There Is A Reason

     Often times individuals who have an Autism Spectrum Disorder will be asked why they do particular things. Sometimes people think its weird and want to know why and sometimes people want to have better insight as to how the individual thinks. Given that I see things from both sides, I tend to over analyze things quite a bit. I mentally document each time I had a meltdown, what caused the meltdown and how far apart the meltdowns have been because I want to learn to prevent them and I want to have them increasingly farther apart. I primarily try to answer why meltdowns happen so that they don't happen in the future. After a few months of doing this I have come up with some conclusions. Most meltdowns have an underlying reason that may be deeper than we sometimes realize.
     First and foremost, each meltdown I have is typically triggered by one thing that is stressing me out. Once I have processed through that one thing, I begin to realize that there are other things underneath the surface that have bubbled to the top. This is when I have learned that it is time to stop talking about the things bothering me and begin to distract myself. If I continue to talk about things, I get into a repetitive circle that then causes more anxiety for me and thus more frustration and more crying. If I distract myself, I am then able to calm down, sleep on things and if need be talk to someone the next day about my frustrations. The meltdowns aren't always caused just by frustration, but sometimes that frustration comes from a subconscious level in which something in my routine has changed and I don't realize it. There have been two recurring examples that I have finally picked up on.
      Transitioning back to my dorm at the end of the day can sometimes be a real struggle. Often times when I come back to my dorm at the end of the day and my RA or my Resident Coordinator aren't there to check-in with, I begin to get irritable. I try to distract myself and unwind, but sometimes it is difficult. I always chalked this irritability up to the fact that coming back after a day of classes and settling into the evening was a big change, but it is so much deeper than that.
      I never viewed my mother as a stay at home mother because she has always worked. My mother has had her own business for almost 20 years and she is very proud of it as well she should be. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you view it, she has worked out of our home for most of my life. This has always been extremely convenient when my brother or I have been sick and it was also convenient when my brother and I would get off the bus at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Each day, when we got off the bus, my mother was there to greet us. A typical afternoon would entail getting off the bus, throwing our backpacks in the foyer, going to the bathroom and heading for the basement to check in with our mother. This happened for 10+ years and has since become an engraved habit that I subconsciously still follow today. Unfortunately it's hard to do at the dorm.
     I have recently realized that my need to check in with my RA or my Resident Coordinator at the end of the day has been my brains natural way of adjusting to a norm that is no longer a part of my life. I would greet my mother at the end of the day for many years. Now that I'm in college, I don't have a mom to go home to, tell about my day, and give a big to. Today I enthusiastically come back to my dorm and hope that I have someone to look up to and talk about my day to. This has naturally fallen on my Residence Life staff. When I am unable to do this, this leads to irritability because it is changing something that I have known since I was in 1st grade.
     Friendships and planning events have also been extremely difficult for me this year. For quite some time, my RA and I would think that I was upset because people weren't able to schedule things. We figured it was because I like having a set schedule and a routine. I would always tell ask people if we could do something at a particular time and the answer was typically, "I don't know what I'm doing yet". This would often times upset me because I thought people made plans. Unfortunately unwritten rules of society change.
     Growing up, I had a lot of trouble making and keeping friends. I always wondered why people couldn't hang out. My therapists and my parents would always tell me it was because I had plan things a couple of days in advance. I always had difficulty with this. When I was able to plan "playdates" in advance, my mother would typically ask me exactly what I was going to do when I had friends over. I learned to plan things because I had trouble picking up on how to entertain my friends. I liked having my friends over, but often times my brother would have to entertain them. Today when I want to hang out with someone I feel like I need to plan something and plan exactly what I want to do.
     Now that I am in college, things have changed. I meet with my RA/friend every other week to spend some quality time with her. I alway ask her what she thinks we should do a couple days in advance because I have been taught to plan. This past week she informed me that she wasn't going to put the time and energy in to planning something. I was taken aback by this, but realized after a discussion with her that it wasn't that she didn't care, but that it really doesn't have to be an event like I was taught. Simply having her door open and me having access to her and knowing she was there to "chill" was what she was thinking. For example, this would be a good time to do our own things, maybe chill in the same room, listen to music and talk on and off as we pleased. As a child, you have play dates, as an adult you relax or partake in leisure activities. Once again, this is an unwritten rule that changes.
     Often times I will get into deep conversations with people who I trust because friends share how they really feel and share there deepest darkest secrets. Interestingly enough I am realizing that isn't exactly how best friends work. Typically as soon as I trust someone, I dump all my personal life stories on them. I'll constantly ask how they are, if they are okay or what is wrong. I thought that is what defined a friend, someone who you could share your true feelings with. What I am learning is that this is not the case. Friends are people who you share a sense of humor with, you converse with in short simple give and take chatting. Yes, friends do share stuff, but it isn't as much of a word vomit as I like to think it is. Give and take, take a long time to develop the friendship. It's not something that you share your life story and your friends. There is more to life than struggles, it's about the goofy stuff we do, the quality time, and the memories that are made!

