Sober Reflection About Sober Reflection

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Masking (the autistic kind, not the COVID-19 kind)

As always, names and places changed...

In a journal entry dated January 31, 1996, I wrote, "Everything about me is wrong. I want to try to change it by June."

At the end of the previous summer, I wouldn't have dreamed of writing something like that in my journal. I had spent almost two months at Camp Negev, where I felt accepted and appreciated for the first time. Entering 9th grade (the final year in middle school in my district) in the fall with my newfound self-esteem-- despite having endured several years of bullying-- I felt incredibly optimistic. 

That optimism, however, didn't last. Having been regularly teased since 2nd grade, the childish teasing escalated to bullying by 5th grade and to severe bullying by 8th grade. In 9th grade, it had reached a crescendo. I didn't feel emotionally or physically safe coming to school. Every day in ceramics class, kids threw balls of clay at me while the teacher told me to "just ignore" the physical assault I endured. In other classes where I was regularly forced into group projects (times have changed, but back then teachers seemed to think there was something wrong with you if you preferred to work alone), my ideas were shouted down or ridiculed simply because I was the one who thought of them; sometimes, a more "popular" student would propose the exact same idea that I had suggested just minutes ago, and the other kids would embrace it. Often, these group projects ended up turning into episodes of taunting, rife with bitingly personal comments: one of many instances of emotional abuse at the hands of the other kids.  

It was turning into the worst school year of my life.

One Saturday or Sunday that year, I spent the morning crying in my room. I didn't want my parents to hear me because I felt that they blamed me whenever I was bullied at school, saying things like, "You joke around too much," or "You don't know how to interact with people" or "you bring it on yourself." I can't remember if my parents heard me crying and then forced it out of me, or if the amount of time I was in my room made them suspicious, or if I purposely cried more audibly because I was so tortured that actually wanted them to hear me because I needed to talk to someone. Whatever the case, I eventually ended up telling them about an incident that had happened on Friday. If I remember correctly, it was some taunting that had occurred during a group activity in science class.

"Why do kids do this to me?" I finally wailed.

Mom, aggressively pointing a scolding finger at me, shouted, "Because you don't even try to fit in. Believe it or not, appearance does matter. Look at you! You look like a 6th grader! Let me tell you something: you're not going to high school next year dressed like this!"

How was I dressed? I was wearing a pair of tan jeans and a green Bugs Bunny sweatshirt. Mom then pointed out a bleach stain on one of the pant legs that I had failed to notice. She yelled, "How could wear pants that have a stain on them?" When I told her that I hadn't noticed the stain, she said, "This is what girls your age notice!" I didn't know what to tell her about that. But her comment made me feel like there was something wrong with me.

Then, my dad started in on me about my hair, the fact that I hadn't worn it down for the past year unless forced to. Although not transgender, I felt somewhat dysphoric about my thick, wavy, Ashkenazi Jewish hair sending the message "pretty bombshell model" to other people, because that wasn't me. I was a tomboy, androgynous as hell, and that's how I was comfortable presenting. But my parents made it clear, not just that day, but several times, that my androgyny was immature and unacceptable and that they-- and society-- wanted the "pretty bombshell model".

After a protracted fight, I retreated to my room again to cry, feeling even worse after talking to my parents. Clearly, my initial instincts to try to hide the incident from them were founded. I didn't feel supported in personality or how I dressed. The interaction with them left me humiliated and feeling like a worthless excuse for a human being. I thought about my previous summer at Camp Negev, how I had been accepted for the first time. However, I had arrived under extreme pressure: I told myself that this was my last blank slate until college, that I had to fundamentally change things about my personality if I wanted to be accepted and have friends. 

Between the criticisms about my behavior and my clothing, my parents were demanding that I do something that is now referred to in the autism world as "masking", and it was what I had told myself I would have to do if I wanted to make friends at Camp Negev. It's a phenomenon that a lot of autistic adults-- especially autistic cis women-- have referenced in discussions about growing up with undiagnosed autism. What is masking? Well, it's exactly what it sounds like: inhibiting your natural inclinations in favor of ones that are more socially acceptable. The author of this article summed it up like this: "fitting in, in order to avoid being coddled, babied, ostracized, hated on, harassed, or bullied for being different."

Holy crap, does that hit home. 

I occasionally tried to mask, but it backfired spectacularly. If I stopped myself from telling an inappropriate joke or talking about some movie that only I was interested in, all it did was delay the inevitable and I would do both. That's not to say there isn't a time and place to talk about movies or tell inappropriate jokes, but I had been trained to think that any time I did these things I had committed some horrible, unforgivable moral failure, that I had violated the other person in egregious ways and that any anger or emotional abuse that they responded with was justified. 

I often commented that I had to think about everything before I said it. People who I told this to said that everybody has to do that. No. That's not fucking true. There's a difference between occasionally having to stop oneself from saying something that might not go over well and having to think about every goddamned thing before saying it. It caused severe anxiety in me that I am still feeling the aftermath of today. It was frustrating and painful trying to find a balance between being myself and being what I had to be in order to be accepted. Since I very rarely tried to mask, friends at camp often commented that I was one of the strongest people they knew. At home, my parents dismissed my strong sense of self as rigidness, stubbornness, and being set in my ways.

I am almost finished a book by Sarah Kurchak called I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was this Lousy Anxiety Disorder. Kurchak succeeded in masking when she was young and, like many women who used masking as a strategy in their youth, suffers severe anxiety and trauma. Had my mother known this woman as a kid in the '90s, she probably would have seen the adjustments she made and said, "See? She knows how to take advice." Only fairly recently have she and Dad finally seen this sort of thing for what it is-- masking, which is ultimately detrimental to the mental health of autistic people.

In her book, Kurchak said something very relatable about the mindset that masking (or, in my case, attempting to mask and failing at it) leads us to:

[The aftermath of a mistake] follows the same pattern: I make a mistake. I react poorly to it. Before I can take the time to properly process what has happened, what it might mean and what I should do, my mind is already racing with worst-case scenarios. Then it gets stuck in a repetitive loop. Even if I do manage to recognize that my thought process is starting to spiral, there's nothing I can do to stop it at this point. It's like a broken record skipping over and over and over and over the same self-loathing sound bite.

It made me think about how in the summer of 1995 I had told myself that going to Camp Negev was my "last blank slate until college", as if who I was, was so wrong that I had to fundamentally change myself in order to deserve friends. I was fourteen years old, and back then it didn't even dawn on me how horrible it was for a young kid to have to think like that. But that was my reality back then, what society had taught me. Adults didn't even bat an eye about it. I even remember asking my shrink, who I have since dubbed Dr. Bonehead, "What if I mess up and I'm not able to make any friends?" He said, "Well, I guess it will be a disappointing summer." In response, I quipped sarcastically, "Boy, you're insightful."

The other day, I was telling Chuck, a counselor from my 1997 Israel trip (affiliated with Camp Negev) who I recently reconnected with and befriended, about how I had "spent the year in sober reflection" after that summer. Why had I been in sober reflection, let alone for an entire year? Because that summer, when I was sixteen, I had had a huge crush on Chuck and constantly followed him around like I was Pepe LePew. In addition, I had been dealing with unbelievable anxiety due to some issues with my parents that had escalated right before I left. On top of that, the fact that there were about 90 kids my age on the trip (as opposed to 20 kids my age or fewer at camp) was overwhelming, and I was also frustrated about the sudden overemphasis on hookup culture and substance use. I was having frequent meltdowns, which back then society dismissed as childish temper tantrums.

Between the stress from my parents, the crush, and the culture on the trip that contrasted sharply with camp, my anxiety was in the stratosphere. I was a loose cannon, my mood spun on a dime, and I even got into a physical fight with someone. These were all mistakes-- stupid mistakes-- to be sure, but why did I have to spend an entire goddamned YEAR feeling guilty about my behavior? Why did I eventually entertain the notion of finding all the email addresses for my counselors and contacting them, apologizing for being so difficult and letting them know that I was trying to change? Kids on that trip did a lot of stupid things because, well, they were teenagers. It's just that my behaviors were a different kind of stupid, but not necessarily worse. Hey, you know what? I wasn't malicious, and it wasn't like I was setting things on fire. And boys get into physical fights all the time; people see that as "normal". 

