****** Please Read the Introduction First!! 7/26/24
It’s been a while since I last did anything with AAOF; too long. I think its because I’ve been avoiding it. And, of course, the longer I avoid adding to AAOF, the more challenging it becomes to engage.
I have been going through an unusual amount of muck since my last entry. Until recently, I have not been dreaming. This is intentional. After my mother died in 2012, I decided to not have any contact with my older siblings (Im the youngest of three) because I was furious with them for the way they treated my mother in her final years. Actually, furious isn’t a strong enough word. I started having nightmares about killing them both. These nightmares were every night, very intense, and realistic. I began getting physical in my sleep. One night, Jamie woke up because I was on top of her with my hands around her neck/throat; I was asleep. After speaking with my shrink about this event, and how murderous all my dreams had become, we started experimenting with different meds to add to the medication cocktail I was already taking (Panic Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, Polyneuropathy pain) in the hopes of finding a combination of meds that would stop the nightmares. We got lucky pretty quickly; I stopped dreaming altogether. This was wonderful, right up to about two months ago. I had another nightmare, and ended hitting Jamie in my sleep. We increased the dosage of my dream-stopping med… twice. I meet with my shrink this Thursday to discuss what happens next, because now its not just an occasional nightmare, I have very disturbing dreams most nights. Last week I swung and hit Jamie, in my sleep.
One of the things I’ve been avoiding, but thinking about, is to move on from explaining my younger years. I mean, hell, everybody had a beginning. I’ve gotten very close to another autistic via texting. I can comfortably call her my friend. We have spent hours texting each other about experiences of growing up, and now living, as an autistic. She has family members that quite probably have ASD. She has been an incredible source of personal insight of having, and living with, fellow autistics. Through her, I’m coming to find out that most of us “late diagnosed” autistics have very similar experiences as kids. Most of us didn’t fit in, maybe got bullied, thought there was something wrong with us, etc. Any autistic reading anything on AAOF can probably relate to most of it. Where ASD starts to have a real impact on the direction of my life starts in college. I mean grade school was the expected nightmare. High School was when I started getting healthier; unsupervised weight “training” (instead of gym), Tae Kwon Do, the occasional take down of a bully. It’s when a few of the few things my father taught me became useful. There was the common “Look at me when I’m talking to you!” But there was also “Look at me when you’re talking to me” because that way he can be assured I was being honest. “If a man can’t look you in the eye when he’s talking to you, you can’t. trust what he’s saying.” I learned early about eye contact. We used to see who could stare down the other when we were “disagreeing”; I got to be pretty good, but I never won. Beyond eye contact, there was a really big one; “never back down”, ever. What can I say? He was a Navy Lieutenant who didn’t take any shit from anyone. These rules got me through High School without getting bullied. I just got a reputation as a crazy MF. HS was also when I had my first IQ test: “He’s so brilliant, but he’s horrible academically. There must be something wrong with him”. I “passed” the IQ tests (WAIS) with an aggregate in the 95 percentile. I wasn’t stupid… big whoop. My IQ score didn’t help either the school or me. “Do whatever is necessary to graduate the boy… we don’t need the grief of figuring out what makes him tick”. I was never a Junior in HS; I was a Sophomore twice, and then a Senior.
While I knew I was expected to go to college to become an engineer, I didn’t have enough “steam” to put myself back into academia so soon after finally getting out of it. Electricity, electronics, and any technology, had all grabbed my full attention pretty early in my childhood. So instead of college, I decided on tech school instead.
There was a class starting at Connecticut School of Electronic the summer after HS, a two-year, tech-intensive, school that I could commute to. The first year was fun, but unfortunately, very easy. After I aced the finals, I was offered an non-paying position as a teacher’s assistant to finish my second year. It was a roll I pretty much fell into during my first year. I declined, but got a recommendation to the 4-year college of my choice. Since my parents would be footing the bill, I felt I owed them an explanation. I said something along the lines of “I may make the best janitor in the world, but I’d still be a janitor.” They bought it, now all I needed to do was convince the Dean of Engineering at University of Hartford that my ridiculous records from High School were meaningless. As the saying goes… “If you can’t dazzle ‘em with your brilliance, baffle ‘em with your bullshit”. Using a combination of both, I was granted acceptance to their College of Engineering after taking a summer class of algebra. I was a Freshman the following Spring.