Just when I think I am getting my life together, everything goes wrong. I feel like a capable adult, I think like a capable adult. I make complicated plans; based on a broad knowledge and intelligent reasoning, I have the skills to do many things extremely well. But I never get anywhere. I can’t get past the smallest hurdles and I absorb help like a ravenous blackhole; where the efforts of professionals and amateurs alike are crushed to a nothingness and disappears forever as if it had never existed.
I’m starting to believe that I am living in a parallel universe; my knowledge doesn’t apply, I seem to misunderstand what is being communicated to me, I am often misunderstood, I see, hear, taste, smell and feel differently to those around me. Am I perceiving one world while I am being perceived in another? Intellectually I probably understand humans better than they understand themselves; psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, education, history, archaeology, body language & philosophy. But the real truth is I don’t understand people at all. Maybe I understand how they should be or I can analyse with hindsight; but I can not predict or even keep up with human behaviour and how they communicate with each other.
I have written before about Scholastic Book Club; the book fair etc. But I have been too ashamed to admit what’s been happening. I have not been able to contact my rep, meanwhile she has been reporting to others I am not contactable, I was contacted and had a productive call with her one day substitute, but I’m not really sure what’s going on. This has also meant some information & papers are sent to me & some to my predecessor which is very confusing for an autistic control freak. Keep in mind I am a volunteer who receives absolutely no tangible benefit from my involvement, in fact there are expenses I have to cover. Unfortunately I have no proof but worse than that I have let the anxiety & confusion of dealing with this woman paralyze me and thus slow me down, bringing on guilt and culpability. My hands therefore aren’t clean so I don’t feel I can complain. I have now been publicly humiliated by this woman who has contacted my colleagues & customers and told them I am not contactable. So in a typical Lisa move this news combined with the bereavement this all became too much; so I withdrew and became uncontactable for about 4 days. I am the incompetent she has always thought me to be. I lose!
No matter how old I get I still respond to confrontation with withdrawal, not always a long withdrawal and much shorter if I’m defending a third person and there is no confusion involved. So even if initially she was wrong my response was inexplicable and worsened the situation.
I have been considering leaving the P&FA (Parent Group) for sometime. I love the people, I enjoy the work, but I end up standing around not knowing what I am supposed to be doing, the combination of guilt (not helping enough), frustration and the sensory overload of being in public in brightly lit conditions is not good for my health. I just don’t get it, they seem to be able to anticipate and work with each other so well, I don’t fit in. But they are such nice people they try to accommodate me, I am extremely high maintenance.
After failing to fulfill my duties in a timely manner after all their help I can not face those people again! Issues with both my younger daughters and the school I can not face those people again! It was good while it lasted but my latest experiment has as all the others before it failed. We have reached the point of diminishing returns actually we’ve passed it.
The sooner I can get it through my thick head that I can not & will never be able to function in the real world the better off I will be.
Don’t worry I don’t want to die or anything drastic. I just realise that I cannot work with normal people on an equal footing. Writing circle (kind of like being a student), therapists and blogging circle (I’m hoping I haven’t been burned yet) are all okay; but not volunteering or committees or anything professional.
For God’s sake, what am I missing? How do even stupid (the 10% of low achievers I am not saying all NT’s are stupid) neurotypicals understand and work together? I have studied and I work on it!
I Give up!
I’m Out!
autistsix 
Life is like that, so often we all are loosers but everytime it worth while because we make an experience of life and we feel emotion and our being human grows up. Don’t give up, please!
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Thank you! Unfortunately I have to try & work out where my strengths lie and if I’m actually doing any good. But unlike many other times I’m not going to withdraw away to nothing I’m going to keep going with the couple of things that are working.
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It will get better
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It will. What’s more I’m not falling down as far as I used to and I’m getting higher each time in between. The thing is learning to reach out & get support from lovely people like all of you, is how things get better.
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Indeed
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Dear Autistsix
For ten years I was an English Chairperson with a faculty of 16 at a small historically Black University. I’m white. I loved my job and all was well up till the last two years of the chairmanship. A woman came into my department with a PhD and from day one she made my life a living hell. She showed up in my office and threw screaming fits. She brow beat other faculty. She was a mediocre teacher, but administration was reluctant to reign her in. I couldn’t sleep. I took pills. I drank. I developed a serious limp.