Wouldn't this have been a better way for me to contextualize the mistakes I had made that summer?:

But the reality was, throughout my teenage years and into my twenties I was expected to be in sober reflection about my behavior constantly, especially when I failed to mask, which was most of the time. Bottom line, people cannot live that way. And the fact that it's mostly cisgender women who try to mask their autism tells me something very damning about our culture (there may also be a biological component to this, but obviously it's not easy to tease out) and the way women are expect to be constantly nurturing, anticipating what other people need and practically having an orgasm while doing it. 

Remember those rubber masks you would put on every Halloween and how uncomfortable they were? This is that.

The difference, of course, was that you knew you were expected to take the masks off.

Lemons and Lemonade (or "The Silver Lining Around the Mushroom Cloud")

As always, names have been changed...
It's just about 5 months into this COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, Massachusetts, which has done a great job of containing the virus, has entered phase 3 of reopening. On July 5th, I took the subway (mask on, of course) for the first time since March, getting myself the hell out of Quincy and going to Cambridge to go swimming in an outdoor pool. The outdoor pools are open (at lower capacity), and so is the gym. While going to the pool at the gym or an outdoor public pool is not a risk-free activity, I feel it is one of the safer risks I can take because chlorine kills the virus. I've also recently gotten to see one of my friends who already had the virus in April. He had a high fever, which indicates a strong immune response, and thus some type of immunity developed in the end. My doctor confirmed that right now he likely has some immunity, though we don't know enough about COVID-19 to know how long it will last. So I felt comfortable seeing him. I've also extended my social circle a little and hung out with my cousins, who came for a visit from Providence.

This pandemic is frustrating to no end. Until there's a vaccine, it's hard to know what the future will hold, and I dread this winter when people will be forced inside and given more opportunities to spread the virus. Even now in the summer I feel a little anxiety of what's to come next. This is one of the most horrible things to have happened in The United States (maybe THE most horrible?), with more casualties than 9/11.

That said, it is also one of the best things that has happened to me. Before anybody decides to twist things around, reads the wrong thing into my statement, no, I am not saying how wonderful it is that we have a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Rather, I'm saying that there's a silver lining around this mushroom cloud, a lemons and lemonade kind of thing that's happened to me in its aftermath. For one thing, I am doing a lot of writing. I'm well into writing a novel. I've tried writing many different novels over the years, but have had structural problems and have found myself stuck after writing the beginning, or have ended up writing a crappy draft. This time is different. What is also great about developing this novel is that I'm writing with characters I came up with at the end of 1996, characters who I've tried over and over to get a story out of but have been unable to. Until now. I think I'm really going to do it this time.

Additionally, stuck in full quarantine in March, April, and May, my mind started to wander. I thought back to the summer of 1997. I remembered my group trip to Israel, where I had an obsessive, autistic-style crush on a counselor named Chuck, and how I chased him around like I was Pepe LePew. This severely disrupted my experience and left me embarrassed about my behavior for years. I have had a few brief, superficial communications with Chuck over the years (ICQ, email), and we've been on Facebook together since 2008. We never kept in touch in any meaningful sense of the term. But with my wandering mind, I decided to message him. We had a good conversation, and ended up Skyping-- twice.

During our first Skype chat, Chuck and I hit it off right away and had some interesting discussions-- it turns out we have quite a bit in common, including a shared interest in brain science. We had a few good laughs about the funny things that happened on the trip in the summer of 1997. We also talked very frankly about my embarrassing behavior. I said, "Yeah, I had a thing for you and I had the subtlety of a hand grenade about it. I was embarrassed about it for years." Chuck shrugged, laughed, and said, "You were a teenage girl. These things happen. I'd like to think I handled it well, but I'm sure sometimes I didn't." I told Chuck that I gave him a lot of credit, that while he didn't always handle it well, he did the best he could for a young guy working in an era where autism was virtually unheard of. Having this discussion with Chuck was very cathartic and gave me a lot of closure that I never really had about that rough period in my life. He lives nearby, and I look forward to meeting up with him, and I hope to also meet his wife and two kids. This, of course, will probably only happen after a vaccine is developed, or when Chuck is at least more comfortable expanding his social circle during the pandemic.

Chuck isn't the only person I've reconnected with. I reconnected with Jonas, my counselor at Camp Negev and friend and mentor throughout my teenage years. Oh yeah, and my first crush. Yeah, I tended to get crushes on counselors... wow, what a dork I was! Anyway, he and I had kind of a falling out in the spring of 2001, and I haven't seen him since then. Our communication was limited to the occasional email and Facebook comment. However, we cleared the air about what happened back in the day (which I really don't want to get into the details of right now). At first, Jonas was not sure it was a good idea to video chat, but a month later, after hearing me on an alumni section on a camp podcast, he changed his mind. A couple weeks ago, we talked on Zoom. We had some good laughs about camp memories, and we filled each other in on some of what we've been up to over the past 19 years. Jonas ended by saying, "Let's stay in touch." He lives thousands of miles away, but the next time he is in New York City visiting his in-laws (which I suspect will only happen after a vaccine is developed, so I think we're talking about at least a year), I will probably head down there to see him. I definitely look forward to meeting his kids (I already know his wife; she went to the same camp).

I also reconnected with Amelia, a close friend from my age group at Camp Negev. Like Chuck and Jonas, we had been on Facebook together for years but didn't have much communication. We had a nice Skype chat and, like in my chat with Jonas, we filled each other in on what we've been up to over the past several years. She lives in the south, so it'll be a while before I get to see her in real life. I hope she comes up to Boston at some point. Or, perhaps I'll go down there. We'll see. If nothing else, we're just about due for another Skype session.

In short, because of this pandemic, I've been writing like a madwoman and reconnecting with old friends (Jonas and Amelia) and acquaintances (Chuck-- now a friend? Not sure how he'd classify the relationship from Skype alone). This mushroom cloud has indeed had silver lining, and I've turned some lemons into lemonade.

With all the horror stories that have happened as a result of COVID-19, it's nice to be able to hear something positive. Let me know in the comments if you have similar "lemons and lemonade" stories that have happened as a result of this pandemic!

Angry

I'm angry at so many things right now.

I'm angry that I was born in 1980 instead of 20 years later. This meant growing up in an age of profound ignorance, when there was no word for Asperger's. Instead, I was that problem kid with the mysterious behaviors, someone who my parents and teachers concluded had psychological problems.

I'm angry that my parents didn't know just how aware I was that they thought there was something psychologically wrong with me.

I'm angry that I was expected to change, and that I was conditioned by pretty much everybody to believe that when I got bullied, it was because I brought it upon myself, that others were just "responding" to me.

I'm angry about the cliche that those who bully others are going to grow up flipping hamburgers. No. It's absolutely not true. I know for a fact that a number of the people who bullied me have successful careers. Me? I'm stuck trying to get an entry level job. It's like I've been 22 for the past 14 years.

I'm angry that by the time I went to college, there was still no word for Asperger's-- and instead of getting bullied by other students, I was bullied by teachers, which had rarely happened to me before.

I'm angry that my parents, my mom especially, were so fucking blind to the reality when I told them what was going on in college, that they thought that I was exaggerating.

I'm angry that my teachers in college gave me no tools for going out in the real world with what skills I had; they just told me to give up. One in particular took delight in seeing me fail and suffer.

I'm angry that I had a crush on one of those abusive teachers. What does that mean about me? Am I attracted to abusive people?

I'm angry at how many things about me that are well-understood by psychologists today were shamed by others during my childhood and early adulthood: my obsessions with movies, the fact that I couldn't handle myself when I got a crush on someone, the fact that I RARELY got a crush on anybody, my sense of humor, my slightly-skewed gender identity, etc.

I'm angry that all of this stuff is connected-- that I'm 36 years old and still paying the price for who I am. I still don't have a job. Who the fuck would hire somebody with a patchwork resume of dead-end jobs and multiple degrees that went nowhere?

And because of this, I'm angry when people ask me, "What do you do for work?" For me, it's like one of those "When did you stop beating your wife?" questions. So many loaded assumptions: I'm 36, white, and from a middle-class background, so OF COURSE I must have a career!

I'm angry that I have more skeletons in my closet than a fucking graveyard. I'm angry that my story is so unbelievable that it's the equivalent of airing my dirty laundry in public. I'm angry that on occasion when I DO tell my story, they think I've reached the fundamental point within ten seconds, but the reality is that I've just begun telling it, that it's that long, that convoluted, and contains multiple traumas.

