When I was in second grade, three female teachers locked me in a room and took turns lambasting me until I was shaking, crying, and begging them to forgive me — and then they scolded me more.
The unforgivable sin I’d committed?
Bringing a book about puberty to school.
The other girls had been saying wildly inaccurate things about puberty, and I knew for a fact they were wrong because I’d read this book. So I brought the book to school. Apparently, they all told their mothers, who then called the school en masse to complain about me. The teachers reacted as if I was running a prostitution ring out of the playground. It was one of the most traumatizing events of my childhood.
For decades, moments like that made me question myself. Was there something wrong with my character? Why did I keep ending up in these strange misunderstandings with the world?
After my autism diagnosis at 49, I realized the truth: many of the behaviors adults called “bad” or “difficult” were actually autistic traits.
Here are six of them.
1. I Corrected Misinformation
“A period is when you bleed out of your butt because you’re gonna have a baby. That’s how you know.” I think that was the breaking point for me. I couldn’t let this nonsense go on any longer.
When I was a little kid in the early 80s in rural Texas, there wasn’t a lot of information available about what was going to happen to our bodies over the next few years, and it was a frequent topic of speculation. I knew the truth because I had a book that I’d bought at the secondhand bookstore along with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and A Wrinkle in Time. The book was geared toward girls who were a little older than us, but it was far from pornographic. It was kind of a “What to Expect When You Go Through Puberty” guide and I’d found it fascinating; it had cleared up a lot of things for me.
I hadn’t known bringing it to school would cause the wrath of a gaggle of self-righteous Texans to rain down on my head. I’d simply wanted to set the record straight because the theories the other girls were coming up with were absurd and I could prove it.
Now I better understand my mind, and I know that this yearning for accuracy is a common trait among autistic people. I get itchy when there’s an unanswered question, or worse — when I know that people are operating from incorrect information. It’s one thing that makes me a good researcher. But until I was diagnosed, I didn’t truly grok how very negatively my drive to correct inaccuracies could be perceived. Understanding my neurological tendencies has helped curb my compulsion to correct and led to more peace in my life — even if it’s sometimes very uncomfortable for me to refrain.
2. I Felt Things Very Intensely
“Oh my God, are you crying again, Leah?” It’s something I’ve heard throughout my life. I know that some (most?) people perceive me as being very dramatic and very intentionally demonstrative about my emotional distress. And it’s true, if you’ve been around me for more than a couple of hours, you’ve probably seen me cry. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s also not something I’ve ever been able to change.
The idea of crying to be manipulative is the farthest thing from my mind — I cry when I’m alone as often as I do around others. I just feel everything so intensely that I’m often moved to tears. It’s an extremely frustrating way to live, and I can understand why it would be massively irritating for those around me.
Now I know that the intensity of feeling I experience is shared among a lot of autistic people. It often leads to meltdowns and crying jags that come from frustration or adrenaline or a million other things and it’s all very exhausting. It’s why I, like a lot of other autistic people, prefer to just stay home when possible. And because I know now that it’s part of my neurological profile, I’m a lot more patient with myself. Since my diagnosis, I’ve learned about the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic system and have become better able to regulate myself without melting down or lashing out in frustration. I’m a work in progress.
3. I Had to Have Things My Way
“I know if Leah doesn’t like what we’re doing, she just won’t go.” Sarah looked at me and grinned. She was calling me out in public. We were in college, but she’d just articulated a pattern I suddenly realized I’d followed since childhood. She was right. I wasn’t inclined to join in the group just for the sake of going.
But then I wondered, why would anyone do something — at least something social — they didn’t want to do? If they don’t have to, why would they? Do people really go around doing social things they don’t want to do? I couldn’t see any reason to do that.
Because of all my sensitivities and intensities, there are things I’ve always avoided because they’re liable to trigger me. I can understand how that could seem diva-like, but I’ve honestly never done it with the intention of making people change plans. If I were in a group who was going somewhere I didn’t want to go, I truly preferred to go home. I didn’t see what the big deal was.
Now I understand the sensitivities that often come with autism, and it makes more sense. For the other kids, going somewhere and doing something they didn’t prefer was just a mild annoyance, if that. For me, it could lead to dysregulation and an episode of depression. It’s no wonder that I’ve often tried instinctively to protect my nervous system, even when it made me seem demanding and high-maintenance. But I did usually feel guilty about it. And the guilt is something my diagnosis has helped me let go of.
4. I Was Deeply Curious and Inquisitive
“Seriously, though, do you really, truly believe that Jesus’s mom was a virgin? And that he was actually somehow God and also his own father?” It was the kind of thing I was known to ask as a kid and it makes me cringe now.
I’ve always been curious about belief systems and the principles that guide people’s lives, and I used to let my curiosity provoke me to ask pointed and uncomfortable questions. I was often puzzled by people’s negative responses to my earnest inquiries — I was only trying to get to the truth.
Since my diagnosis, I’ve taken it on myself to better adapt to (certain) social situations. I’ve come to understand that my questions, even though they may be based on honest curiosity, weren’t always welcome and I’ve adjusted my approach accordingly.
5. My Gym/PE Resistance Made Me Seem Like a Trouble Maker
“I can’t do PE today. I have a note from my mom.” It was an almost daily ritual when I was in elementary school. My hatred of — and desire to avoid — PE was a central part of my life, and it makes me uncomfortable to remember even today.
PE was a daily descent into Lord of the Flies, sneakers squeaking across a shiny gym floor and kids hurling hard plastic balls at one another; “suicide drills” which made me cry both in function and name — my father had told me he was thinking about suicide and, like a contagion, now I was thinking about it too.
Teachers and even other students saw my behavior as recalcitrance. The truth is that my body has not always been cooperative. Besides the sensitivities that I described above, I have a panoply of physical ailments that I now know to be correlated with autism. I have dyspraxia, which basically means I’m chronically, congenitally clumsy and uncoordinated. It’s always made fast, guided movement of the type required by most sports absolutely out of the question for me.
I also have hyperhidrosis, which means I would start PE already dripping with sweat and by the time the class was over, I’d be soaked. That alone was reason to try to get out of it. And finally, I got my period and had the body of a college student by the time I was nine. That made every part of PE complicated and difficult, and made the whole thing humiliating, but my resistance to all of it earned me a reputation as a conniving shirker. Now I know I can exercise in ways that suit me — walking and yoga, for instance — and the fact that I don’t like sprinting around and having balls thrown at me no longer seems like any kind of character defect at all.
6. I Always Felt Different From Other Kids
If you’ve made it this far, you probably understand why I was never really “in” any friend group. I was different. I knew it, but it wasn’t something I intended; it was just something I was. And in that time and place, different was not good — unless it manifested in exceptional athleticism. I was called all sorts of names by kids and teachers and my own father long before I knew I was autistic. I was weird. I was something of a curiosity, but I never really understood why.
Now I do.
For decades, I believed these traits meant I was a bad kid.
But they weren’t signs of badness.
They were signs of autism — long before anyone around me knew it. I was born this way.
And if this list sounds familiar to you, I hope this has helped you feel a little less alone.
Comments
Post a Comment
thank you