I finally moved to another position for three years and got away from that person. I went back as chair, she was still there, for two years…just to show folks that she hadn’t scared me off. She tried again her screaming tactic, but it got nowhere and she quit.
That break, though, of three years, did me a world of good.
I can empathize somewhat. And you are incredible to me. Your mind is certainly damn sharp. From what I can tell it’s the other person who is the problem…not you. BUT, this world, this terrible world, is a place that doesn’t like “otherness.”
I agree with phlomis68, Please, don’t give up. Give yourself a break, but don’t give in. Okay? And keep blogging. I love your blog. I wholeheartedly agree with your attitude to keep going with things that work. Good for you!
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Thank you for your support. It is hard to live with a disability that is invisible and sometimes makes you a small helpless child and at other times an intelligent adult. I may negotiate a partial not full retreat from the P&FA because they are very nice. It is very easy to think we can ignore external people causing problems (your screaming lady) but we aren’t built that way we are a social animal. I will keep moving forward!
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I agree wholeheartedly! 🙂
And good for you!
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I was a school teacher for twenty-nine years in the public schools. I worked under seven different principals during that time. Some were great and others were hell! I have outlived the worst who is no longer with us. I looked at giving up and quitting many times over the years. I finally came to the conclusion that if I was going to survive, it was easier to change my attitude than to change my job. It made all the difference for me. Don’t give up. Life is tough, but you can make it through!
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Thank you! Although I’m 45 I haven’t been an active member of the community for very long. It’s a matter of trying to work out where to use my limited energy and which battles to choose. I will be talking to some of my support system before I make the final break.
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Find out what your really love to do and pursue it !
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Writing, education, animals, gardening not committees. You’re right thank you!
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life knocks us down all the time. it’s about getting up that counts.
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It is thanks for helping me back up!
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I think you are terrific. If everyone had the same work ethic and heart that you have, we would have a far better world. Everyone confronts groups or situations that just don’t fit or work. Move on and find a better fit. Don’t spend all your energy trying to fit a round peg into a square hole (you are round, they are square). Best to you! -Jennie-
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Thank you so much!
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Don’t give up. Just being you is providing a great service, knowing how your mind works, knowing your insight into the human mind.
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Thats so kind, thank you!
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This is relatable. I like the positive comments here.
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Thanks, me too!
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There are always people in life happy to make other people look incompetent and humiliate them just to make themselves look good. I realise that, with autism, confrontations with these kind of people can make you want to shrink inside yourself. In your case, I sense a strong, clever woman who won’t let such people or situations win. Your work as a volunteer sounds invaluable to the Scholastic Book Club, so this woman hasn’t a leg to stand on. Don’t give up!
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With the help of my support worker today I was finishing off my duties and I when I’d finished there was a survey, I gave the facts, so I may have started something for my sales rep. I’m thinking through my options, thanks for the support.
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Wishing you all the best in this… Your support worker sounds really good.
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She is! Thank you!
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To see, hear, taste different is something that sets you apart and not something that makes you feel out of place. I really appreciate your blog and look forward to the strength it exhibits! You can obviously break down like all of us breaking down some time or the other but you giving up is never an option. More power to you.
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Thank you!
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It is difficult to live with a disability that is invisible. I have Wegener’s granulomatosis, a rare disease that my doctor revealed to me as one that would kill me within two years. He told me that in 20o3. On the third anniversary, I reminded him he told me he told me that, and he said, “That sounds like the sort of thing I’d say.”
I’ve lived with the disease almost 13 years. It has caused me on-going complications, including wiping out my kidneys so I am on dialysis three times a week now and for life, however long that might be. Yet, I have a positive attitude and look forward to what’s to come. Why? because early on in my disease, I was in a hospital waiting room feeling sorry for my “death sentence” (it was before the two year expiration date on my life….!) when I saw a totally paralysed man in a very expensive wheelchair that he could control by blowing into a control device that operated the chair. “I have no reason to feel bad for myself,” I told myself after I saw this other man.
