A Sad and Cautionary Tale that Makes Too Much Sense

Note: All names have been changed to protect individuals' privacy.

I've often written about Melanie, my ex-best friend who cut me off ten years ago when she didn't invite me to her wedding and stopped talking to me completely, all without explanation. If you're late to the party, you can find the first post about it here and the most recent post about it-- which also addresses its long-term effects on me-- here. 

In the second of those links, I tell the story about how an advertisement for a "Family Movie Night" featuring Moana was the catalyst for an elaborate and embittered fantasy that I concocted in my head: one of parents cheerfully taking their kids to a Disney movie, all the while having forgotten their identities and having excised their childfree friends. 

Indeed, this is the image I had harbored of Melanie and her husband and kids for the past ten years-- well, sort of. I had already known that Melanie's living situation was bizarre; I heard down the grapevine that she and her husband and kids were still living with her parents in their small northeast Philadelphia home. But aside from that, the otherwise pristine image of Melanie and her family remained in my mind... really, because of the way my mother initially reacted in 2008 when it had become clear that Melanie was no longer talking to me. My mother, who has since apologized profusely, had said these exact words: "Melanie is in a stage of her life where you're not invited." Mom went on about how this is what usually happens when people get married (years later I learned that she had told me that obvious lie because for some reason she thought it would make me feel better...uhhh??) and that I needed to learn to take hints. "She's trying to tell you something," my mother muttered (I could practically hear her facepalming at the other end of the line). "What?"  grunted. "She's not interested," my mother grunted back."

This conversation had made me feel inadequate-- even though I had known about Melanie's living situation and even that her mother was controlling (more on that later), I continued to imagine her in this mostly blissful, idyllic life: going to see a Disney movie in a public park on a warm summer night with her husband and kids; sitting on a bench at the playground with other mothers and talking about their kids' achievements while the kids played on the swings; having neighborhood potlucks with families that her family is close with... all the while having cast me off because I had been holding her down.

But I learned something interesting down the grapevine a couple weeks ago: Melanie has fibromyalgia. It isn't this information that shattered the "idyllic" image of Melanie's life (though it certainly didn't help). Instead, it was something else that I found out from an old mutual friend, Jenna, who I'd lost contact with around 2004 or 2005 and later reconnected with in 2015. Jenna hadn't been in contact with Melanie since about 2002 or so, and they (Jenna's preferred pronoun) also have fibromyalgia. I thought this was an interesting-- if sad-- coincidence. I told Jenna what I had found out, and they told me that they weren't interested in hearing about someone who had cut them off without explanation...

Wait, what?

Jenna said that they had thought they'd told me this a while ago. But they hadn't. Jenna then explained that around 2002 Melanie stopped returning Jenna's phone calls and emails and wouldn't even take their phone calls. What makes this even more interesting is that around 2002 or 2003 I had asked Melanie, "Do you still talk to Jenna?" I don't remember Melanie's exact words, but she said something that made it sound like she and Jenna had simply fallen out of contact. 

The fact that this has happened with at least two people who had once been close with Melanie is revealing. Why Melanie stayed in contact with me for a few years after severing contact with Jenna, I couldn't tell you. But I strongly suspect that this wasn't entirely Melanie's decision, and maybe not even hers at all. While I still think she's a jerk for doing what she did, I think her mother put her up to it, but perhaps not in an overt way. I think Melanie's mother gradually poisoned Melanie's mind against Jenna and me, and Melanie told herself that she simply "lost contact" with Jenna and possibly with me. But how would Melanie "not know" what really happened? Because, if my hypothesis is true, Melanie is also a victim in this-- a victim of her controlling mother. 