I'm angry that everybody else on the spectrum I've met doesn't have a story even remotely similar to mine:

They're either people with penises who A) Fit the autism stereotype of computer genius and have a successful career, or B) Are so fucking naive and clueless that they don't know what their reality is;

They're people WITHOUT penises who haven't been through the hell I've been through because they were naturally quieter than me. They were able to slip under the radar of "concern".

I'm angry that even within the psychiatric community, there still seems to be this profound misunderstanding that if you have Asperger's you're likely a computer genius and super literal. And you have a penis.

I'm angry that the only services for adults on the spectrum are for people who are so fucking clueless that they need it explained to them that they shouldn't, for example, talk about their masturbation habits at work, because it will make people uncomfortable and get them fired. There are no services for people who have bizarre, complicated problems like mine.

I'm angry that when I tell people I don't understand something, people ask, "What don't you understand?" They see it through a neurotypical perspective no matter how many different ways I try to explain it to them: When I say "I don't understand something", it means I don't fucking understand it! PERIOD! When I was a kid, this was pretty much any movie more complicated than Home Alone. This wasn't me saying, "I don't understand why that guy committed suicide at the end." It was, "I don't understand what the movie is about, what's going on, ANYTHING." As an adult, it's when I'm trying to learn programming. Telling me to "Walk away and come back an hour later" is not going to help WHEN I DON'T FUCKING UNDERSTAND THE MATERIAL! I try to explain this to people, and either I'm explaining it poorly, or they just can't see it! Well, let me give you a metaphor: Go out on a PITCH BLACK NIGHT and say, "I can't see anything." Well, how will you answer it when I ask you, "What don't you see?" Yes, this is what I mean when I say, "I DON'T UNDERSTAND!"

I'm angry that I have to ask my parents for money all the time "until I get a job". With each passing day, I continue to lose hope that this will happen. I wake up in my tiny, paint-chipped apartment and think "So this is my life."

And I'm angry and how much strain I'm putting on my parents financially and perhaps emotionally. Who the hell signs up for this sort of thing when they have kids?

The Butterfly Effect

This is a post not necessarily related to Asperger's. It's more for fun than anything else.

What is the Butterfly Effect? It is a metaphor that is often used to describe how seemingly inconsequential actions-- such as a butterfly flapping its wings-- can potentially trigger a chain reaction whose end result is quite significant-- such as a tornado brewing thousands of miles away from the butterfly. This is hyperbolic-- of course a butterfly flapping its wings will not contribute to a tornado, let alone one thousands of miles away. But you get the idea. 

We all experience a Butterfly Effect of sorts in our own lives. For example, perhaps you missed your train and had to wait an hour for the next one. In that time, you sat down next to someone. With time to kill, you struck up a conversation. You hit it off immediately. You talked even more on the train together. You exchanged contact information and… forty years later you are still happily married with two kids, one of which is now in her late thirties and who has just won the Nobel Prize for finding the cure for cancer. In short, if you hadn't missed your train forty years ago, there would be no cure for cancer today. 

That is, of course, an extreme example. But you get the idea. Here's an interesting one from my own life:

If my family had not moved to a new town in 1987, exercise would not be an important part of my life. Wow, that's reaching, right? Or is it? Let me explain:

For the first almost-seven years of my life, my family lived in a suburb immediately outside of Philadelphia. It was getting too congested and the public schools didn't have the best reputation. My parents wanted to move to a suburb that was less congested and in which there were reputable public schools. They found a house in a suburb twenty miles away. 

Okay, but what do wanting to go to public schools have to do with being an exercise fanatic? Do the schools have a renowned physical education program? 

Not quite.

My family is Jewish, and my mother wanted to bring my brother and I up as Reformed Jews (Scenes of her trying to get Dad, my brother and me to go to synagogue on the High Holidays are a lot like scenes of Marge trying to get the family to go to church on The Simpsons, but that's another story altogether). We joined a nearby synagogue. 

A few years later, Mom wanted to send my brother to overnight camp, and she wanted to send him to a Jewish camp. The first one she looked into was too expensive. In the days of no Internet, Mom had to search for another, less expensive camp. Mom asked the Rabbi, who recommended Camp Negev. My brother went there and loved it. I started going there a few years later-- in 1995-- after I was too old to go to the arts day camp I'd been going to since 1989. 

Oh, so Camp Negev has a renowned sports program?

No! Stop being so literal, and let me finish! No, not at all. There was one one-hour sports period during the day, and that was it. The rest of the day included work projects, discussion groups, swimming, electives, free time, and more. 

Having had undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome, being fourteen years old and having just completed 8th grade-- another year of bullying, the worst so far-- I was so used to grudgingly accepting myself as someone who would have this horrible effect on people. I was convinced that the bullying was my fault, and I didn't even call it bullying. I thought it was a "normal" consequence of me being me. I was so used to this treatment that it was all I knew. Coming to camp, I imagined the usual middle school drama: I imagined girls putting on globs of makeup in the morning. I imagined girls whispering and giggling, and then when I would ask what was so funny, they would laugh and say, "Nothing!" I imagined people hating me, ostracizing me, and excluding me in every way,  no matter how hard I tried. And why wouldn't I think that would happen? It was all I knew.

The first two weeks didn't go so well. I was constantly on the defense, and I assumed the worst about people's intentions towards me. I had Asperger's-style crying meltdowns practically every other day. One of my counselors, Jonas, saw that I was struggling and reached out to me. He listened when I needed to talk. He didn't pass judgment on me, telling me I was immature or that I needed to "get over it", like my (misguided) parents and teachers did. In the throes of adolescence, he was someone I could talk to. He was the friend and mentor I needed. I developed a crush on him-- he was my first crush-- and he knew, but he was generally okay with it (unlike the later crushes, but that's another story, and another blog post). 

When I became more comfortable and at ease it was easier for me to make friends in my group. I discovered that Negev was a very progressive, left-leaning and accepting summer camp. Most of the girls didn't put on makeup. They thought that it was cruel to ostracize others for being different. In fact, many of these kids came from same-sex parent households and some of them were even openly gay or bisexual (unusual for kids in the '90s). They didn't get me at first, but when you're with people around the clock, it is easier for them to get to know and understand you. And they did understand and appreciate me. And I made friends with some of the boys, too. 

I had only been signed up for first session, but I suddenly wanted to stay second session. I almost wasn't able to do it because my parents didn't think they could afford it, but back home, my brother-- who lamented never having been able to stay second session-- convinced my parents to find a way to do it. So I stayed second session.

This has what to do with exercise?

Patience, patience! 

Camp Negev had a special day each session called Revolution, in which the CITs would kick out the counselors and run the camp for a day. Revolution was centered around a theme, such as history, a movie, animals, and more. The theme of Revolution second session was the time-travel movie Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. During one activity, we pretended that we went back in time to the era of prohibition. In a game similar to Capture the Flag, people were divided into teams and had to steal the other team's "beer" bottles, while also guarding their own. 

My team was deciding who got to guard and who got to try to steal the other bottles. I was always terrible at sports and terrible at running. Sometimes I wished I were good at sports and could kick total ass in soccer, baseball, etc, and the tomboy in me wished I had the strength to wrestle. But because I was bad at sports, I hated them. During this game, for once I wanted to be on the offensive and try to steal the bottles. I ran across the field to try to get a bottle. A girl on the opposite team spotted me and tagged me. I tried to stop too quickly. My right leg crossed over my left, and down I went . I felt a familiar surge of pain in my left ankle-- I had broken my left finger and my right hand over the past two years-- and I knew instantly it was broken (I could swear that I heard a CRACK when I went down, but I realize that was probably a false memory). I had to go home from camp five days early. And that's tough when every day at camp is like a week. 

After the cast came off, the muscle on my lower left leg had atrophied. It was difficult for me to walk at first. Dad explained to me that this happened because with my leg immobilized for seven weeks, the unused muscle broke down. So every day after school, I went for walks to try to rebuild the muscle. At first, because of the stiffness in the tendons around my ankle, I could only walk down the street and back. As the muscle regrew and the tendons loosened up, I increased this walking route until ultimately I mapped out a two-mile loop. After a couple months, I began jogging. I wasn't very good at it, of course. But I did it.

