternate lexicon
2. the alternate lexicon
3. perseveration/rumination thinking style
4. “foreign service” autism
5. “the neurotypical spectrum”
6. alternatelexicon.com
7. ari ne’eman is a piece of shit
8. autism loneliness
9. feminism asperger
10. food choice perseveration

Now, I should note that “top ten” is sort of euphemistic, since only the first three have yielded multiple hits. Still. This list is pretty awesome.

1, 2, and 6 are self-explanatory, though 6 begs the question of why they googled me instead of typing it into the url bar. 3, 8, 9, and 10 are all things I am interested in and plan to write about more (I’m thinking maybe of writing about feminism and autism for blogging against disableism day). I have no beef with Ari Ne’eman, so I’m not sure how 7 gets you there (except that now I’ve typed it out, it will inevitably do so again). As for 4, I’ve thought about writing about my experience applying for the foreign service two years in a row and being rejected early in the process, but, here’s the thing: if anyone (on or off the spectrum) tries to tell you that people with autsim, as a rule, do not hold grudges, that person is a LYING LIAR. I’m still angry at the foreign service and probably will continue to be for years. One of the many reasons I’m interested in medical school is so I can be better than them (yes, I know this makes no sense), and I felt an overwhelming sense of loss this spring when I realized I was not taking the exam this year. It’s really for the best if I don’t write about it.

2. There are a lot of cool places I like to go to that, for whatever reason, I have utterly failed to add to my links sidebar. Please check them out while I get to remodelling (see 3, below).

FWD/Forward, a blog about feminism and disability.

Hyperbole and a Half, written by someone named Ali, too, except she spells it wrong. Her blog is awesome enough to forgive that.

Hezabelle, my dear friend Heather’s awesomeness.

The princess of denial, my other dear friend Sarah’s awesomeness.

Both blogs my girlfriend has made and sort of totally failed to keep up with (there’s Kate Miller-Heidke on one of them!).

It appears that Derailing for Dummies (a must read) is no longer online, but there’s a reconstruction.

3. I want a new theme. HALP. I’m okay messing with it a bit to get what I want–I did with this them (and sort of broke it in the process, whatever). Does anyone have an opinion on any of these?

Paper
Airmail
Look Booster
Magatheme

April is Autism Awareness Month. Some of the hub bloggers have pointed out that awarness is only a baseline–yes, in some cases we do need to make people simply aware of autism and the broader neurodiversity of which it is a part. But in many or even most cases, awarness is not acceptance; it provides a convenient excuse to actually stop further learning (“I know all about autism, I read about it during autism awarness month! You can’t possibly be/know/think/feel X!”). This is a mindset I see regularly at my soon-to-be-former job: my coworkers are aware of mental health issues, so they feel no compulsions to further their knowledge in any meaningful way. This leads to harmful and usually incorrect stereotyping and actions which are not just unhelpful, but sometimes actively harmful towards the kids. This baseline awarness does nothing to help the autistic boy who tantrums all night because of sensory issues or the depressed girl who really does need to just talk to someone she can trust not to overmedicate her.

Emily suggested that people who are going to transform awarness into acceptance would do so regardless of their awarness, and people who won’t will not regardless of the amount of information presented to them. In my personal experience, this is absolutely true.

But, I also think this is true, and poignant.

Being aware is never enough to promote acceptance. Being familiar usually is. Yes, some people will always prefer to try to change others or refuse to believe there’s anything different about them in the first place, but I would like to think that really knowing people on the spectrum promotes acceptance. Familiarity shows that we’re human, and not really different than any other person in our needs and desires.

I think I might get that t-shirt after all, even if it is a bit pricy. I want to be able to show the people around me that they are already familiar with autism–they just don’t know it yet.

Jezebel posted earlier about loneliness, which got me thinking about loneliness and the difference and overlap between autism, introversion, loneliness, and depression. They all have some overlap, in the sadness one can feel about being alone, but they are also all dramatically different.

Introversion and extroversion are the endpoints of a spectrum all people are on, weighted towards the extroversion end (that is to say, many more people are extroverted than introverted; if a Kinsey-type scale is used with 0 being absolute extroversion and 6 being absolute introversion, most people fall in the 1-2 range). Extroversion is the state of being refreshed and energized by other people, crowds, friendships. Introversion is the state of being refreshed and energized by time alone. On my hypothetical scale, I’d say I’m about a 4.5 to 5–definite introvert, but not a hermit.

Autism is a type of cognitive style. It can be barely noticable or well-masked, or prevent most forms of communication. It is no more inherently disabling than any other cognitive style, save that we are not societally set-up to accomodate intellectual differences any more than we (really) are for physical differences. We assume that speaking, signing, writing–using words–is the ultimate goal of communication, rather than communication being the goal unto itself. We assume that whatever our existence is, all others must be unsatisfactory. We assume that everyone must have similar goals. We assume that everyone must have access to the information we have access to (like nonverbal communication or tone–but, funnily enough, this assumption when present in spectrumites becomes a symptom of a problem!). These assumptions as a society can absolutely be disabling for those on the spectrum, but the cognitive style itself is not. Autistics can be introverted or extroverted, though I suspect we tend towards the introversion due to sensory overloading and poor social skills.

