It's come to my attention that many people in the autism community have issues when it comes to how they feel when they make social mistakes. These can be anything from replaying the conversation and event in your head, to depressed mood or thoughts based on feeling like you never say the "right" thing, or act normal. Many times it feels like you just can't and wont ever fit in, and no one truly wants to be your friend, or feels attached to you. This can end relationships both quickly and over time. It can result in apathy and lack of interest in forming relationships or communicating in general. I struggle every single time I notice I do something "wrong", and so do some of the people on my facebook page.
Right now I think I need to make this post to say I understand that struggle, and I know how bad it can get. But I'm facing it myself, I don't have the answers yet. But this is me promising that as I learn what works for me and share it, and even suggestions that I am skeptical of or that don't work for me I will mention so that maybe someone finds something that does work for them.
All I can say at this point is if it's not inherently negative, own it. Make it into a statement against the status quo and don't think of it as a mistake. If it is a mistake, then learn from it, but try not to remember the time you made the mistake as it can seep into your mind and make your future positive experiences stressful and anxiety inducing.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Tom Plastow to Autism Parents
This should be a short tribute I want to write if tribute is the right word.
I have a friend from Facebook named Tom. He is similar to me, he likes doctor who, has anxiety is autistic, and is an activist in many of the same fields.
We both write and fight for feminism and for autism rights.
I can't help but feel proud because I "was there" when Tom began to make it bigger.
One post he wrote about an experience we and many others had with an autism mom, "the feminist breeder", had over 2,000 views.
It was a short and sweet "we don't want cured" post directed at parents of autistic people.
I personally don't like "autism parents" it's not grammatically correct and tends to indicate a certain level of egotism. Like having an autistic kids makes you a victim or super hero. Like it's you who is autistic. And they tend to be the least willing to learn and change based on the will of autistic people themselves.
I also dislike how it's like parenting autism, not a person.
They remind me of autism speaks. Orwellian double speak.
I, unlike Tom, make a distinction between autism parents and parents of autistic people. My choice based on how many self described autism parents act like autism speaks.
But however you view autism parents, it's clear everyone needs to read his post. Parents, friends, people not yet directly related to autism. Everyone can learn and thus grow and become more respectful.
And I'm proud that it seems people are doing exactly that. Tom had stated many positive messages have come in, many not knowing these things previously but happy to learn. This is very good.
And I'm glad people are willing to learn and read and educate themselves.
And I'm happy a friend is helping them to do so.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
My Hospitalization Part 2- The Hospital
I walk in side by side with my mom. I try to stay calm but seeing all the people and hearing all the noise scares me.
My mom tells a nurse I'm autistic and asks if I'm going to have to be out here with all the people and noise. She gives some answer I know means yes but my mom takes as a no.
They take me back for questioning but i can go with my mom. I think about demanding she stay with me but another nurse asks for a safety check. They direct me alone to a room. There are two nurses. I know this can't be good. They tell me to strip to my underwear. Great. I do them they tell me to take it off and then to lift my breasts and spin around. Great.
I'm a nudist but the demand freaks me out.
I tell my mom immediately. I've been breaking down off and on again since we came in.
They take away my soda and my clothes and I'm dressed only in two hospital robes and a pair of hospital pants and mesh panties.
I feel violated isolated and terrified. I cling to her. She offers to get me stuff but I demand she stay. Eventually they force her to go but she comes back with stuff.
No clothes. No books. Not even my contacts. She brought my large blanket my eevee and something else but I forget what.
I spend the whole night wanting to sleep. I found I can call her so it makes it livable. Some people talk to me so I talk to them. We eat a snack. But I'm waiting for my stuff and my meds. Once I take my meds I go to bed.
My roommate was yelling and having a scene earlier but she was actually nice. Everyone judged her wrong. I liked her.
But I wanted sleep.
I feel asleep fast partly from the sleeping drug. But about 2 am some guy comes in saying I go in the hall. I help move my bed and go back to sleep grumpy. I hoped I dreamed it but waking up to drugs and a prayer in the hall confirms I don't even very the privacy quiet and dark of a room.