After a few months of this, Mom suggested I join the track team in the spring. I thought she was out of her mind. But I did it anyway. I always came in last at track meets, but I still enjoyed doing it. I got stronger, not just physically but mentally: the endorphins helped my self-esteem and gave me the strength to stand up to the bullies. I continued running track throughout high school.

The End. 

Or not.

I was very skinny growing up, and I thought it would be impossible for me to become overweight. But it happened. I got into some horrible eating habits in college, and I wasn't running regularly. I struggled with being overweight for several years. Finally, in the summer of 2012, on one particular hot day, I went to the pool (instead of swimming in the ocean, as usual). What was I supposed to do? Just stand there to cool off? Boring. I started swimming laps to give myself something to do, and I realized that I enjoyed it. Over the course of several months, I made swimming a regular part of my life. I adjusted my diet, and the weight fell right off, at a rate of about two pounds per week (although I've gained some back, I'm still within normal limits and am working on taking it off again). 

To this day, three years later, exercise is still an important part of my life. I alternate between running and swimming (though lately it's been swimming because last year I injured my knees while running, which I'm still not over yet) and cardio/weight machines at the YMCA. But I can tell you had I not had that history of running track it would not have occurred to me to take up swimming. I just would have gone to the pool that hot day in 2012, splashed around a bit, and gone home. I had been meaning to put exercise back into my life, but it was so difficult without someone to coach me. Finally, I just made myself do it, and that would not have happened if I had not had a history of exercise to look back on.

So let's go over this Butterfly Effect:

In 1987, my family moved, and we joined the local Reformed Synagogue. My mother wanted my brother to go to a Jewish camp. The one they were looking at was too expensive, so the Rabbi recommended Camp Negev. My brother went to Negev and loved it, so I decided to go there after I "outgrew" my arts day camp. It was tough for me at first because I expected to be bullied, but Jonas reached out to me and made me want to stay second session (and, of course, come back in years to come). During second session, I broke my ankle. After the cast came off, I began daily walks to rebuild the atrophied muscle. After the muscle was restored, I began jogging. Mom told me to join the track team, which I did. I loved exercising, but being human I got into bad habits in college, ultimately putting on weight. At my worst, I was very close to clinical obesity. Years later, on a hot day, I went to the pool to cool off, but ended up swimming laps. It occurred to me that this would be the answer to getting me back into an exercise routine. I did just that, and I'm still in this routine today. 

So yes, moving in 1987 indirectly made exercise an important part of my life.

Could my parents have found out about Negev through a rabbi in our old town? Possibly, but even if they had, there still might have been a huge difference in my experience at Negev. When my family moved, they had me repeat 1st grade to give me "another year to mature". They never would have done this in the same school (kids latch onto that). So if I hadn't moved, I wouldn't have been held back. The age groups at Negev were based on what grade you were going into, not your age. And Jonas-- an important role in this Butterfly Effect, as you've seen-- wouldn't have been one of my counselors. 

As an addendum, with Jonas as an important part of this equation, he had his own Butterfly Effect of sorts that got him to Camp Negev. He and his ex-girlfriend had been working at a different summer camp. But they broke up, and (if I remember correctly) they thought it would be awkward for them to be at the same camp. So she continued working at the same camp and Jonas went to Camp Negev (or they both agreed to go to different camps; I don't remember). Had he not broken up with his girlfriend, I never would have met him, I wouldn't have stayed second session and… you get the idea. No exercise routine for me today.

Yes, that's the effect of the metaphorical butterfly flapping its wings thousands of miles away.

A Painful Memory that Resurfaced

This morning as I lay in bed, a memory randomly came back to me. In the summer of 1998, when I was a CIT at Camp Negev, I had a crush on an Israeli counselor, Omri. Like all my other crushes, we started out on friendly terms, he figured out I had feelings for him (despite protocol that I had implemented to try to keep myself under control), and by the end of the summer he wanted nothing to do with me. My memories of him are very bittersweet and nuanced, and part of me still never got closure for that summer. The memory in question that came back to me this morning was this:

We were at a staff/CIT meeting on the porch outside the rec hall, and there was a box of oranges on the floor. People held out their hands to catch the oranges as Omri tossed them. I held out my hands. No orange. Finally, I said, "Hey, Omri, could you toss me an orange?" He said, "Get it yourself."

Just let that sink in.

Empathy

Another thing I'm curious about. Aspies are supposed to lack empathy? You seem to me unusually empathetic.

These were the words in a mildly-amusing-as-well-as-flattering private message from someone I am friendly with online. Yes, the pervasive myth that people with Asperger's Syndrome lack empathy is still making rounds. It reminds me of some kind of abstract Hydra: That is, instead of cutting off one head just to watch two grow in its place, I clear up the "Aspies don't have empathy myth" for one person just to to have to clear it up for two more people. It is a myth that has gone viral and just seems impossible to stop.

Do Aspies lack empathy? The problem is that the term "empathy" has two very different meanings. Here's dictionary.com's definition:

the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

In other words, the definition can be interpreted in two ways: 1) Cognitively understanding that someone else is suffering (or joyful); whether or not the person cares about these feelings is a different question entirely. 2) The visceral reaction someone gets when seeing someone else suffering (or being joyful); that is, he's suffering (or joyful), so I'm suffering (or joyful) too, or  Unfortunately, when most people use the term "empathy", they use it in the second definition I am referencing: they believe that the Aspie knows that the other person is upset or joyful but simply does not care.

Reasons Why Many People Believe Aspies Lack Empathy

1. Difficulties with cognitive empathy are mistaken for lack of sympathy 

Yes, it is true that people with Asperger's Syndrome sometimes have problems with cognitive empathy, which is one thing that gives rise to the myth that they lack sympathy, more specifically, for another person. Sometimes Aspies do not realize that somebody else is upset. Or perhaps they do understand that the other person is upset but cannot quite understand why (depending where on the spectrum they are!) and the upset person thinks that they are self-centered and don't care how other people feel. Often, once the Aspie realizes that the person is upset, he or she cares just as much as any neurotypical person would. Conversely, sociopaths have a lot of cognitive empathy-- and they exploit others' emotions for their own selfish whims.

To give a very concrete example of this phenomenon in my own life, I need look no further than my horrible years in middle school. More times than I can count, I would approach a crying friend (and I use the term loosely, because they were fair-weather friends!) and ask her what was wrong. Her other friends would glare at me and ask, "Where have you been all week?" Because I missed subtle cues that something had been bothering a friend all week and did not realize it until she was doing something obvious-- crying-- the other girls thought that I didn't care, that I was only concerned about myself. Middle school is often the worst for girls with Asperger's because girls at that age tend to form relationships based on emotional intimacy, secrets, etc., rather than a shared interest, such as a favorite movie. The social dynamics become more intense and demanding. Boys that age are more likely to form friendships around shared interests-- it is for that reason (and more) that I wish I had tried to befriend boys at around that age. I had much more in common with them in terms of interests and styles of social interaction. Today I find that I generally get along better with men than with women (unless it's in a setting with like-minded individuals; then gender makes no difference).


2. We find it exhausting to be social butterflies

My very neurotypical mother is a high school teacher. She learns all of her students' names very quickly. She gets to know each kid individually and knows all their likes and dislikes. Years later, if she runs into one of her students again, she usually remembers him or her. I could not do what she does. Ever.

In my years working at summer camps, I bonded with a few kids over common interests. For example, if a camper wanted to learn to draw, we would bond over that because it was something concrete I could teach them. Or they could at least show me their drawings and I would be interested in seeing them. But I have difficulty pretending to be interested in a little girl's love of princesses, for example. I was not one of those counselors who knew everything about each camper, and it always took me forever to learn everyone's name. I'm also terrible with faces, which didn't help matters.

Fortunately, many of these kids usually liked me because they thought I was fun and funny. In a video I shot during my CIT year at Camp Negev, some 11-year-old kids are jumping up and down and shouting, "We love you, Julie!" But I don't remember the names of most of the kids that I've worked with. My style in terms of working with kids involves a very narrow, usually impersonal focus. Kids who wanted to bond with their counselors on a more personal level usually went to their other counselors. Unless, of course, the kid has psychological/neurological issues. Then they came to me. Kids with such issues usually liked me, probably because I understood them better and could give them better advice.


