Every day I'm buffering
My entire life has been like a kaleidoscope. Shiny fragments spin ever so slowly but without any coherence. Pretty gems with no pattern. Three years ago, my daughter was diagnosed as autistic. As I listened to the pediatrician, neurologists and psychologists explain WHY she is autistic it dawned on me that a lot of the things they considered autistic traits are things I do. Ways I behave, perceive, and react. Suddenly, instead of everything floating like beads in a kaleidoscope, the fragments coalesced, and I started getting a logical picture that fit my experience on this Earth. I always felt half a beat off and two years behind my peers. I am quirky. I am mostly scared out of my wits when interacting with others. It's not that every person I have ever encountered is a dick. It's more that I always felt that I was hard to understand. In many ways. I think I want to explore all the ways gradually, but I think the biggest thing that overrules every other challenge is processing time.
As I mentioned before, my brain processes a lot. This has a few benefits, one being that I learn things deeply. When it comes to studying, I think that deep learning is amazing and I have no worries there. But in real-time interactions I flounder. For example, someone will tell me something in a way that isn't straightforward. This is normal because as a rule, people lean toward being polite. We're even polite to computers! But anyway, I will often take the statement literally at the moment. Or I won't grasp every nuance of the statement in real time. But a day, week, month later? It hits me like a ton of bricks. Let's face it, in this day and age, taking any amount of time to understand something is a literal handicap. Requirements for a project take thought. Or subtle advice ignored. The saddest though is when someone says something that just so happens to not be polite. And I smile like an idiot and go my merry way until BAM! A week passes and I end up in tears because someone was unkind.
I don't even know the solution for this because I cannot "upgrade" the Operating System in my brain in a way that will completely alter my processing style. And without a diagnosis (I tried and that's another story), how can I convey my needs and get accommodations? How can I have meaningful relationships when my ability to process the words of my friends and family drains me between all this buffering and stress? I am always anxious about missing info, or offending someone by being careless because of the way I am. I'm trying to be open and tell people I am autistic but isn't that statement vague? When someone knows I'm being confusing to them, I don't think the autism label is enough to convey that yes, that is the reason. As I mentioned in other posts and throughout this blog, this writing is a journey. I don't even know a fraction of the solutions to the things that make my life harder. I'm just writing, hoping that the act of just letting my experience flow as words can at least heal and give me insight as I continue to evolve as a person.