I take my pills and sit around with nothing to do really.
Monday, February 10, 2014
My Hospitalization- Part 1 Exposition
Before Going In
About a week ago I was in a depressed rut.
I remember the trigger that set me off though. I had about an hour and a half of sleep and my mom basically thrust a full on driving session on me taking her to work. I was tired, cold, driving stresses me out, and I couldn't handle the stress at the time.
I try protesting but she tells me by Monday I need to be able to drive her and the kids to their schools. So I try. I try backing out of the driveway, which twice was unsuccessful. I pull back in because a truck is driving down the road.
Then she begins screaming and telling me how I can't seem to contribute anything, that I can't do anything right and how I'm going to cost the family $600 because I can't back out of the driveway correctly. I begin by getting angry and yelling back but then I get very hopeless and sad and every word she says seems to be true in my head. I begin thinking about death, and how I just don't want to be living anymore. I'm not crying, I'm just very numb to the world, consumed in my own thoughts of how worthless I am. She's right, no job, no school, no remarkable skills of any kind. I begin thinking how poison would be best if I could find one that is quick and easily available.
I decide to let a community on Facebook know I will kill myself, so I put up a comment in a group.
I begin an exchange and then once home I'm told how I can't even pick up the trash cans correctly.
I haven't thought of a good enough plan. So I start watching Star Trek and erase my post completely. My phone keeps going off so I check and apparently a lot of people have tagged and messaged etc me. This begins to annoy me, I was starting to feel better and then they drag it out and made my feelings return. I erased the post FOR A REASON.
My step-dad tells me my mom wants me at her work and he wont say why. I get very annoyed as I can guess, I pretend not to know in case it's something less awful. I tell him how I don't want to be around her after she spent 20 minutes this morning telling me how useless I am.
After we finally get there, many of her students ask me if I'm sick, once we leave she begins accusing me, so I demand she let me know one way in which I'm not a failure. I point out how they keep hiding these Buddhist temples so you can't see them until after you pass them. She says I'm observant. I still think that's rich, she's never called me that without sarcasm before.
We think of solutions that will be ANYTHING besides sending me away overnight. I can't handle being away overnight. I can barely handle traveling overnight. I try to handle hotels but I can't really sleep in them.
I'm willing to do any treatment but inpatient. But we go over how I'm not to say that so they can't force me to stay longer than 3 days if they decide that's what I need.
No, I wont let them decide I need that.
My step-dad decides St. Anthony's is best. I have reservations about going to a religious hospital, but after my younger brother wrote suicide threats on the wall in red marker, they decided he didn't really need anything, so I feel the risk of inpatient care will be minimal.
The nurse was quite rude and unprofessional. Downright accusatory and kept blaming me for running out of meds. My mom even points out how awful it is for a NURSE to tell a SUICIDAL patient how bad they are.
I note the irony of -her- being the one to say something about it.
On the way to the hospital we did get drinks from Sonic. I kept mine with me all the time, I was drinking very little to save it for as long as possible. I suppose it's a coping mechanism I have, I don't want to run out of something familiar when I'm somewhere I don't want to be. As soon as I get out of the hospital the better. Hopefully with a new prescription and a therapist. The suicide hotline, before hanging up on me, assured me they wont do inpatient care, just a quick evaluation 1-2 hours and send me with what I need.
About 5 hours into our waiting time I get a sharp pain in my shoulder blade and I contort. The comfy hospital bed (imo, though it seems I'm the only one that ever thinks so) typically feels nice but it's small and I'm trying to be contained while I adjust my body or hit it, or do whatever it takes to make the pain go away, though I don't know what it takes. My left side jerks and my bedside table is hit, my nearly full soda crashes to the ground and I shriek out. I begin bawling and have a complete meltdown. I can't speak, I can't think clearly. My entire world seems to have crashed. I can only stare and repeat how I was saving it, how I lose everything and nothing ever goes my way. I want to just fall to the ground in the puddle but my mom begins cleaning it. I just keep sobbing completely destroyed by the loss of my drink.
