The 48 Year Old Aspie

The other night I watched the documentary Autism in Love on Netflix (directed by Matt Fuller ). It chronicled the lives of four people with autism and their experiences with relationships. It's an important topic as for those of us on the spectrum, relationships bring difficulties that folks without autism might not experience. We follow the lives of Lenny, a young man filled with self loathing and who, heartbreakingly, wishes he didn't have autism; Stephen, a man around 50 who is more on the low-functioning end of the spectrum (if you need an image in your mind of what this sort of looks like, think of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man); and a couple, Lindsey and Dave, both of whom are on the spectrum. Lindsey and Dave's story has a happy ending (he proposes), but Lenny and Stephen's stories aren't particularly happy (Lenny bemoans his life, and Stephen loses his wife of 20 years to cancer). This entry isn't meant to be a review of the film, by the way. I will gi...

I recently took an informal survey of folks in a Facebook autism group that I'm a member of. The responses were unsurprising. What was the question? Did the people in the group struggle with insomnia. The answer was, all of them. I've dealt with insomnia for a long, long time. I can remember well a night when I was maybe 10 and I just couldn't fall asleep. I tried and tried and tired, but it wasn't happening. That left me with many hours to fill flipping through the pages of Boys' Life magazine and whatever books I had on hand. I don't recall it happening as often throughout high school, perhaps a night here and there and almost certainly every night prior to returning to school following summer vacation. It's hard! It's 3:29 a.m. as I type this. I really do want to go to sleep, but my brain is too active. Prior to starting this blog entry, I was in bed, but my mind was just going full speed, playing out conversations or just flinging around random ...

One aspect of being on the autism spectrum is the fact that you take things literally, and I wish I could better know when to take things literally and when not to. If you're wondering what I mean, it's pretty much as I described: if someone says something to me, I will probably take it literally. This means that I don't always catch sarcasm, or jokes told in a deadpan manner. What an odd symptom this is! It's the one symptom of autism spectrum disorder that bothers me the most. It's so strange. It's something I will discuss with my counselor, a therapist with experience treating people with autism. I guess the moral of the story is, I can easily be taken advantage of?

I have a really, really hard time with eye contact, as many people with autism do. I think in my many years of life, I've learned to "fake it until you make it," but it's still super uncomfortable for me. I try really hard! But if you're with me and we're talking, you'll notice that I will look away after a couple of seconds and then look at your face again. It's such an odd thing, you know? But the longer I hold eye contact, the more uncomfortable I get, and then I have to look away. This happens with people I know and love, whether it be friends or family. I shared this story on my Facebook, but years ago I worked for Xerox (they have a business unit focused on providing third-party customer service support, and in this particular job we were supporting the travel website Hotwire). Anyway, in that job I worked as a quality analyst -- the person who does call monitoring and mentoring of customer service agent -- and I was up for a job as a superviso...

I know, it sounds kinda dirty: self-stimming . But it's not, it's something that people with autism do. I found an article on it here , I'd encourage you to give it a read. Here's a short video that talks about it. It's referencing this behavior in children, but it's applicable to adults, too.

For all of my life, I've felt...well, different from others. I never really had a label for it, at least not initially. I guess I would have been considered shy during my school years. I don't recall having particular difficulties in interacting with others, but I am looking back on something that was a long time ago, so my memories might not be accurate. I went into the Navy after I graduated from high school, and again while I felt different than my shipmates, the only thing I'd say to describe myself was that I was shy. I didn't date during my six years in; I was not comfortable in striking up conversations with others. Going into my late 20s and 30s, other symptoms began to manifest: anxiety in social settings, increased difficulty in maintaining eye contact, and the need for a structured routine. I was also beginning to exhibit other symptoms, such as the need to touch objects or to rub my fingers together, or rub on my arm. I just assumed it was anxiety (which I...