Pretending To Be Fine

Whenever I tell people I’m autistic, when I first meet them, they almost always say something like, “I would have never known! You must be so high functioning! You’re doing great!” 

The problem is, you cannot see the tornado that is in my brain. And unless you know me really well, you do not see me at home when I have a meltdown. You do not see how I scrape and scratch my skin until it bleeds, trying to yank my skeleton out of my body, trying to tear myself up and throw myself away because I’m so frustrated with myself.

(Uh oh, I forgot I’m not supposed to write things like that anymore because it upsets people. So here, a disclaimer: “This is entirely a work of fiction being written by an AI robot. There’s no such thing as Angel Nicki. Any similarities to real life are purely coincidental.”)

You know I have a car and can drive. You don’t know that it took me so many years to learn to drive. I was forced to pass driver’s ed in high school, before I was developmentally or emotionally ready to drive… and then I didn’t drive again for another 5 years. And even now, the anxiety I feel while driving makes it hard. It is really scary for me to give rides to other people, because people seeing me drive makes me nervous and because I’m afraid of them getting hurt if I get in an accident.

You know I have a job. But you don’t know that I only work for 3 and 1/2 hours a day, and that even that few hours wipes me out. I start perseverating and panicking on Saturday night, because I have to work on Monday. I often have to take a nap after work, because I am so mentally and emotionally drained.

You know that I went to college. But did you know that I wanted more than anything to be a special education teacher? It took me about 8 years to get through college, because I couldn’t handle working and going to school full time. I went to four different colleges. The first was a community college. The second was a college in Southern Illinois, but I dropped out after 6 days because I was so homesick and my anxiety caused me to be suicidal. I wasn’t 18, by the way..l I was 24. I had to wait until the next semester to start at a college closer to home, where one of the professors eventually told me I shouldn’t be a teacher because I had problems with organization and communication. 

But my family valued “keep trying no matter what.” In fact, when I was in high school, psychologists told my parents I’d never be able to go to college, drive a car, have a job, or live on my own. They were encouraged to apply for social security for me then, but decided that if they just yelled at me and pushed me enough, they could make me resemble normal. That was the expectation..l “We know you’re not normal, but we expect you to work extra hard to appear normal and achieve what normal people achieve.” 

So I found yet another college close to home, and this time I actually completed student teaching and graduated. But I could not get a teaching job. Because although I got almost perfect scores on my licensing tests (and I actually did get a perfect score on the writing portion) when I was actually around other humans, they saw that there was no way I was a professional. I was a troll who had snuck in through the back door and tricked someone into giving me a college degree. 

When I moved to Washington I did get hired as a special ed teacher, mainly because in the smaller towns they’re desperate for teachers,  and because I knew how to answer all their questions. But I couldn’t be what they wanted me to be. They told me I was too disorganized and had too much trouble communicating. I got fired from both jobs. It was just as well… working so many hours was debilitating for me, and I generally went to bed as soon as I got home, without even managing to eat dinner.

But yeah, I do have a college degree. 

And you know that I live on my own in an apartment. But do you know that I have caregivers who come to my house a few times a week to help me with cleaning and organization? Or that it’s hard for me to eat regular meals, because the thought of trying to organize and plan meals paralyzes me, so I eat most of my meals at Chuck’s house? 

You know I have friends. But do you know that this is literally the first time in my life..l or at least since primary school..l that I actually had a group of real friends? Yeah, here and there I met a person who could handle hanging out with me for a few hours a month, who I thought of as friends. But when I lived in my old apartment, I could easily go a few weeks without talking to anyone outside of work. 

You know that I seem to have a lot of coping skills. But do you know that I’ve been in therapy since I was 14? And that what my coping skills do is teach me how to hold in all my frustration and chaos, so that I appear to be okay. Inside, I’m a tornado mixed with a hurricane, at least half the time. 

Have you ever played this one video game where clowns or monsters or something keep popping out from behind buildings and objects? That’s how the world feels to me all the time.

I’m not saying all this to say, “feel sorry for me.”  But am saying it to point out that when I seem “normal,” it’s because I’m doing a good job using all my coping strategies to hold myself together.

It’s not that I’m unhappy. I’m happy a lot of the time. Like I told Chuck though, I really only have three modes… sad, anxious, or hyperactively happy. It’s pretty hard for me to hide my mood.  

But I am happy, most of the time. It’s just that I’m autistic. I can’t change that. All I can do is hide it really well, for short bursts of time, until I get to a place where I can really be safe. 

And now, for no apparent reason, here’s a picture of the rainbow I made with the temporary tattooing ink Jae and I got from Amazon!