In other posts I've alluded to Melanie's mother being a control freak. She wasn't someone who I would call abusive, not by a long shot. However, she did shelter Melanie in bizarre ways, squashed her individuality, and did not give her any tools to function as an adult. Growing up, both of us complained about our mothers for similar reasons, often to the tune of, "I'm unconventional and my mom is trying to change that." In the case of my mother, she was trying to help me be happy but did it in a tragically misguided and ultimately hurtful way, which she now realizes and regrets. In Melanie's case, her happiness was not part of the equation: Her mother had an image in her mind of what Melanie should be like and was determined to realize it at all costs. How do I know that her motives were different? Well, technically I don't know that, but I look back at a lot of incidents from when we were kids that support this theory:

1. When Melanie was a teenager, she told me that she had recently been at a gathering in which she had been playing basketball with a group of boys. Her mother called out to Melanie and said, "Come sit with the women." Yes, Melanie. Stop getting exercise with kids your age and come over and sit with middle-aged people whose genitals look like yours (sorry, but that's what it comes down to). My mother would never have done that! In fact, she would have been happy that there were finally other kids who wanted to hang out with me -- regardless of what was in their pants -- and that I was getting exercise.

2. One time when I was seventeen and Melanie was eighteen, I said something about someone being a nutcase. Melanie told me, "Oh, I'm not allowed to say 'nutcase'. My mom says it's too sexual. She tells me to say 'nutball' instead." No, this absurdity was not a line out of Ralph Wiggum on The Simpsons. 

3. I wanted combat boots, and so my parents got them for me for my eighteenth birthday. Melanie wanted a pair too but her mother wouldn't get them for her because they were deemed too masculine. Never mind that plenty of teen girls in the '90s wore combat boots. 

4. When Melanie finally met the guy she ended up marrying, at age twenty-one, she had to sneak him up to her room to fool around because she wasn't allowed to have boys upstairs. That's right-- she was in her twenties and this rule was still there.

5. The very last time I saw Melanie was in the summer of 2005, when I was twenty-four and Melanie was twenty-five. We met at Six Flags Hurricane Harbor in New Jersey. Melanie had originally planned to come back to New York City with me (where I'd been living at the time), but her mother had already planned a "girls' day out" for the next day-- and told Melanie about it at the last minute. Additionally, her mother said she wanted Melanie home at 8:00. Yes, a twenty-five-year-old had a curfew. 

6. After Melanie had gotten engaged, her mother had started bugging her about grandchildren. I don't mean the typical, "Oh, are you going to have kids?" or even "When do you think you'll have kids?" It was relentless pressure to the tune of, "I wanna be a grandma!" Melanie's comments that she had wanted to wait a couple years after marriage before having kids apparently fell on deaf ears. 

You get the idea. Melanie remained under her mother's roof into adulthood. Even when she went to college, she commuted (I realize this could be a financial issue, but I'm not convinced of that in this case). She met a man, married him, and gave her mother the grandchildren that she'd demanded. Oh, sure, she and her family live with her parents, but otherwise she has found true happiness, right? And because she's married and has children, she must be a true adult, right?

No. I doubt that "true happiness" is the term to describe Melanie's adult life, and not because of the compromising condition of fibromyalgia either. The above examples strongly suggest that Melanie's mother not only groomed Melanie to grow up to be like her, but also that she probably expected Melanie to continue living in her childhood home through adulthood: At the time that Melanie's mother pressured Melanie about wanting grandchildren yesterday, Melanie had been working at Macy's for a mere $8 an hour.  

Melanie had complained about her mother trying to squash her unconventional personality over the years, but she stopped in her early twenties. In fact, when she first started dating the guy she ended up marrying, I saw a radical transformation: This rambunctious tomboy who'd been my best friend for years turned into a demure, 1950s woman who even said, "Oh, my sweetie knows about that" when I asked her what kind of computer she had. And no, I don't think this change was for her husband-to-be; I met the guy and I liked him, and I find it difficult to imagine him trying to make a woman into someone passive. Rather, I think Melanie did this for her mother. I think the message Melanie's mother had given Melanie was subtle but clear: She could either conform to her mother's expectations and they could have a good relationship, or she could tell her mother to fuck off and they'd have no relationship. One or the other. No compromise. Melanie did not want to lose her relationship with her mother, so the choice was very clear. Part of the choice involved cutting off any friends that her mother deemed "weird". I personally think her mother's issue with me was that she thought I was going to do something inappropriate at the wedding and also be a bad influence on the eventual grandchildren. She couldn't have me ruining the 1950s-white-picket-fence-wholesome image she was trying to create. She probably would have seen Jenna as a similar threat to that image.