All people–autistic, neurotypical, otherwise neurodiverse, introverts, extroverts–need connections to other people. It may be so difficult to overcome different cognitive styles that we go without, willingly or unwillingly, but we still need others to communicate with and recieve and give affection.

Loneliness is the gap between what we need, and what we get.

Introverts, if the comments on Jez are any indication, seem to think that they are above loneliness, because they need aloneness. I don’t think this could be father from the truth. Introverts need affection and respect and communication from other people, the same as extroverts. We all need these things, and perhaps this is another spectrum: some people need a lot and some just a little, and most people somewhere in between, a perfect bell-curve. What I think happens for those introverts who never feel lonely is that their personal connection requirements are quite low, and so easily met.

I need aloneness. I crave it, and seek it out. Being alone allows me to think, to perseverate, to relax, to experience all of the emotions I have collected over a day and not realized I was missing. But being alone can also lead to loneliness. I am a creature of habit; there are days I only eat broccoli and coffee and there are days I don’t speak to anyone aloud except the cat. There is a line between aloneness that is good for me, and loneliness, but I can’t find it–it moves, I think, with my emotions and physical sensations and even with my thoughts. It’s easy to cross over that line and only realize it some time later, when the loneliness begins to gnaw at me and I finally notice. Like many feelings, I suspect I feel it much earlier than I am aware of feeling it. I need connections to other people, because I am human. Being autistic, being an introvert doesn’t quell that need. Depression is where loneliness is so pervasive there is no longer a drive to seek out that contact, that connection.

I don’t know how I’m going to make friends in Atlanta, but I am beginning to recognize that it is not just something I would like, but something I will need.

On Monday morning, after a long night of not-quite-sleep reminiscent of being 8 and waiting for Christmas morning, I hauled myself out of bed at 6. I was on the road by 7, headed north.

View Directions to Staunton, VA in a larger map

The top line, where they split, was my route going to NYC, the bottom my route home (I ultimately changed my mind on the drive home from a third route, as my guess that there might be more places to stop on US highways rather than interstates proved to be drastically wrong).

More precisely, I drove to Iselin, NJ, where there’s a big giant train station for the NJ Rail, with covered and monitored parking garages and an inexpensive train ride into the city.

At first, driving was okay. I had a new book to listen to, and was super excited.

This quickly became despondency, however, as I realized I was going to be in the car forever and might die.

After a full seven and a half hours of driving, I had learnt two important things:
1. New Jersey is AWESOME. They pump your gas for you and it’s miraculously much cheaper than every surrounding state, and their roads are very nice. The single toll I had to pay at any point was a mere $.75 to cross a bridge into NJ (just that direction, too).
2. I have been lying when I say I don’t hate driving so much anymore.

However, I fucking love trains. They take you places with an extremely predictable route and schedule, and you don’t have to do anything but sit quietly and stare out of the window. Just being in the train station made me excited.

The ride from NJ to NYC reminded me of nothing more than the couple times I took the train out to some of the suburbs of Melbourne on exploratory missions. Parts of NJ looked distinctly like Footscray.

Once in the city, I realized that even with the traffic, I’d overcompensated for time and had to kill about an hour. This was managed with a browse through the large bookstore just outside of Penn Station, and then the subway ride down to SoHo, and a bit more shop browsing there as the pub was ridiculously easy to find.

I felt very fancy ordering a prix fixe menu, though none of it was awesome enough to warrant writing about, except the couple behind me who insisted on loudly referring to it as the Price Fix menu. Er…French, ur doin it rong.

My first impression of Kate was “Peach princess!”, and that’s what stuck with me for the gig (despite the creepy drunk man at the table next to me who shouted through the gig his enthusiasm and how much he loved her–later, his companion would regale me with a story about how she spent $4000 to fly to Adelaide to see Kate, because she wasn’t going to fly coach, you know, and couldn’t grasp the idea that the price she paid for a pair of tickets was actually slightly below average for a pair to a Kate gig).

There was very little dancing, which is saddening–I hate that she seems to think American audiences won’t enjoy her antics, but maybe she’s right. She’s so much more alive when she performs in Australia, though, to my eyes–more manic, flaily, stompy-dances. It was a great show, though, and Keir was very sweet, though the story she told about him being confused for Ben Folds was probably pretty accurate (unlike the rest of the stories, which she’s been recycling for 3+ years).

The show was sold out, so there was a massive crowd to buy her seriously under priced CDs and get them signed, so I only had a few moments to say hi and get my pilfered setlist signed before she had to leave. While I was waiting, a very nice man asked me out, which was…strange. Apparently he has a terrible habit of asking out queer girls, and was very apologetic and sweet. I don’t know that I’ve ever actually been asked out before. With Kit it all just sort of happened.

As it was apparent Kate was not going to ask me to be her groupie at this time, I started the journey home.

The train was delayed leaving Penn by about half an hour, though I was glad of it–there was a serious concern everything on that track might be cancelled for the night, so half an hour suddenly seemed like nothing. I made it back into the car and started the drive home. It was…long. There was a lot of coffee and Dr. Pepper and a moderate amount of junk food. I spent the time between 3 and 5:30 singing along loudly to Kate to keep myself awake–at one point doing only the harmonies, for the challenge of it (it proved not to be very challenging, unfortunately) and for the day when Kate decides I need to be her back-up singer.

I slept for a very long time when I got home.