I did try to eat at the house, one of those little pot pies. I had not much appetite, so I gave more than half of mine to my mom, she was more hungry anyway.
That was all I ate that day, 4 bites of pot pie, and some sips of my soda. It was catching up. But I was still a mess. My mom told me that my step-dad will bring me some chicken sandwiches and a soda from McDonalds. I begin to realize how unhinged I seem so I start to try to censor myself. Any minute now a doctor will show up on my screen and tell me what she wants me to do.
Sure enough, a nurse wants a urine and blood sample, so I give him the samples easily and with what I learned to be inappropriate commentary about how I do like blood, and how I can handle needles but I have to see it. I nearly punched my nose piercer when she told me to close my eyes and THEN pierced my nose. The first time I was watching in a mirror. I thought it looked cool. The second time I was looking down at myself when she told me to close my eyes. I hated the trick and nearly punched her. I relayed that. while watching the blood flow into a tiny vial. Only another hour or so and another nurse sets me up with the doctor.
All goes well until the doctor asks if I've ever been hospitalized overnight before.
"No." I reply, "I wont be...now...will I?"
Something in her wording tipped me off. But at my question she tells me that it's standard and I will be transferred to a north side hospital if they have any empty beds, if not she will look for another.
I look at my mom and tell her to say something. But she doesn't, so I venture asking if my mom can just keep an eye on me instead. She's not a counselor. But my aunt it is! I look at my mom again. She can't read my "Tell her my aunt is a counselor" look.
Granted she's a vocational rehabilitation counselor just a few weeks from a doctorate...and in DC, as far away from me as my fiance. But she didn't say therapist, or psychiatrist, she said counselor. That wouldn't be lying it would just save me. But I don't want to push it, and risk going in for longer.
But I do begin to break down again as soon as she said it was standard procedure.
I feel hopeless and alone again. I'm virtually inconsolable. I just want to run away but I know it will be worse. My mom tries to watch an episode of the Big Bang Theory with me on her phone. We try for two hours. Somewhere in there she goes to the bathroom and my step-dad brings me my food. We came in at 2, it's now 9. I finish my food in time for a nurse to tell me that an ambulance will be ready as soon as the shift change is complete and the hospital does have empty beds.
"Great." I think.
We never did finish the episode, there was about 5-10 minutes left but it kept doing commercials, crashing, restarting, not starting at all, and eventually her phone died.
I notice the paramedics are friendly. My best friend's dad was a paramedic. He died 4 years ago to colon cancer. He was the closest I had to a real father. I had my dad and step-dad but my dad was so far away, and my step-dad unloving and even abusive. He even broke my collar bone once, still blames it on me for being so "bad", because I didn't understand his figures of speech. ("What is X doing Y?" I believe. Like what is that cup doing up there? NOTHING, it's a CUP, it can't DO anything, what kind of a question is that?)
We never liked each other. But Bill, my friend's dad...I always dreamed my mom would get with her dad after her mom left for an abusive guy in Texas. Funny how he, my dad, and my step-dad are all named "David", a name I began thinking of as synonymous with "asshole".
Bill however always listened, understood, cared, he was always there.
I considered being an EMT because of Bill. At least temporary.
I greatly respect, but am very hurt by the paramedics all at once. I hadn't been inside an ambulance since I was 9 years old and Bill was showing me around and explaining medical equipment to me. It hurt, big time.
I try to smile, and I do converse with the lady that was with me, but I keep missing Bill. He would have helped me. He would have understood. If he was here, I wouldn't be. Sometimes I think of Bill as more my friend than even my best friend was. Honestly I did love her, and not like a sister. But I felt she wouldn't have felt the same until after she confessed to me, after I was in a relationship. Knowing both parties are monogamists. I'm not, but they don't really want to budge, so she's stopped talking to me altogether. Which makes coping even harder.
I step out of the ambulance and walk away from the hospital towards my mom. I know I have to turn around but I don't want to be separated again.
