Photo taken at the University of Washington campus by Brian T. Goff, March 2024.
Content warning: Brief mention of self harm.
Content warning: Brief mention of self harm.
I tell my husband it gets easier, but now I question if it actually does without the total betrayal of who we are neurologically and physiologically.
Let me explain.
My oldest daughter is Autistic (and now the younger two are on waitlists to get evaluated after recent discussions with the school’s social worker and our fellow neurodivergent family doctor).
My oldest is like a carbon copy of me as a child, only she’s growing up with a heavy influence of technology.
Like myself, she can be a lot to handle when she breaks down, which is often.
I have a good deal of built-in empathy for her as I regularly explore my youth and present-day struggles post Autism diagnosis, and how the former influences the latter. But for my husband, the sympathy has to develop. And when someone is shrill-screaming bloody murder and throwing things, it's hard to remain calm, patient, and attempt to see things through their bleary eyes.
But when I assure him it gets better —it'll get easier — more recently I feel like that’s a lie or a betrayal of my daughter's future self.
She's twelve, and outside of coming from a budding-but-evolving, emotionally-supportive household (unlike myself), saying out-loud that it gets "better" or "easier" feels like filler.
In my youth, when I continued to hit a wall of authoritarian parental rules and expectations, I at first caved into myself. I became selectively mute, regularly hurt myself, and often left the home as if to run away (although I never made it far because the unexpected was more terrifying that the familiar), or regularly contemplated running away.
I sacrificed who I was to squeeze into a mold of my family's expectations of me, and continued doing that to myself until self-identifying as Autistic last year. I pushed and squeezed and forced myself into that mold, mimicking the observed popular people, and actresses’s laughs and smiles and mannerisms. And after camouflaging the real me, I started making “friends” and my parents stopped being so dismissive of me all the time. I started getting positive attention from people, and it had euphoric, drug-like effects on me.
I cried behind locked doors and carved into my skin with a serrated pocket knife, but finally people were starting to be nice to me; to talk to me.
I kept that inner person tucked away. I copied socially accepted peers. I gossiped with the girls — they seemed to like that for some reason. It was an exchange: they’d say something unkind about someone else, and I’d return the cruelty. It never felt good, but it’s the one thing that got people’s attention and drew more people to me. I became obsessed with gossip, and my words and actions became razor-edged swords. Soon, I was being trapped by peers who’d say something horrid about someone, then ask me what I’d thought. Regardless of if I contributed something new or just agreed with them, they’d turn around and tell the person all the horrible “things “I said.” This lead to threats of violence, fewer and fewer people wanting to be around me, and eventual cliques forming without my inclusion.
Soon, I withdrew from social relationships completely.
Like the makeup I put on my face to cover my MCAS-and-Rosacea-flushed skin, my carefully crafted personality cracked and faded, and all those people I duped into liking me began to see what was really underneath.
Maybe some felt betrayed and lied to. Some altogether dropped me, and others went on to become more of my bullies.
That high I got from those temporary connections throughout my life never lasted long. And I never understood why they could all “keep up the acts” while I couldn’t handle it and would burn out. How were they able to continue being actors in life’s stage play, yet I never could?
I did what they all wanted, but still no one wanted me.
In my youth, I didn’t realized it wasn’t an inability to keep up an act “like everybody else,” but just how “repulsive” someone “different” seems to others.
I escaped into books and writing out my pain. It helped, especially under threat of getting Baker-Acted by my father after getting caught with a blade against my skin.
After my mom died during my first semester of college, I moved onto sex to replace the cutting. I was shamed for the things I said and hid the things I did until one day I became pregnant.
Things didn't get easier for me — not for one second. I continued to sacrifice who I was to make things easier for everyone else; and found ways to self-harm in new, more dangerous ways to dull the internal suffering.
I don't want that for my children.
I don't want the world to squeeze them into unrealistic, unsustainable molds because the world wasn’t designed for different people. I don't want things to be easier for others at the utter sacrifice of what makes them who they are.
I hope for the best. I hope that information and education on neurodivergence and practicing radical acceptance becomes more commonplace. But, I won’t hold my breath. The United States has been a melting pot of various cultures beyond Puritanical Whites since 1776, and we still don’t have racial peace 245 years later.
But I know, no matter what, my kids will have things easier and better just in the support system they have at home. They will always have what I dreamed of in their parents, and I'll have the confidence and self-assuredness that I'm doing the best I can to continue being there for them.
Because no matter what, as long as we never stop trying, and do the best we can as parents, we’ll have nothing to be ashamed of.
My best,
My best,
Sara
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And here are 6 more things this week:
- Still reading Drama Queen by Sara Gibbs. I have a feeling it’s going to take me longer than normal to finish with how life is going lately. But it’s been a good read so far, and I’m hopeful I can dedicate more time to reading it this week.
- Writing this made me remember a personal piece I wrote several years ago about my self-harm — long before I knew Autism was a part of my life, and very early on in my writing experience but — I found it fitting with the mention of self-harm: It Was The Look on Her Face on Medium.
- Talking with a new fellow Autistic friend recently, we discussed all of our misdiagnoses before finally getting on the right track. And since it is so common for women on the Spectrum to get a slew of other diagnoses before (hopefully) stumbling upon Autism, I thought I’d share this: Autistic Women: Misdiagnosis and the Importance of Getting It Right by Cynthia Kim on AWN Network.
- Under Attack by Audrey Hirsch on The Audacity.
- The Enduring Spectacles of Fat Suits in Hollywood by Hazel Cills on Jezebel.
- “Don’t let someone change who you are to become what they need.” —Unknown