Nov. 19th 2016

My seeing eye person. in People suck. Cats are awesome. Dogs are alright.

  •  Nov. 19, 2016, 5:36 p.m.
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I’m reading this: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/19/autism-diagnosis-late-in-life-asperger-syndrome-john-harris And the husband is out shopping for cat food and our supper and probably some of my birthday stuff; and it occurs to me: I probably don’t appreciate him enough.
From that article: “Simon Baron-Cohen cites one big frustration: if autism comes down to an often profound difficulty navigating the world, only a tiny number of people currently receive the help they need to do that. “Whether it’s about how to go shopping, or how to go for a job interview, or how to reply to your girlfriend. To me, if we were a civilised society, we’d be paying for mentors. It doesn’t seem unreasonable.”
And that’s what the male does for me. He isn’t perfect. We do fight. But I always get my way, in the end, or I would’ve left him a long time ago; because compromise really isn’t something that I’m capable of. Unless there’s a logical and legitimate reason for it that can plainly be explained to me, anyway.
And when he accompanies me to doctor’s appointments, or disability paperwork things, or whatever; and people invariably ask, “is he with you?”, I say, “he’s my seeing eye person”.
He makes sure I get where I need to go, the right way, on the first try. A few days ago I tried to make to an appointment alone, while he was at work, and I wound up nearly a mile away from where I was supposed to be, with no time to backtrack, and had to reschedule. Which is ridiculous when you consider that I’m perfectly capable of reading a map and following directions. I KNEW I was on the wrong street, because I saw the signs, but my brain failed to make the connection that that meant I should go several blocks further west, and then south, before it was too late. I got to a highway and suddenly a light bulb came on, this is the wrong place!. And I remembered the street signs then, looked at Google maps, and saw the time, and knew that I had to call them and go home. I’d blown it again.
So now I’m going with the husband, on his one weekday off, so he can make sure that I actually GET there. He has one weekday off, every week, specifically so that he can go places with me. And I used to tell people, FOR DECADES, in reference to things like this, “I’m an idiot”. Except I’m not an idiot. I probably know more sheer factual knowledge than 90% of the population. Idiocy isn’t my problem. I have executive disfunction. I spend so much time thinking about the minutia of my surroundings that I fail to separate out and pat attention to the IMPORTANT things. On that doomed trip, I was thinking about the beautiful autumn leaves, and the color of the sky, and how much this city resembles the last one I lived in, despite their vast geographical and climatic differences. I was appreciating the weird things that I saw on the edges of the street, and wondering if any automobile ever just dies from the loss of screws and springs and fuel caps that evidently happens all up and down the roadways.
The fact that I was on the wrong street got lost in a sea of more interesting information, and my brain can’t prioritize.
The fact that I’ve been put down my entire f!@#ing life for this sort of thing, because I went undiagnosed for four decades, is merely a side not in tragedy; because there’s no way I’ll ever recover from that, and I DETEST my species as a result. I fake it pretty well, unless I’m overwhelmed, so people I meet never know it; but make no mistake: If I honestly thought I could get away with it, I’d be a serial killer. A person can only take so much negative feedback.
Again from that article: ” In 2014 Baron-Cohen’s team found that two-thirds of the patients in their clinic had either felt suicidal or planned to kill themselves, and that a third had attempted to do so. “To my mind, this is nothing to do with autism or Asperger syndrome,” he says. “These are secondary mental-health problems. You came into the world with autism, and the way the world reacted, or didn’t react, to you has led to a second problem, which is depression. And that’s preventable.”
HAD depression. Now I have disthymia and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, because nobody gave TWO SHITS about my depression. My self hate, over YEARS of having to work and pay my bills while I was bawling and had no support slowly turned into hate FOR EVERYONE and EVERYTHING else. Because my choice was to either genuinely DIE, or go to work and get yelled and laughed at for things that I couldn’t help, for YEARS.
I sat in my attic with a noose around my neck, many times. And I always went back downstairs and back to a job that I HATED with every fiber of my being, to get write ups and called names, so I could pay my bills and feed my cats.
And now I’m not depressed any more. Now I’m homicidal. And my family did this to me when they abandoned me. And society did it when it failed to provide any kind of support for an adult with no children and no diagnosis. I FINALLY got my diagnosis when I moved to a state that had Obamacare, and NOW I’m GOING TO LOSE THAT. Thank you, republicans. You are the living embodiment of evil and every single one of you needs colorectal cancer. Live with a colostomy bag while the tumors slowly consume your lymph nodes and eat you alive.
But back on point: Here’s to my only and most stalwart companion. He who makes pizzas and fries catfish and follows me everywhere I go to make sure I don’t wander into traffic or get completely lost. He who many, many people have told me that I should get rid of, because he was unemployed once. F!@# those people, they weren’t my friends and they did nothing for me! Where the hell are they now, while he’s out buying me stuff? Where were they when I had no one?
He’s my only real life friend, and I am grateful that he exists.

Last updated November 19, 2016

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