I take a large gulp of my soda and then follow the paramedics inside, side by side with my mom.
About a week ago I was in a depressed rut.
I remember the trigger that set me off though. I had about an hour and a half of sleep and my mom basically thrust a full on driving session on me taking her to work. I was tired, cold, driving stresses me out, and I couldn't handle the stress at the time.
I try protesting but she tells me by Monday I need to be able to drive her and the kids to their schools. So I try. I try backing out of the driveway, which twice was unsuccessful. I pull back in because a truck is driving down the road.
Then she begins screaming and telling me how I can't seem to contribute anything, that I can't do anything right and how I'm going to cost the family $600 because I can't back out of the driveway correctly. I begin by getting angry and yelling back but then I get very hopeless and sad and every word she says seems to be true in my head. I begin thinking about death, and how I just don't want to be living anymore. I'm not crying, I'm just very numb to the world, consumed in my own thoughts of how worthless I am. She's right, no job, no school, no remarkable skills of any kind. I begin thinking how poison would be best if I could find one that is quick and easily available.
I decide to let a community on Facebook know I will kill myself, so I put up a comment in a group.
I begin an exchange and then once home I'm told how I can't even pick up the trash cans correctly.
I haven't thought of a good enough plan. So I start watching Star Trek and erase my post completely. My phone keeps going off so I check and apparently a lot of people have tagged and messaged etc me. This begins to annoy me, I was starting to feel better and then they drag it out and made my feelings return. I erased the post FOR A REASON.
My step-dad tells me my mom wants me at her work and he wont say why. I get very annoyed as I can guess, I pretend not to know in case it's something less awful. I tell him how I don't want to be around her after she spent 20 minutes this morning telling me how useless I am.
After we finally get there, many of her students ask me if I'm sick, once we leave she begins accusing me, so I demand she let me know one way in which I'm not a failure. I point out how they keep hiding these Buddhist temples so you can't see them until after you pass them. She says I'm observant. I still think that's rich, she's never called me that without sarcasm before.
We think of solutions that will be ANYTHING besides sending me away overnight. I can't handle being away overnight. I can barely handle traveling overnight. I try to handle hotels but I can't really sleep in them.
I'm willing to do any treatment but inpatient. But we go over how I'm not to say that so they can't force me to stay longer than 3 days if they decide that's what I need.
No, I wont let them decide I need that.
My step-dad decides St. Anthony's is best. I have reservations about going to a religious hospital, but after my younger brother wrote suicide threats on the wall in red marker, they decided he didn't really need anything, so I feel the risk of inpatient care will be minimal.
The nurse was quite rude and unprofessional. Downright accusatory and kept blaming me for running out of meds. My mom even points out how awful it is for a NURSE to tell a SUICIDAL patient how bad they are.
I note the irony of -her- being the one to say something about it.
On the way to the hospital we did get drinks from Sonic. I kept mine with me all the time, I was drinking very little to save it for as long as possible. I suppose it's a coping mechanism I have, I don't want to run out of something familiar when I'm somewhere I don't want to be. As soon as I get out of the hospital the better. Hopefully with a new prescription and a therapist. The suicide hotline, before hanging up on me, assured me they wont do inpatient care, just a quick evaluation 1-2 hours and send me with what I need.
About 5 hours into our waiting time I get a sharp pain in my shoulder blade and I contort. The comfy hospital bed (imo, though it seems I'm the only one that ever thinks so) typically feels nice but it's small and I'm trying to be contained while I adjust my body or hit it, or do whatever it takes to make the pain go away, though I don't know what it takes. My left side jerks and my bedside table is hit, my nearly full soda crashes to the ground and I shriek out. I begin bawling and have a complete meltdown. I can't speak, I can't think clearly. My entire world seems to have crashed. I can only stare and repeat how I was saving it, how I lose everything and nothing ever goes my way. I want to just fall to the ground in the puddle but my mom begins cleaning it. I just keep sobbing completely destroyed by the loss of my drink.
