It has bothered me over the years that when I tell somebody a story about something I've struggled with in my life, or even something traumatic, people think the way to make me feel better and validated (if that is indeed what I'm looking for, but it usually isn't) is to say, "That happens to everyone" or "That happened to me one time..." and then they tell an anecdote that is tangentially related.
No.
Stop.
It is a simple fact that those of us on the autism spectrum have problems with things that most people take for granted. So unless your experience is really that similar (and I doubt it is), then I don't want to hear your story.
So shut up and listen.
Here are some examples of when this sort of thing has happened:
When I was a kid in the 1990s and dealing with autism in an era in which it wasn't well-known, I found myself getting obsessed with movies and television shows. I knew this was weird. I told my therapist about this, and he said, "Oh, everybody gets obsessed with things. Some people are obsessed with... relationships."
Where do I even start with this one? First of all, it was considered "normal" to be obsessed with relationships, but not with movies and television shows. And I wasn't even in a relationship, let alone getting obsessed with one. And I don't use the term "obsession" lightly, and I didn't back then. The way most people use it has the connotation of "slightly preoccupied". With me, it had the connotation of "all consuming". So no, that didn't make me feel better. It just made me feel like my shrink had no idea what he was talking about.
Shut up and listen.
Over the years, before I got the job that I've been at for three years now, whenever I told people about being fired from job after job, or having a hard time finding a job, people often would respond by telling me about being laid off and unemployed, say, for a year and a half.
No, no, no! You don't tell someone who has been chronically employed for 14 goddamned years after finishing college about the time you were jobless for a year and a half. They have nothing to do with each other, especially since chronic unemployment is textbook for autistic people.
Shut up and listen.
Last year, when I was running a debate Meetup, I got into a conversation with one of the members. I told him that I was on the autism spectrum and made some vague allusion to the fact that college was "a difficult period in my life". This guy said, "Well everybody goes through a difficult period in their life."
First of all, no. I'm not going to go into a tangent about exactly what it was, but I promise that what I went through in college was fairly unusual. To add insult to injury, the guy who said this had some kind of connective tissue disorder that made him unusually short and, with no tactful way to say it, he looked a bit odd. If he had trouble with some physical task due to his condition, it would be pretty shitty of me to tell him that everyone has trouble with [insert physical task here] sometimes.
Shut up and listen.
Recently, at a writing group, I workshopped a personal essay I wrote about an obsessive crush that I had at age sixteen during my summer group trip to Israel. As the essay made clear, this crush, on one of the counselors, had been all-consuming and seriously disrupted my experience. I chased this guy around like I was Pepe LePew and did stupid things like waiting for him outside of buildings in the middle of the night. One night I was up until 1:00 AM crying over him.
While we were discussing my essay, I said something about how 23 years later I'm still embarrassed by my behavior. Someone thought it would be a great idea to tell me that she had a crush on a counselor when she was a kid, and she tripped and fell in front of him, and it was soooo embarrassing.
No, no, no, no, fucking NO! First of all, did she even read my essay? Well, yes, she did, and that's why her reaction is even more ridiculous. My piece made very clear that I was dealing with something much more serious and intense than giggling over a "cute guy". Her story about being embarrassed about falling in front of a counselor she had a crush on is not in the same universe as my embarrassment about spending an entire god damned summer obsessively chasing my crush around.
Shut up and listen.
If somebody tells you a story about something they've struggled with, just shut up and listen. Don't pretend you know how they feel. Rather than making them feel better, it comes across as dismissive and invalidating. It makes the person feel even more isolated because they are seeing further evidence that you don't appreciate the gravity of what they have to deal with. I would never tell someone starving in Africa that I know how they feel because I was hungry when I skipped lunch one time, or even because I once fasted for a day. Nor would I tell a black person that I understand how it feels to be frightened around cops, because one time I was slightly nervous around a particularly nasty one. I'm not going to tell a quadriplegic that I know how it feels not to be able to walk because I broke my ankle 25 years ago.
Really, what is so difficult about saying, "Hey, you know what? I really don't get it, but I imagine it's rough."
Or better yet, just shut up and listen.
Showing posts with label Meetup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Meetup. Show all posts
Saturday, June 20, 2020
Saturday, May 28, 2016
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!
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)