3. We react differently than neurotypicals to another's joy or distress 

If somebody I barely know at work, for example, tells me that their mother is in the hospital, I do not gush with emotion. I think it's unfortunate, but I am not overwhelmed with emotion at this news. I say, "Oh, jeez. I hope she gets better," and I forget about it ten seconds later. The expected reaction-- from both sexes, but I think women especially-- is to react viscerally, or at least pretend to. That is, people are expected to at least seem extremely upset even if they don't know this person. And sorry, I think a lot of the time it is just an act if the person doesn't know the other person well. It is a social ritual to stay in others' good graces. Same with the social ritual where everybody tells a new mother that her baby is "perfect". Sure, some people mean it, but I think a good portion of them are lying, just saying what is expected of them. What do I say? I say what I mean. I tell the new mother that she's going to be a great parent.

The thing is, I sometimes question my own capacity for empathy. When something bad happens to a friend, I try to console him or her. But I do not get emotionally involved with the friend's issues. I just try my best to help. Am I in the minority? Do most people get emotionally involved? Do they get a visceral reaction, feeling the ache of the friend's breakup (for example) as if it were happening to them? I don't. And also, do I try to anticipate the possibility of hurting another's feelings or annoying them in some way because I genuinely care about their feelings, or am I just trying to avoid trouble for myself? Or both? I really don't know. And why do most people try to avoid hurting or annoying others? Does avoiding trouble for themselves factor in as well? I really don't know either.

I am more likely to get visceral reactions when I see a suffering animal than when I see a suffering person. I once broke off two pieces of bagel to give to two pigeons. One larger, dominant pigeon ate his share and stole the other pigeon's piece. When the smaller pigeon tried to eat his own share, the larger pigeon bit him. This made me really upset. I wanted to kick that bullying pigeon away from the little pigeon. I tried to feed the small pigeon again, but the same thing happened. I tried scaring the larger pigeon away by stamping my feet. It didn't work. I threw a piece of bread a few feet away so the larger pigeon would have to chase it. Unfortunately, the smaller pigeon gave chase as well, so I was unable to feed the smaller pigeon separately. It made me so angry that this little pigeon was barely able to take a bite while this alpha male (or female? I don't know what sex it was) got his way because he was bigger and stronger.

As for suffering people, I rarely get visceral reactions where they're concerned-- unless it involves children, particularly children who are victims of bullying. And I suppose the pigeon incident ties in nicely to my visceral reactions for the children who are victims of bullying.


4. We find ourselves in very extreme circumstances that makes it look like we lack empathy

The obsessive crushes I've discussed in a few blog posts immediately come to mind. Most people are able to move on if they think their crush is avoiding them. I simply couldn't. But I knew that it was also wrong to be pushy towards these guys that I liked. It was this constant balancing act, a psychological war in my mind to try to figure out how to allow myself to interact with them without being too pushy. As for the times I waited for them outside of buildings at summer camp and on my Israel trip, that was the end result of the warfare in my mind. On my 1997 Israel trip I didn't say, "Hey, you know, I think I'll wait for Charlie outside a building. That's not weird at all. That sounds like a great idea." Of course I knew it was weird, but I was just experiencing intensely powerful emotions that I couldn't handle. As a friend from that trip put it: "You were so gone over Charlie that you didn't know what to do." But to the observer it looks like stalking and lack of respect on my part. Even the following summer back at camp, in 1998, it was not enough that I implemented strict, assiduous controls for myself to make sure I did not fall into those same behaviors again (also discussed in the above linked post). Why? Because in the last week  or two of camp I did fall into those behaviors. People commented that I seemed self-centered for hyperfocusing on these crushes, and they did not realize that it was not a conscious decision. It was that my brain was hijacked by neuroterrorists, as I call it, and I just didn't know what to do.

In other circumstances, such as trying to navigate middle school and having to watch my every move lest others start trash-talking me, people would ask me, "Why are you so focused on yourself? Why don't you ask other people how they're doing?" Because when your emotional survival depends on not becoming a target for bullying, the last thing on your mind is how other people are doing.


5. We don't always relate to what upsets others or makes them happy

I get a strong, visceral reaction from seeing victims of bullying suffer, from seeing children with psychological/neurological issues suffer, and from seeing animals suffer. I do not get a visceral reaction from hearing that my friend is having problems with her boyfriend. I've never been in a relationship and cannot relate directly to this. When I try to help, I tap into my issue of obsessive crushes to try find something relatable, but that is the best that I can do. I really cannot deal with a friend's relationship drama, and I don't want to (though I want them to feel better, of course), and they probably shouldn't come to me anyway because I have no good advice for them. But I suppose I am flattered that they do come to me.

In terms of joy, I really cannot relate to the joy a parent feels when having a baby. I can't even imagine feeling joyful about having a baby. And if I had any doubts about my declaration about not wanting kids, they were torpedoed when I began having recurring dreams about being pregnant and feeling horrified (in a couple dreams, I had the baby and thought, "What am I supposed to do with this?") The only time I really cared when someone I knew had a baby was when my cousin gave birth. But it wasn't this whole motherhood-is-an-amazing-and-rewarding-and-beautiful thing or a babies-are-so-precious thing. It was more of, "Oh, cool.  This person I grew up with is having a kid. It will be fun to watch him grow up."

The Irony

Now wait a second. Isn't it only natural that people tend to empathize with and therefore sympathize what they can relate to? Most people can relate to relationship drama and babies, and so most people are going to have the expected reactions. On the the other hand, most people can't relate to a lot of what I have been through. The girls in my middle school could not relate to my inability to see that another girl was upset, and so they could not empathize with how my confusion tormented me. Most people cannot relate to needing space from games of social football, so to speak. They cannot see why such a thing would be exhausting. No sympathy there, either. Most people cannot relate to being bullied at school. They think that to be bullied as bad as I was that you have to bring it upon yourself. No sympathy. Obsessive crushes? Same deal. Not thinking about others' needs because one's own emotional survival is in jeopardy? Forget it.

In other words, many neurotypicals lack empathy and sympathy for people with Asperger's because they cannot relate to what we go through. But because their neurotype is in the majority, our not relating to them looks like lack of empathy and sympathy whereas their inability to relate to us simply means our circumstances are too weird to be relatable.

And one more thing...

I'm going to, once again, plug a book by my favorite non-fiction writer, Richard Dawkins. The Selfish Gene. It is a great book with a misleading title, and the gist of the book is that natural selection works on the level of the gene rather than the organism. The genes are selfish (in a metaphorical sense), and this selfishness of genes gives rise to altruism. After all, family members share copies of these genes, and being altruistic towards them increases their chances of being passed on to another generation.

I once had a conversation with my mother about how people go through social rituals that are often phony: telling someone their baby (which they really think is ugly) is "perfect", insisting on paying for a meal even though they know damned well that the other person is going to cover them anyway, offering a Christmas guest leftovers to take home even though the host knows the guest probably doesn't want them... I told my mother that I think these rituals are really to stay in the good grace of others who might be able to reciprocate someday when the stakes are higher. My mother, missing the point that I was trying to offer an evolutionary explanation for these rituals, said, "No, it just makes them feel good." Okay, fair enough. But what does "feeling good" mean? There is a reward system in the brain that perpetuates behaviors that benefit oneself. If I remember correctly, oxytocin in the brain is the reward. So while the person might "feel good" from helping someone else, ultimately the individual (or their genes, if you want to get technical) are benefiting.

We are all out for ourselves in the end, and no amount of sympathy and empathy-- no matter how genuine-- changes that fact.

The Long Silence, Part 5: Getting Affirmation from My Parents

Besides the gender roles/expression issue, there were other ways I needed affirmation from my parents Most were in terms of the way I perceived and still continue to perceive certain situations. Let's look at a few:

1) There was the situation in which I told Mom that one of my non-camp friends, Jenna, was into Wicca. For some reason, Mom was always wary of Jenna (but oddly enough not the "friends" from middle school who had stabbed me in the back and ultimately ditched me), but Dad had liked her. Mom had never had a kind word for Jenna, saying that she "lived on the fringe" and was a "lost soul", and this was long before the Wicca incident. Mom's disapproval of Jenna haunted me for years. Sadly, Mom doesn't remember Jenna, so I have no idea what she thought she was seeing when she looked at her. As a teenager, this really confused me. I thought, well, Mom is an adult so she theoretically must know better, so why can't I see what Mom is seeing? Years later I told my parents that Jenna had understood me. Mom said, "Well, you probably never told me that." Well of course I didn't! What difference would that have made? It would have raised more questions than answers. Besides, how do you tell your own mother, who doesn't understand you in a very profound way, that a friend of yours does? I don't think it would have been taken seriously. 