Maybe you believe I'm overthinking this. I realize I very well might be. I could be wrong about a few things; I could be wrong about everything. I get that this is all speculation But despite my mother's initial comments ten years ago, you cannot seriously tell me that Melanie is an adult just because she is married and she has children. She has never left her parents' house, and I don't think it's for financial considerations either; her husband is a computer programmer. She is probably still under her mother's control and likely has adopted her mother's sociopolitical views simply because she hasn't had much exposure to anything else. She lives in Philadelphia, but it might as well be rural Kansas.

What makes my hypothesis, if true, even sadder is this: My mom believes that Melanie is on the autism spectrum. I'm not convinced that she is, but I think it's possible. I initially rejected that suggestion for a couple reasons: 1) People on the autism spectrum don't tend to be swayed by peer pressure, and 2) Melanie called me out on inappropriate behaviors a number of times when we were teenagers, and 3) Melanie had a lot of friends in high school.

My mother, who is a retired teacher, made me reconsider. She pointed out that while a number of her autistic students are very independent, there are many others who are just like their parents, but in a very superficial way that doesn't seem to reflect the child's true self. In fact, Tony Attwood, the kingpin of Asperger's experts, has pointed out that many autistic girls in particular mimic their peers or parents. They see that these people are socially successful and believe that in order to have friends and a happy life that they have to imitate them. The sad thing is that many of them, when they do this, end up repressing their true selves. In adulthood this catches up to them and leads to a major identity crisis. 

If this profile of autism does indeed describe Melanie, then it could be that she learned how to superficially mimic her peers in order to make a lot of friends in high school. It could be that she also commented on my behaviors simply because she saw that I didn't act like her peers, and yet her comments may have lacked any real insight. Or it could be simply that her mother told her to call me out on these things. It wouldn't surprise me at all. In fact, if I remember correctly, when Melanie related the story about her mother telling her to say "nutball" instead of "nutcase" because the latter was "too sexual", there wasn't a hint of irony in her voice. She said it matter-of-factly and with a straight face. It also makes me wonder: Did Melanie have kids because she honestly and sincerely wanted to, or did she just think she wanted to because it was what her mother and society at large expected of her? 

Melanie was a talented visual artist and singer. Even though the arts are not usually marketable skills, Melanie could perhaps pursued freelance work (at least prior to the fibromyalgia diagnosis, which I understand was very recent). At the very least, she and her husband could have moved out; her husband is a computer programmer and there are many affordable, nice apartments in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She could have found some other type of work and done her art on the side. But the last time I saw her, she was no longer drawing and I don't think she was singing either. Melanie had so much potential, but I think her mother crushed her.

Ultimately, I have a very different perception of what exactly happened between Melanie and me. While I do believe Melanie needs to take responsibility for what she did to Jenna and me-- she is an adult, after all-- I realize that it's likely that she is also a victim. It is indeed sad.

Parents of Asperger's girls, I'm watching you.

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?

I Hate Money: Part 2

As I illustrated in Part I, people are often judged by how much money they make: If you're 35 and aren't financially independent, you're lazy; if you mention having Asperger's Syndrome, you're just using it as an excuse; ultimately, there is some low-hanging fruit that you've somehow missed.

