For two years, I substitute taught in three major cities in Missouri and Arkansas. These years preceded my autism diagnosis just barely. I got a lot of work because I had checked boxes indicating a willingness to work with special needs kids. Special education meant just about whatever the school wanted it to mean, I found, whether that be detention, study hall, true diaper-changing sadness, to simply learning and developmental disorders. One kid stuck with me for reasons that were vague at the time. Nobody liked this kid, even amongst his special education peers. He had a need to talk constantly, to the point where, unless a teacher was speaking, he was talking. While I was not then and am not now able to diagnose him with autism, it seems an obvious fact of the situation. Once he figured out I COULD keep up with him, he and the teachers basically requested I stick to him like glue and I think I genuinely brightened the kid's life for a day. Talking to the special education teachers about him during a break, they explained to me that his condition was such that they didn't think he'd ever have a job or a normal life because he was too low-functioning. Floored by this information, I was also sure that I could never be a special education teacher. How do you tell anyone, let alone a kid that's supposed to have a full adult life ahead of them that that can't happen. "Sorry sweetheart, but disregard every time an adult asks what you're gonna be when you grow up. Let go of the dreams that your heart or your loins might put in your head. Learn that certain aspects of being an adult, or even a human being, will always remain unavailable to you. You were born...different. Different enough that your life is only a partial one." That memory haunts me deeply now because that kid, with all his myriad dysfunctions was, as best as I can tell, only slightly lower-functioning than me.
As I reflect on that student in the story above, I wonder about him. He's 24 or so by now. Now, the way his teachers talked about him, it's quite obvious he's been raised with the idea that he'd always be on disability and single. So I wonder if he's found it easier to cope with that reality than I have. His grandmother never told him he could be anything he wanted to be when he grew up, he hasn't been pitched a million business and career ideas, and he's never had litany of failed relationships that each crushed his soul in unique ways. No, he grew up with no doubt in his mind that he would never be a real adult and always be a broken human being with little to offer society. Obviously, I can only know one side of the dichotomy, but I think I envy him for knowing where he stood for so long. Those who are diagnosed with autism young, however functional they may or may not be, get a head start on the work I've only been doing since the age of 27. They get to work out their limitations, what the realistic romantic and professional prospects for them actually are, and generally integrate that knowledge into how they feel about themselves and whatever kind of life that may or may not mean for them. When I was a kid, my autism was mistaken for ADD and I was simply given Ritalin, which was supposed to make everything fine. Generally speaking, I was thought of by myself and, to the best of my knowledge, others as weird and not exactly on the ball with certain things, but still possessed of a healthy amount of potential, insofar as that sort of thing goes. Laboring under that misapprehension, I went to college, dated when the opportunity arose, and developed a variety of professional skills in which I pursued employment. If I had known then what I know now, I'm not sure I would've done any of that, save for the undergraduate work I did at Drury because of the social experience it gave me.
Above all, much of my life feels as if it has been a waste of time and energy in pursuit of reaping a harvest of potential that was never there in the first place. That being said, I don't have anything like a reasonable idea of what I should've been doing this whole time. It is certain that it took my myriad trials to convince myself and my family that the pursuit of love and career were a waste of time. Learning that wasn't possible any other way, but that knowledge came at a high cost in every sense of the word. Given this, I suppose it always had to be this way, but damn it if it didn't hurt to go through everything I've been through to get where I am now. There cannot, therefore, be any real sense of regret for all of that wasted time and energy. Nowhere can I say I should've zigged where I zagged. Instead, I can only say that I wish I didn't have autism, or at least that I didn't have it to the degree it so limits my functionality. A life with autism is a difficult one to endure, although how difficult and how one feels about the difficulty will most certainly vary from autistic to autistic. For me, it honestly is all I can do to keep myself sane and functional. When concerned people ask me how I'm coping with my circumstances, I have come to tell them that I'm taking it one day at a time. Efforts to overcome it frayed gradually, and then finally collapsed in late summer, so it's been a slow bleed. While I cannot predict how I will feel about it as time goes by, I can say that right now I am mourning everything I ever thought or was told I would or could become. This is a very powerful sense of loss, and I feel it is the great tragedy of my life. Managing this feeling mostly involves enjoying myself however I can whenever I can. All the baking, this blog, the many hours I spend in the cigar shop lounge that constitutes my social life, are little shots of happiness and joy to keep my spirits up as I go through this life. These things are vital to my continuing to function as well as I do, under the circumstances. Life will get lonelier as I grow older and I fear the challenges of that time. Meanwhile, I'm just waiting out the clock as I try to do the best I can to be healthy, helpful and generous to my friends, and pass the time in pleasurable ways. Somewhere, that autistic kid I met is coping with a damned difficult life as best he can and I wish him luck. He'll need it and so will I.
-Frank
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