I did try to eat at the house, one of those little pot pies. I had not much appetite, so I gave more than half of mine to my mom, she was more hungry anyway.
That was all I ate that day, 4 bites of pot pie, and some sips of my soda. It was catching up. But I was still a mess. My mom told me that my step-dad will bring me some chicken sandwiches and a soda from McDonalds. I begin to realize how unhinged I seem so I start to try to censor myself. Any minute now a doctor will show up on my screen and tell me what she wants me to do.
Sure enough, a nurse wants a urine and blood sample, so I give him the samples easily and with what I learned to be inappropriate commentary about how I do like blood, and how I can handle needles but I have to see it. I nearly punched my nose piercer when she told me to close my eyes and THEN pierced my nose. The first time I was watching in a mirror. I thought it looked cool. The second time I was looking down at myself when she told me to close my eyes. I hated the trick and nearly punched her. I relayed that. while watching the blood flow into a tiny vial. Only another hour or so and another nurse sets me up with the doctor.
All goes well until the doctor asks if I've ever been hospitalized overnight before.
"No." I reply, "I wont be...now...will I?"
Something in her wording tipped me off. But at my question she tells me that it's standard and I will be transferred to a north side hospital if they have any empty beds, if not she will look for another.
I look at my mom and tell her to say something. But she doesn't, so I venture asking if my mom can just keep an eye on me instead. She's not a counselor. But my aunt it is! I look at my mom again. She can't read my "Tell her my aunt is a counselor" look.
Granted she's a vocational rehabilitation counselor just a few weeks from a doctorate...and in DC, as far away from me as my fiance. But she didn't say therapist, or psychiatrist, she said counselor. That wouldn't be lying it would just save me. But I don't want to push it, and risk going in for longer.
But I do begin to break down again as soon as she said it was standard procedure.
I feel hopeless and alone again. I'm virtually inconsolable. I just want to run away but I know it will be worse. My mom tries to watch an episode of the Big Bang Theory with me on her phone. We try for two hours. Somewhere in there she goes to the bathroom and my step-dad brings me my food. We came in at 2, it's now 9. I finish my food in time for a nurse to tell me that an ambulance will be ready as soon as the shift change is complete and the hospital does have empty beds.
"Great." I think.
We never did finish the episode, there was about 5-10 minutes left but it kept doing commercials, crashing, restarting, not starting at all, and eventually her phone died.
I notice the paramedics are friendly. My best friend's dad was a paramedic. He died 4 years ago to colon cancer. He was the closest I had to a real father. I had my dad and step-dad but my dad was so far away, and my step-dad unloving and even abusive. He even broke my collar bone once, still blames it on me for being so "bad", because I didn't understand his figures of speech. ("What is X doing Y?" I believe. Like what is that cup doing up there? NOTHING, it's a CUP, it can't DO anything, what kind of a question is that?)
We never liked each other. But Bill, my friend's dad...I always dreamed my mom would get with her dad after her mom left for an abusive guy in Texas. Funny how he, my dad, and my step-dad are all named "David", a name I began thinking of as synonymous with "asshole".
Bill however always listened, understood, cared, he was always there.
I considered being an EMT because of Bill. At least temporary.
I greatly respect, but am very hurt by the paramedics all at once. I hadn't been inside an ambulance since I was 9 years old and Bill was showing me around and explaining medical equipment to me. It hurt, big time.
I try to smile, and I do converse with the lady that was with me, but I keep missing Bill. He would have helped me. He would have understood. If he was here, I wouldn't be. Sometimes I think of Bill as more my friend than even my best friend was. Honestly I did love her, and not like a sister. But I felt she wouldn't have felt the same until after she confessed to me, after I was in a relationship. Knowing both parties are monogamists. I'm not, but they don't really want to budge, so she's stopped talking to me altogether. Which makes coping even harder.
I step out of the ambulance and walk away from the hospital towards my mom. I know I have to turn around but I don't want to be separated again.
I take a large gulp of my soda and then follow the paramedics inside, side by side with my mom.
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