Recently, I had another horrible situation involving money. I took my cat to the vet for his long-overdue annual checkup (on my parents' dime, no less), and the vet said she was concerned about my cat's teeth. He had gingivitis, and she felt that X-rays and maybe even extractions were in order. She quoted me at $850. I told her I'd see what I could do. My cat hadn't gotten any dental care in four years because I couldn't afford it, and he's had issues practically from day one. I didn't think I could ask my parents for the money-- one time when I asked for money for a dental cleaning for my cat, my parents got upset at me (I know now that they didn't realize that this was a chronic issue for my cat; they'd thought I just wanted to brush his teeth). I was very concerned because I know that dental problems can affect other systems, and even increase the risk of a heart attack.

I went home and looked around my apartment for anything I could sell to raise the money. I had a ton of DVDs, and if they would sell on eBay, I could raise the money. But the keyword is if. Very few people buy DVDs on eBay. Why do that when you can just buy it for less on iTunes or stream it for free on Netflix? I then decided to do something I've seen people on Facebook do a million times-- set up a GoFundMe. I set the cap at $700, with the intention of paying the final $150 myself-- I felt that I should take on as much of the financial burden as I could. I thought that at best two or three people would donate, and that when the donations didn't add up, I'd end up refunding them. But to my great surprise, $100 came in in one day. So I posted the link to the GoFundMe on my Facebook page twice a day every day. I set it, however, so that my mother and brother (who are both on Facebook) couldn't see it. I felt that this fundraiser just needed to be done, and I didn't want to deal with what I thought would be the standard lecture of, "You don't do that! It makes you look irresponsible!" or "Just posting it on Facebook will make people feel pressured!" or even, "What if potential employers stumble upon this when they Google your name? What would they think that says about you?"

The money came in, slowly but surely, but it wasn't without any backlash. I asked a few people in direct messages-- in most cases during a conversation, rather than a sudden message from me with the query-- and I was careful as to how I phrased it. Rather than saying, "Can you donate to this?" or something to that effect, I said, "Would you be interested in helping me with this? If not, that's OK." One friend said, "I wouldn't have a cat that I couldn't afford." Then she got upset and said that her parents would never pay her rent like mine do for me and that they hold her to higher standards. Because life has been so shitty for me for the past three years, that hit me pretty hard. The implication seemed to be that I was a spoiled kid from rich parents who just gave her money whenever she wanted it, and didn't expect her to pull her weight. This is absolutely not the case. Ultimately, my friend and I talked it out, and she apologized profusely, saying that she'd been having some problems of her own lately and that I'd caught her at a bad time. She eventually donated. Although my friend said what she said when she was having a bad moment (it happens to us all; she is a good friend and very kind otherwise), it made me wonder if what she seemed to imply was true. It sucks to have to think that way.

I also run a Meetup group. I sent an email to the group telling them about the GoFundMe. I started it with, "I know this is a bit unorthodox, but..." and, of course, said, "If you would rather not donate, that's OK too." I sent this message three times in the period of a month. On the third time, a woman responded by reading me the riot act, using loaded words like "egregious", chastising me for my "brazen gall", saying that she was "flabbergasted by [my] audacity", and that I was "abusing [my] role as a leader." Then she said that she went to my GoFundMe page and was suspicious by how many people from the Meetup had donated (it was 4 people out of 22 total donors). When I finally told her I had Asperger's and, in the heat of the moment, said, "Clearly my social skills and judgment are shitty", she said, "Excuses, excuses." Thankfully, she left the group.

I then emailed someone who'd just donated literally moments before to make sure she hadn't felt pressured. She said that she hadn't felt pressured, and then said that she donated because she doesn't like to see animals suffering. Then she went on to tell me that I was irresponsible for not having pet insurance (which, incidentally, is incredibly expensive).

For the record, I hate asking people for money. I even hate asking my parents for money. I did this GoFundMe because I didn't know what else to do, and I didn't want to have to worry about my cat having some long-term health problem that would cost thousands of dollars or that would kill him. I would never have asked for donations to, say, pay off a credit card or to buy the latest iPhone. The irony is, that when I finally did tell my parents, their response was, "Why didn't you just come to us?" As I mentioned before, I thought that it would upset them. I'm glad to say that I was wrong. I'm also glad to say that they thought there was nothing wrong with me doing a fundraiser: If people don't want to donate, they don't donate. My parents, if anything, were upset at the people who judged me and spoke to me with self-righteous indignation.

