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wispfoxI am reminded by this of exactly how lucky I was, growing up.
Lucky to have had the first bunch of years of schooling at home, with small groups of people, who at least somewhat understood how I worked. Lucky to have not lost my love of learning in the terror that school ended up being, once I was actually in school outside of my home. Without my love of learning and my curiosity, a _huge_ amount of the necessary impetous toward learning how to cope and doing things no matter how terrifying they were would be gone. I do intensely scary (generally having to do with either being something I have little to no previous experience with, or being a transition state) things in order to get to the good things that I have reason to believe are there.
Lucky to have parents who _did_ just tell me things, rather than expecting me to miraculously pick up on things. And encouraged me to ask questions when I was confused, rather than just hope I'd figure it out. Lucky to have had a mother who had a reasonably good idea how to help me cope with things to a reasonable degree, and who did an excellent job of helping me to understand that it was not a bad thing to be who I am. Confusing to a lot of people, certainly. But not bad. I did not do _nearly_ as much attempted camaflouge as I might otherwise have tried. (and I most certainly did attempt to pretend I was 'normal', for probably the first half of my not-at-home schooling)
Lucky to have parents who are _both_ at least some degree of autism spectrum (I _think_ I'm further along than either of them, but am not sure), so I rarely got outright statements of 'this behavior is Wrong' from them. (I did, however, get a fair amount of pushing to learn to do things I _could_, and needed to, learn. Like using public bathrooms - loud, scary, extremely difficult to relax enough in places. And yes, easily overstimulated is one of the things I have difficulty with)
I can point at so many bits of things that I would not have known had someone, usually my mom, but later on friends of mine, not told me. And little bits of things I would never had learned had I not been pushed into it, but which come in handy now. Like driving.
People have commented, when I talk about some of the ways in which my neuroatypicality affect me, but which I usually either avoid or have decent coping mechanisms for, that they are simultaneously fully confident in my ability to take care of myself and very worried by precisely how vulnerable I seem. This is true, certainly. But... I _can_ take care of myself, and part of this is simply that I've developed a good enough sense of who it is safe for me to go to with my more odd questions/confusions - because one of the major problems that I am known to have is amazing difficulty with telling if someone means what they say or not, especially if I don't have the energy available to be paying the amount of attention such a thing requires. My bullshit detector _sucks_. (but, when combined with available energy and my being empathic, is good enough for most of the things I need to do. Also when combined with enough interaction with people who are not necessarily meaning precisely what they say, but not in a mallicious way)
There are very good reasons that it's extremely difficult to be someone I am close to - because if I trust someone, I _TRUST_ them. To a frightening degree. Because I _know_ I have deficits in social interaction, and common sense, and such - so I need other people to bounce thoughts and ideas off of, to get reality checks from, to not have to constantly second-guess. This does, however, mean that people I really, really trust can _REALLY_ hurt me and/or seriously fuck with my brain.
So. As much as there are things from my childhood which still cause me problems and with which I am still attempting to cope, things could have been a _lot_ worse.
I have a good sense that it's ok to be who I am - even when I had mostly decided that the rest of the world was completely insane, and that I was not actually going to be able to find people who loved me for who I _am_ - I still knew what _should_ be true. I suspect sometimes that this is where my inability to settle comes from - I know what _should_ be true, even if I have no actual experience with it. Because the confidence in myself is something that I have a pretty good amount of, and I believe that much of that comes from my parents.
And I am thankful. And I should send this to them.
Lucky to have had the first bunch of years of schooling at home, with small groups of people, who at least somewhat understood how I worked. Lucky to have not lost my love of learning in the terror that school ended up being, once I was actually in school outside of my home. Without my love of learning and my curiosity, a _huge_ amount of the necessary impetous toward learning how to cope and doing things no matter how terrifying they were would be gone. I do intensely scary (generally having to do with either being something I have little to no previous experience with, or being a transition state) things in order to get to the good things that I have reason to believe are there.
Lucky to have parents who _did_ just tell me things, rather than expecting me to miraculously pick up on things. And encouraged me to ask questions when I was confused, rather than just hope I'd figure it out. Lucky to have had a mother who had a reasonably good idea how to help me cope with things to a reasonable degree, and who did an excellent job of helping me to understand that it was not a bad thing to be who I am. Confusing to a lot of people, certainly. But not bad. I did not do _nearly_ as much attempted camaflouge as I might otherwise have tried. (and I most certainly did attempt to pretend I was 'normal', for probably the first half of my not-at-home schooling)
Lucky to have parents who are _both_ at least some degree of autism spectrum (I _think_ I'm further along than either of them, but am not sure), so I rarely got outright statements of 'this behavior is Wrong' from them. (I did, however, get a fair amount of pushing to learn to do things I _could_, and needed to, learn. Like using public bathrooms - loud, scary, extremely difficult to relax enough in places. And yes, easily overstimulated is one of the things I have difficulty with)
I can point at so many bits of things that I would not have known had someone, usually my mom, but later on friends of mine, not told me. And little bits of things I would never had learned had I not been pushed into it, but which come in handy now. Like driving.
People have commented, when I talk about some of the ways in which my neuroatypicality affect me, but which I usually either avoid or have decent coping mechanisms for, that they are simultaneously fully confident in my ability to take care of myself and very worried by precisely how vulnerable I seem. This is true, certainly. But... I _can_ take care of myself, and part of this is simply that I've developed a good enough sense of who it is safe for me to go to with my more odd questions/confusions - because one of the major problems that I am known to have is amazing difficulty with telling if someone means what they say or not, especially if I don't have the energy available to be paying the amount of attention such a thing requires. My bullshit detector _sucks_. (but, when combined with available energy and my being empathic, is good enough for most of the things I need to do. Also when combined with enough interaction with people who are not necessarily meaning precisely what they say, but not in a mallicious way)
There are very good reasons that it's extremely difficult to be someone I am close to - because if I trust someone, I _TRUST_ them. To a frightening degree. Because I _know_ I have deficits in social interaction, and common sense, and such - so I need other people to bounce thoughts and ideas off of, to get reality checks from, to not have to constantly second-guess. This does, however, mean that people I really, really trust can _REALLY_ hurt me and/or seriously fuck with my brain.
So. As much as there are things from my childhood which still cause me problems and with which I am still attempting to cope, things could have been a _lot_ worse.
I have a good sense that it's ok to be who I am - even when I had mostly decided that the rest of the world was completely insane, and that I was not actually going to be able to find people who loved me for who I _am_ - I still knew what _should_ be true. I suspect sometimes that this is where my inability to settle comes from - I know what _should_ be true, even if I have no actual experience with it. Because the confidence in myself is something that I have a pretty good amount of, and I believe that much of that comes from my parents.
And I am thankful. And I should send this to them.