Other times in other waiting rooms, I saw other people with conditions so severe my life seemed simple by comparison. Again, I counted my blessings and felt more in control of the vicissitudes with which I dealt.
Like you, people see me as someone who looks “normal” so they have little sense of what I deal with, my pains or challenges. I don’t worry about that. Don’t worry about how people view you without sensing your pains and challenges. You are teaching people through your blog, one person at a time. That leaves you a few billion more to go! That’s a worthy challenge for a lifetime!
Incidentally, I am learning about autism through your blog. I know people with it, but never how it impacted their lives. Thank you for helping me learn, if slowly, what it is like.
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I plan to go a bit more along that line. I really worry for kids out there whose parents are normal, without a better understanding of autism all they have to go on is professionals, and some of those people are complete dingbats. I think the hardest part for me is a recent therapy had such dramatically good results that I’ve found a new normal, weirdly enough it has made me more aware and more frustrated with my remaining limitations. Any way the most wonderful person I ever met had passed on; my head was not in a sane place. Thank you so much for sharing, I can’t explain just how much your support means!
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ive been masking like a boss all my life. so when things fall apart, no one has half a clue in the world whats going on. “why are you being so unreasonable?”
anything they dont understand is unreasonable ❤ and the more they (someday) understand… unfortunately, the dingbats are out in force with their misdiagnoses, treatments for the wrong things, and absolutely stupid, stupid things like the dsm-v, where we are reduced to a few anecdotes like: "doesnt give a flip about the weather." yeah, that about sums it up⸮
that, and i havent slept normally since i was about 4.
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I just had a school thing happen to me
it blew me out the water
It was supposed to be fun
And what happens
Control freaks all around me
I got so sick
I had to back out
And quite
There isn’t enough time and patience for some people
It’s not you
Thank you for visiting
Sheldon
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Thanks for the support!
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I just want to offer that the rep who went around telling everyone that you were unreachable is the one who doesn’t deserve her position. My guess is that she was receiving pressure and her story was to shift the blame to you. From the outside, it appears that you have been an asset all the way around. The only difference between you and the others is that you are painfully aware of your limitations and they are clueless about theirs.
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Thank you, I know the rep preferred my predecessor; a man and a published author. The rest of the P&FA are really nice, autism is really hard to get your head around. The really great thing is last week my youngest responded to a homework/teacher problem by withdrawing instead of asking for help and I was able to illustrate using my reaction that she may have been autistically but she wasn’t lying & trying to get out of something.
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Awesome! Your children are lucky to have someone who really understands what they are going through.
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Sorry for your pain but please keep trying?
I have found ‘groups’ of people struggle to accept and deal with anyone slightly different. As individuals they either work at it or walk away. That whole ‘group’ mentality can create barriers – ‘different’ people just have to keep breaking them down!
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I am going to review the situation, to make sure I don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Thanks for the support, it means a lot to me!
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funny to me because i have a pretty visceral loathing of scholastic in particular. it figures they are all the way out there, too.
oh the book sales when i was a kid– they were awesome. i was always too old for half the books they had, though some childrens classics i adored with good reason. scholastic was like a successful “dealer” that knew his clients and their weaknesses. youd be back, they would be sure of it. theres something for everybody.
for me to hate a publisher, they have to do something purely and incredibly evil. no need to talk about that here or now– just a chuckle– i will always side with you over them, even realising that wasnt the point of this post. no worries, lady holt– no worries at all.
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I’m out and I’m never going back. ❤
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oh right, this one is from last year ❤ i was replying to another part like its new. 🙂
im watching that thunderbirds documentary in another tab.
im also done with the giant (2560×1600, lcd) screen for the mac. i have an adapter so i can use the mac with with normal (svga) lcd monitor. i learned a lot about macs firsthand this week, though im still not a real fan. overpriced, overhyped, and "you get what you pay for…" not really. for the price this thing was originally, i couldve gotten 4 "pc"s that did more than i needed, instead of just one that doesnt. im so glad youre done with scholastic.
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