I Bet They Have Aspergers

"I bet they have Aspergers", I say when someone isn't very nice about something! "I bet they have Aspergers", I say when someone does something weird. "I bet they have Aspergers", I say when someone does something stupid. I don't like saying, "I bet they have Aspergers", but I do and it comes so naturally to me.

Every April is Autism Awareness month in which the big evil organization Autism Speaks spread awareness of individuals who have Autism. I can't stand the organization because they have a belief that individuals who have autism can't speak for themselves. In April you will often times see things lit up blue to promote Autism awareness. What other things happen during autism awareness month? There may be a few walks that raise money for this horrible organization that uses hardly any of that money to provide services for individuals who are battling the condition now. As one person said, "finding a gene isn't going to help me find a job".

You have the Autism Awareness month events sponsored by Autism Speaks, including walks, documentaries and PSA's demonizing autism. On the other side of this, when it's not Autism Awareness month, you have the large media outlets sharing horror stories of mass murders. It seems like the majority of the time, the individual who ends up doing the killing have Aspergers: Adam Lanza, Elliott Rodgers. Do they ring a bell? If your not hearing about this your hearing horror stories of individuals with autism who have gone missing or parents who have attempted to murder their autistic child: Issy Stapleton and her mother. If you have ever seen Autism Speaks documentary Autism Everyday, you have seen a mother discuss the want to driver her autistic daughter off the Washington bridge.  Then there is the story of the ice bucket challenge in which peers decided to dump feces on and individual who has Autism during his challenge.

Speaking of the ice bucket challenge, people decided to come up with this really stupid idea in which you do the Twizzler challenge. Two people eat a Twizzler like they are Lady and The Tramp. How is that difficult? How does that show the pain of Autism? Then again, I don't want to show the pain, but who is going to want to donate money to such a good cause if eating a Twizzler is so simple? Why should I be upset over such silly things? Why am I upset that the challenge isn't showing the pain of autism if I am sick and tired of Autism being shown as such a miserable condition? Our world is really messed up.

We have all these problems in our society and all I want to do is share with the world how happy and productive people who have autism can be in our society. The fact that my parents were told that I would live in a group home and that I'm going to college. People who have autism have been great inventors. No one ever talks about those who have been productive. Oh yeah they do such as Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs in which the media portray them as mean and nasty men who are successful, but no one gets along with. Then we have those who think the reason we don't have friends is because we don't want them. go watch the Social Network, why don't you?

Then there is me, ME of all people who want to show the world what Autism really is and then I constantly stereotype my own disability, I mean my own strengths and weaknesses. People with autism are humans that try just like others to connect with others, to maintain a job, to be happy. People with Autism are bright, intelligent people who have a passion for what they do. Yeah we have our weaknesses, but doesn't everybody?

I don’t wonder if people have Autism because they are acting out, I wonder if people have autism because I want to connect with someone.