2) In terms of the Wicca incident, I didn't believe and still don't believe that, as far as religions go, Wicca is particularly dangerous. I have my own opinion in general of religion, but I won't go into it here. I think that if anything Wicca is among the least harmful religion, not necessarily because of the beliefs but simply because very few people follow it. Large herds are dangerous. 

2) I still don't see what was wrong with my drawing violent Addams Family cartoons at age 11, as long as I didn't draw them in school (which I didn't). But my parents, Mom especially, were so damned sure that what I was doing was simply wrong and needed to be stopped. 

4) Not voluntarily showing Mom any of my creative work (drawings and writing) until college because I did not know what to expect from her, whether or not she would blow up. 

5) Thinking that people were fucking with me, while my parents (again, usually Mom) were skeptical. Even as an adult, I still say that I was right 99 times out of 100.

6) Not telling Mom about my crushes because I knew she'd bring my gender expression into it, saying, "If you would dress more feminine they wouldn't be so put off by you." And yes, when I did start confessing in my early 20s, that is pretty much how she reacted.

Recently, I discussed all these issues with my parents. In a real twist to the whole, "Mom was right" cliché, my parents have admitted that they were not just wrong, but profoundly wrong and made a lot of mistakes in the past. Mom said that I was right about Jenna, and she said this because now she finally listened to what I said about Jenna. Mom and Dad admitted that Mom probably freaked out about the Wicca incident because she knew nothing about Wicca, not because she was right and had adult experience that I didn't. They also have said they were wrong to prohibit me from drawing my cartoons during my Addams Family phase. They also said that they were usually wrong when they thought people weren't fucking with me when I knew they were. This was something I especially needed to hear from Mom; Dad generally was more able to see when people were fucking with me or screwing me over in some way.

Then Dad and I had this conversation, which was something I really needed:

Me: Dad, isn't it understandable that I didn't show Mom much of my writing and artwork until college because I never knew how to expect her to react?

Dad: Yes, absolutely.

Me: Isn't it understandable that I wouldn't tell Mom about the crushes I got because I knew she'd flip out and lecture me about my gender expression?

Dad: Yes, of course.

So how and when did things finally change? In 2009, at age 28, when I was visiting my family in Pennsylvania, Mom and I got into, yes, another fight about clothes. And it was a screaming fight. She was screaming, "I'm sick of your tears! For fifteen years I've been telling you what you need to do to make your life easier, but you won't listen!" I told her I was fed up with her treating me like I was a little kid, and she insisted she wasn't. We were in the car at the time, and as soon as we got home, Mom went upstairs, and I left the house to go for a walk. I was shaking, and I took out my cell phone to call my brother and to call my shrink. Neither were available. After about ten minutes, I heard a honk. I turned around, and there was Mom in the car. Very calmly, she told me to get in. I told her I'd only get in if she promised not to scream at me. She promised.

We drove around in silence. Mom apologized. She said she had just had an epiphany. She realized that she hadn't been treating me like an adult, and that she had been blind to the fact that I was an adult. She said that she had also been blind to the fact that my reality, even if different from hers, was real and not just some immature view of the world. We started of what became a series of conversations and my coming out-- as I've said in many posts, there's a lot of coming out with Asperger's-- that still continues to this day. I have been slowly telling her and Dad things that I haven't before. Even though I know now that Mom won't flip out-- that she can't flip out, because I'm an adult--  I still am gun shy about my idisyncracies. I have to have a talk with myself and remind myself that Mom and Dad have evolved, and that Mom won't scream if I have a thought that is odd or a perspective she doesn't agree with. In fact, their evolution sometimes seems too good to be true because, as I've said, there's that old "When I was a teenager I thought I knew everything" and "Mom was right" cliché. Besides, after decades-- formative decades-- of hearing that you are wrong about everything? This new affirmation still feels too good to be true. And sometimes I don't even know which of my parents' perspectives have changed and I have to check in with them on that.

For example, in 2011 I got interested in Dr. Jack Kevorkian, less because of his euthanasia work but more because of the brilliant man he was, a unique and fiercely independent man who taught himself several languages to fluency; a man who was a writer, an artist, a musician, an inventor, a historian, and a philosopher; and a man who I was (and am) near certain had Asperger's Syndrome. It had only been two years since Mom had her epiphany, so I was still a little gun shy about how she'd react to this interest. Fortunately, she didn't give it a second thought. Then when Dr. Kevorkian died, I had tears in my eyes. Because I was so used to getting feedback that my idiosyncratic feelings were wrong, I felt like I had to come up with excuses as to why I had tears in my eyes. But then after talking myself down, so to speak, I realized that my parents wouldn't freak out about it, and I decided that if they did that it was their problem not mine. I was 30 years old, and I shouldn't have to justify any of my feelings to them. In fact, once I showed my mother this video of Dr. Jack Kevorkian:

I pointed out the intensity of his facial expressions, saying, "This is one reason why I think he had Asperger's Syndrome." Mom said she wasn't sure if his expressions indicated anything about Asperger's, but she commented, "He's someone you can identify with in a lot of ways." And boy was that something I was glad to hear. Had I been interested in Dr. Kevorkian as a teenager, Mom would have freaked out, no question. But just little affirmative comments like that, which I wasn't used to hearing? I really needed that! It's nice to know, too, that I can draw pictures of Dr. Kevorkian, have all of his books, and have prints of his work hanging in my apartment without my parents wondering why.

When I got fired from my past two major jobs, Mom said things like, "You deserve better than life has given you." Years ago, she and Dad would have been up all night wondering where they'd failed as parents. Again, it's these little things, these little changes. They make not just my life easier but my relationship with my parents better.

One thing my parents tell me is that hindsight is 20/20. Except a lot of what I am telling them now that they say is me looking at the past with 20/20 hindsight (the ridiculousness of conformity=maturity, the absurdity of social roles based on your genitals, etc) is what I tried to tell them years ago at the time these things were happening. They just hadn't listened much.

I do feel better these days about my relationship with my parents, and some people might even think I should feel victorious that the world is beginning to affirm things I've been saying for years. But I don't feel victorious. Why? To quote Al Pacino as Dr. Jack Kevorkian in the biopic You Don't Know Jack, "This isn't a victory for me; it's just common sense!"

The Long Silence, Part 4: Needing Affirmation from my parents

I've always said that I probably would have had a much easier time handling the bullying I experienced in middle school as well as the other setbacks I experienced throughout my life had my parents affirmed me instead of telling me I needed to change.

I started to get affirmation at Camp Negev, the only place I had ever felt comfortable when I was a teenager. I remember that throughout the years I was there the kids in my age group told me that I was "refreshing" and that I was "strong". One of my fondest memories was in the summer of 1996 (age 15), when my friend and mentor, Jonas, and his girlfriend (now his wife), Netya were putting my bunk to bed. We were all talking, and somehow I started talking about the one day, just a few months prior, when I had reached an epiphany and summoned the strength to stand up to the kids who were bullying me. I remember saying things like, "I finally realized that it wasn't my fault." Everybody in the room listened, really listened. When I had tried to tell my parents about it when we were in yet another fight about the clothing issue, they didn't want to hear it. But everybody in the bunk at camp that night was impressed.

Netya was one of those who was impressed, so impressed that she Tributed me a couple days later. "Tributing" was a camp tradition where one person writes a Tribute to another person-- often in the form of a poem-- and reads it in front of the entire camp. Nobody knows who that person is until the very end of the Tribute. Then the person who receives the Tribute has to Tribute someone else. In the Tribute Netya commented on my independence-- my creativity, my weird sense of humor, and even dressing tomboyish-- in a positive way. I thought to myself, "Jonas and Netya appreciate me for who I am. So do the other kids in the group. Why not my own parents?" Well, imagine how hard it was for me to go home at the end of every summer. And by the way, I still have the Tribute. Fond memories, that.