As you can see in this blog post and its predecessor, I have been judged in a variety of ways for not being financially independent. In most cases, the other people didn't know what I have been going through, except in the case of Chris, who knew but wrote it off as me not trying. I have this to say: Walk a mile in my shoes before making such harsh judgments.

As for my cat, he had the procedure yesterday. He had four extractions. A frivolous fundraiser, indeed!

I Hate Money: Part I

Whoa! Sorry for the long lapse in posts. Life has been pretty hectic and stressful lately. That said, I hate money.

Yes, I hate money. I hate how much money dominates our day-to-day decisions. I hate the fact that I don't have enough of it to make ideal day-to-day decisions. But more than anything, I hate how people are judged by how much of it they have. And for the past two months in particular, I've been under a lot of stress related to such judgments.

 I have a Master's Degree and I'm lucky if I can land a job that pays $13.00 per hour. Welcome to the world of living with being a woman who has Asperger's Syndrome. Right now I'm taking web development classes in hopes of becoming a web developer and finally, finally, FINALLY becoming financially independent, but it's been a real uphill climb. In the meantime, I had a falling out with an old friend, and a lot of it had to do with judgments based on how much money I make.

To be fair, the "friend", who I'll call Chris, was never someone I felt close to. I only saw him about once a year (he lives in Connecticut) and I found I could only take him in small doses. He, too, is on the autism spectrum, and the honest truth is that I generally don't get along with autistic men. In general, for reasons that are not yet understood (one hypothesis has to do with prenatal testosterone levels), autistic women and men present very differently, almost as if they're speaking two profoundly different languages. I just don't find that I can be on the same wavelength as them. But that's just me, and I hope this isn't perceived as a judgment call about autistic guys. Anyway, about Chris: He is a web developer, and he most likely makes a ton of money. I don't know how much, but obviously enough that he has no problem sneering at those who don't.

Last year on Facebook, Chris said that those who have Obamacare -- knowing full well that I have it -- are lazy. Then he said nothing while one of his friends chewed me out and told me to stop sucking Uncle Sam's teat. After the whole thing blew over, I decided to write it off as him being autistic (he is much, much more profoundly autistic than I am) and not realizing how he came across. But the personally insulting posts-- while not necessarily directed at me-- went on. I began to seriously consider unfriending Chris in every sense of the word when he posted a status that said something like, "I'm sorry I've ever heard of autism. I know at least three people who use it as an excuse for not being successful." I called him on it, reminding him that both of us went to art school (which is where we met) and this aspect threw a monkey wrench into things for me. Then he asked me, "Well why was your friend Flora successful?" (Flora is a friend who has had a very successful animation career). Then he asked me about a film that I had started several years ago but "refused to finish." His words, not mine.

Once again, it blew over. But I was extraordinarily upset that Chris, who used to be the kind of person who'd give the shirt off his back for anyone who needed it, was judging me for not being financially stable like he is. He's even left posts that he thinks people who can't afford health care should be left to die. In short, he has become a right-wing libertarian, and is starting to sound like Donald Trump.

The straw that broke the camel's back came about a month ago when Chris posted on Facebook, "Why do people with Asperger's seem like they are either the smartest people in the room or they are not only annoying and obsessive (while failing at life in so many ways), but actually love being that way?" Again, I don't think he was necessarily directing that at me, but it hit me pretty hard. He knows I've been struggling for a very long time, and he knows that I feel like a failure. Once again, I called him out on it. He essentially shrugged it off. I didn't unfriend him on a whim; I sat on it a week before doing so. I think I'm pretty reasonable; if he contacted me to try to work it out, I would be willing to listen. But he hasn't done so, and I feel that I'm well-rid of him. And I have no reason to feel guilty. He has plenty of friends, and is even engaged. Who knows, maybe this woman has been a bug in his ear.