And of course the following school year was a lot of the same old, same old. I wasn't being bullied (I was now in high school, and most of the kids who had been in my middle school were zoned for another high school), but my parents-- Mom especially (how many times can I say that?)-- were still hovering over me and trying to tweak me in terms of my gender identity and expression. They didn't seem to see the growth I'd experienced by being able to stand up to the bullies-- how could they? They had never let me tell the story. They had just kept cutting me off. Another problem was that they didn't seem to believe me when I told them that people at camp appreciated the fact that I was different, and admired me for not succumbing to peer pressure in terms of gender expression. They seemed to think that people were just telling me what I wanted to hear in order to avoid conflict.

And whenever I had an opinion about anything if my parents disagreed with it, they didn't treat it like a difference of opinion. They treated it like the opinion of someone who just didn't understand how the world works. This was especially true with gender roles, and Mom's statements on this issue were always punctuated with, "You will change your mind when you get older." In other words, what you're feeling isn't real, but rather just a phase that you should have outgrown long ago. When you'll older, you're realize that you need to conform or else there's something wrong with you." Well, that's what it felt like I was hearing.

It was horrible not to get this affirmation from my parents. It is cliché for an adult to say, "As a teenager I thought I knew everything and that my parents were wrong. Well, I realize now that they're right." But I knew that there were certain things I would never change my mind on-- ever. So what did it mean? Was I destined to change my mind and "grow up", falling into the trap that many people do when they conflate conformity-- particularly gender conformity-- with maturity? And what about the fact that I rarely felt like I could tell my parents anything? Well, my parents insisted they were "always there for me" and yet I couldn't tell them much, so did that mean I was the problem?

In the spring of 1998, Dad finally said something me that I had desperately needed to hear. It started with yet another day where I was in a battle with my parents over clothes. I blew up and screamed, "You won't let me be a tomboy! You just want me to fit into this narrow-minded mold you have set for me!" Later, Mom lectured me that "tomboy" was an inappropriate word to describe myself at age 17, that tomboys were "little girls who act like boys." I said something to the effect of, "I'm proud of who I am, and you just keep telling me I'm wrong!" The next day, Dad and I had a long talk about the whole tomboy issue. Loosely quoting Inherit the Wind (and confusing "gene" with "chromosome"), I said, "Yes, I have a second X gene. It's a gene. It's a determining gene, but it's not the only gene!" Dad listened, and said that I had made a valid point. He said, "You're right. We have been too restrictive on you." At the end of the conversation, I asked, "Mom says I'll change my mind about these things. Will I?" Dad said, "No, because it goes against everything you believe in." I don't think he knew how badly I needed to hear that.

It got better, but I had to wait another eleven years for that to happen. And that will be discussed in the next and final blog post.

The Long Silence, Part 3: Pushed Further into the Closet

Towards the end of my teenage years, I really began to feel that my home was not an emotionally safe place for me. In actions reminiscent of "love the sinner, hate the sin"(although religion had nothing to do with it), my parents, despite thinking they were helping me, drove me into a closet. This was especially true in terms of my mother. Like a religious person who thinks the "sin" of homosexuality is merely a superficial behavior-- divorced from core personality and identity-- that needs to be corrected, my parents seemed to think that a lot of what were core aspects about my personality and identity were superficial behaviors. Not only that, they thought they were marks of immaturity and signs of being unable to understand the real world.

A Tomboy in the Closet

I've mentioned in several other blogposts that I've always used the word "tomboy" to identify myself and my slightly lopsided gender identity, rather than in a tongue-in-cheek way that people usually do ("Oh, she likes to do woodwork. She's such a tomboy!"). But it seemed that my parents-- again, Mom especially-- were inordinately focused on this aspect about me. The way I wore my hair-- for almost 4 years, almost always in a ponytail because it was thick and made me look like a "bombshell", which was not me at all-- was a constant topic of conversation. Phrases I repeatedly heard were "Why can't you wear it down?", "You're the only girl who doesn't like looking pretty!", and the sarcastic "Fine! Cut your hair like a boy!" And what hurt was that I secretly did want to cut my hair in a tomboyish way, but I wasn't allowed, so pulling my hair back was the next best thing. How in the world could I talk to my parents about how I felt if Mom said such dismissive things about my insistence on not wearing my "bombshell" hair down?

Then there was the one time when Dad asked me to wear my hair down for him as a Father's Day present. That was just humiliating. Of course I didn't do it.

Pushed into the closet.

And then there was the clothing issue. I hated wearing shirts that were even slightly girly. I wore polo shirts, flannels, sweatshirts, T-shirts, and military fatigues. But my parents constantly commented on this, telling me that I was too old to dress like that. It made no sense to me that being androgynous was a sign of immaturity to them. When I tried to tell them that in some ways I felt more like a boy than a girl, they just told me I didn't understand how the real world works. They didn't hear a statement about who I was, but rather a statement coming from naivety and immaturity.

I repeatedly had nightmares about being forced to dress in what I call "boob-neckline" (low-cut) shirts. When I had to dress up for family occasions, I felt extremely uncomfortable. I looked in the mirror and didn't see myself. I saw someone wearing an elaborate disguise. It was even worse when my parents put me on display for each other and commented about how I was dressed. It usually went like this:

Mom: Doesn't she look great in that?
Dad: Yeah, she looks like a girl."

If my brother were there, forget it. He'd throw gas on the fire and add, "For once" to one or both of those statements.

Instead of the comments having their intended effect and encouraging me to dress the way they wanted me to, all I heard was, "The way you dress is wrong. I don't approve of your being a tomboy. This is what we want to see, and you'd better learn to like it."

Pushed further into the closet.

In fact, there was one time when I was eating at a restaurant with my family and we ran into one of my mother's high school students. The girl had long blonde hair, was wearing makeup, earrings, a boob-neckline shirt, and short shorts, revealing perfectly shaven legs. I remember at that moment thinking, "This is the kind of daughter Mom wants, and I can't give her that because it's not who I am."

When my brother graduated from high school, my mother submitted "To thine own self be true" as a comment for his yearbook graduation photo. I remember thinking, "Yeah, she can say that to him because the way he is naturally fits in with her expectations."

Pushed even further into the closet.

Asperger's Sexuality

I've mentioned in numerous blog posts that I rarely get crushes, but when they do they are very overwhelming and intense. Mercifully, my last one was seven years ago, and I've never been in a relationship (although I kissed one guy, and that was in summer 1999, age 18!). I got my first crush very late, just a few months before my fifteenth birthday. Prior to that, I would have embraced the word "asexual" had I heard of it. The problem was that I hadn't heard of it, and neither had Mom.

Figuring out my sexuality was another issue my mother seemed inordinately focused on. At the most random moments, Mom would ask me, often in a panicked voice that she unsuccessfully tried to disguise, "Do you have a crush? Have you ever had a crush? Do you like being around boys? Do you get a 'special feeling' around boys? Do you get crushes on girls?" Years later Mom told me that I was "insulted" when she asked me these questions, but really, I was just uncomfortable: she asked these questions frequently, at the most random moments, and in the most awkward ways. When I gave her an honest answer-- first "no" when I didn't have crushes, and then "yes" when I finally started getting them-- she just pressed further. It seemed that she was less interested in getting an honest answer than my telling her what she wanted to hear. If I were gay she would have been fine with it, but it also seemed she wouldn't rest until I told her what would have been lies. To get her to stop grilling me, I would have had to lie and say things like, "Yes, when I walk into a room full of boys (or girls), I'm overwhelmed at how cute all of them are." I wasn't like most girls. I didn't "get that special feeling" when I was around boys as a whole, but rather if there was one particular person whom I liked "in that way", which was rare.

I finally did open to Dad about my issue with obsessive crushes, right after I came back from my CIT summer at Camp Negev and had had my third obsessive crush. I remember very clearly telling him, "Don't tell Mom about this, because then she'll see it as yet another problem that I have that we have to focus on." Sadly, keeping that secret was my only option. And it probably spared me a lot of pain until the day eleven years later (more about that in Part 4), when Mom was finally ready to learn and accept the truth. How do I know? Around the same time I made the serious mistake of telling Mom that one of my friends was into Wicca. She freaked out. Years later, she told me that she doesn't remember this but had probably thought to herself, "Great, this is yet another problem that my daughter has."

In this regard, I was pushed further into the closet, at least in terms of Mom.

So who did affirm me? That is discussed in the next post.

The Long Silence, Part 2: Confessing Secrets

As my last post illustrated, I kept a lot hidden from my parents. I could tell Dad a little, but there was still a limit to his ability to understand me. As for my mother, forget it. Over the past few years I have slowly begun to tell them about the emotional and mental turmoil I experienced as a teenager, especially in terms of trying to navigate crushes. It is not much different than the coming-out process that LGBTQ people go through, confessing feelings and thoughts that most people think are "wrong". Even today it is still awkward telling my parents about things that I had kept from them for so long, because I am so used to being told that my feelings are "wrong" and that my actions are "immature." This operant conditioning is a result of what I heard in my formative years, over and over again: I was too old to be a tomboy and that I should like typically feminine clothes; that I should have crushes, but not so intensely; I shouldn't feel devastated if someone hurts me, because I probably brought it on myself or am just misinterpreting them... and so forth.

This blog post has two confessions about the summer of 1998, when I was in the CIT program at Camp Negev. On the first day, the head staff broke the shocking news to me that I was not allowed to work with the kids. I also developed a crush on one of the counselors, Omri. Although the summer was mostly good, both of these aforementioned circumstances caused me a lot of stress. When I was hit with the bombshell that I was not going to get to work with kids until possibly 2nd session (and fortunately they did let me work with them 2nd session), they essentially had told me, "You made your bed, now sleep in it." Had I made some really stupid mistakes in the past that they were right to be concerned about? Yes. Did I have some growing up to do? You betcha. But both then and now I felt their concerns were hypocritical because these people were guilty of their own appalling inappropriateness: smoking weed on camp premises, leaving kids alone in cabins, yelling at kids who were a little "different"... But just imagine the stress I felt, with little sympathy from most of the staff. In fact, I was expected to repress any frustrations I felt and keep a Wendy Wright smile plastered on my face. How could anybody be expected to work under that kind of pressure?

This is where the secrets come in. Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you. Two somethings, actually. I vaguely alluded to the second one at the end of the summer of 1998, but I refused to elaborate because I knew I would be lectured about how I couldn't blow up and I had to keep my cool... even under that horrible pressure. Now you will finally know these secrets, and I'm sure by now you've figured it out: The Monster visited me that summer, twice as a matter of fact.

The Monster's First Session Visit:

During first session, I did the math and figured out that the only reason that I even got into the CIT program was because my friend and mentor, Jonas (who that summer was working at one of Negev's sister camps in upstate New York), persuaded the staff to let me in. One day, Jonas came to camp to visit with the sister camp he was working at. As soon as I saw him, I ran and practically jumped him as I gave him a hug. I said, "It's so good to see you!" Then I said to him, "I figured it out-- you talked them into letting me in." Jonas gave a non-committal shrug and laughed awkwardly.

And then the pieces fell abruptly into place. Think we Aspies can't read between the lines? I concluded then that I had misunderstood-- Jonas didn't fight to get me into camp, but rather he made sure I didn't get to work with kids. When I realized what had happened, I felt shocked and horrified, and that my friend had stabbed me in the back. This was the guy who I thought understood me and who was always there for me, only to betray me in one of the worst possible ways. In short, I felt humiliated. I said, "Wait a second. You didn't want me to work with kids. Some friend you are!" And I stormed off.

I tried to keep the tears in because I knew I couldn't be visibly upset-- after all, mature people don't have emotions, right (yes, dear, that was sarcasm-- you see the ridiculous standards people held me to?)? But one of my counselors could see that I was upset and forced it out of me. I cried and screamed because I was in such horrible pain. She tried to calm me down, but neither she nor anybody else understood what this was doing to me. They just saw the superficial behavior of having an emotional outburst, not the devastating buildup that had led to it, with my realization about Jonas being the catalyst.

I tried to find Jonas again but he was nowhere around. Turned out he was taking his kids tubing on the Delaware, so I had to wait for him to get back. When he finally did get back, we sat and talked. It turned out that I was right the first time-- he had fought to get me into camp because he knew it would damn near kill me if I couldn't go to camp that summer. And while I may have jumped the gun about him making sure I didn't get to work with kids, it wasn't entirely unfounded. He agreed with them that I wasn't ready yet. After he explained this to me, I felt somewhat better. But of course I was still hurt that for months he and others had known I was not going to get to work with kids and that I didn't know until the first day of camp. I was still very upset that he had kept this from me for several months. But the bombshell? He thought I had known. He thought the camp director had told me months ago.

I also told Jonas that I didn't like one of my counselors-- we'll call him David-- and that I got the feeling he didn't like me and had no sympathy for me. Jonas, naively, said that David cared about me-- cared about me so much that he had driven down to the river to tell Jonas what was going on with me. Sorry, I call bullshit on that one. David had had it in for me then. He was nasty to me on several occasions, and I don't think by driving to the tubing site to talk to Jonas he wanted to do anything except rat on me.

So there you go. The first visit from The Monster. And of course nobody forgot it, and it was just another mark on my Chalkboard of Mistakes that prevented them from hiring me as a counselor the following summer.

The Monster's Second Session Visit

Mom and Dad, you probably don't remember this. But I had vaguely alluded to getting "a little upset" on a three-day, twenty-mile-hike camping trip during second session. I refused to elaborate, and you kept unsuccessfully trying to force it out of me. This is what happened:

The night before we had left for the camping trip, I was in the shower... OK, I admit it; I was just standing in the girls' shower because I knew that my crush, Omri, was showering with some guys on the boys' side (it was a bathhouse-- girls' and boys' showers were separated by a wall). So of course I hoped to accidentally/on purpose run into him when he came outside. What happened? I overheard my name being dropped a few times. When Omri came out of the shower, I asked him what was said. He said that he and others had said that they were tired of hearing me "bitching", complaining about things. In some cases some things that I had said as a joke were misinterpreted as me complaining-- and sadly that still goes on with me today.

 Omri and I had a very tense talk, and I knew that he was done with me and that he was tired with me (another note-- it wasn't that I couldn't  pick up on these cues, it was more that I didn't know what the fuck to do with them!) and that with only a week of camp left I still had a lot to do to prove that I could come back as a counselor the following summer. I went to bed that night, crushed that Omri was tired of me and crushed that my chances of being hired as a counselor the following summer were essentially zero. I may have been given kids to work with 2nd session, but I knew damn well I wasn't out of the woods yet.

The next day I was very quiet until I confronted one of my close guy friends who had been in the shower the night before when my name was dropped. He said that someone had made a passing reference to me "bitching", but my friend also had told others that I wasn't given enough credit for the good things I did for the campers I was in charge of and that people seemed to only notice my mistakes. Would have been nice had Omri told me about that part.

The rest of the day, walking mile after mile, was quite a bit tense for me. That evening, as we set up camp, I accidentally knocked over a box of cereal, its contents spilling on the ground. The other CITs who were around said, "Julie!" Of course it was probably a momentary thing, something they would have laughed about ten minutes later. But I was like a soda bottle that had been shaken over and over, with finally someone taking the cap off. I snapped. My emotions, which had to be put on the back burner in the name of "maturity", spilled out along with that cereal. Another visit from the monster, screaming, crying... I hurled someone's flashlight across the clearing, and the damned thing broke (fortunately its owner forgave me-- the kids in my group were generally very accepting and nice and understanding towards me). My counselor-- the one I liked, not David the Dickhead-- was trying to calm me down, just as she did first session when the incident with Jonas happened. But I was in hysterics. I was hurting because Omri wasn't my friend. I was hurting because I couldn't be a counselor. And I knew that my outburst was the nail in the coffin, and that I absolutely wouldn't get hired the following summer. I was right.

Nobody, nobody, nobody understood how devastating it was to have strong feelings for someone only for them to want nothing to do with you. Nobody could understand the confusion I felt that things had turned out like this after Omri had treated me like a friend in the beginning of the summer. Nobody understood how hard things in life were for me that everybody took for granted.

And back then nobody knew the name for my condition. I was simply a "behavior problem" and I was "immature". My visits from the Monster were seen by others not as overwhelming frustration that I could no longer keep bottled up, but as childish temper tantrums. Needless to say, these two incidents were the most cited when Camp Negev explained why they wouldn't hire me as a counselor.

Nobody understood me, and I didn't even understand it myself. So Mom and Dad, why would have I told you about these things back then?