Social Discomfort

Just a short post this week, because I strained my thumb and keep tweaking it every time I try to use my hand. *sigh* But I was thinking the other day about socializing, and how I think of myself as a not-very-social person, but at the same time I keep seeking out social contact in various ways. I’m involved in several student and professional organizations in my academic life, and I make an effort to attend meetings and volunteer for positions where I can help get things done. I also try to keep in touch with people, in this time of remote classes and social distancing, and look for ways to make keeping in touch easier.

So then I tried to update the thought, from “not very social” to social but just “not very good at it.” But that’s not true, either. I get along really well in most social situations, and with most people I meet. I get the impression that most people like me, and while some are indifferent, I don’t think anyone really hates it when I walk into the room. And I think I really do end up helping the groups I am part of.

The problem is more along the lines of “not very comfortable with it,” even when I think I’m actually doing a pretty good job. Putting it in terms of the previous sentence, I always feel like that ending isn’t fully complete, that I’m “doing a pretty good job…for now,” but that things could change at any moment, and I will end up making some horrible mistake that will outcast me forever. The fact that this has actually happened more than once in my life makes that feel highly plausible, even though those events happened a long time ago, and I have lots more experience that says otherwise.

But things that happen in childhood stay with you, especially when they happen repeatedly. And the lingering trauma of ongoing bullying and ostracism — something a lot of autistic kids go through, diagnosed or not — can leave you walking on eggshells to avoid similar treatment even decades later. I’m getting better at recognizing the signs of that trauma being triggered (which, thanks to alexithymia, is NOT easy), but it still leaves me uncomfortable with a lot of social interaction.

But I still end up seeking it out. I’m just usually bracing myself when I do.

Planning, Anticipation, and Uncertainty

One of my biggest strengths is the way I anticipate and plan; I automatically work out the logistics of getting things done, and I usually find ways to make the doing more efficient as well. This has helped me in both my work life and my personal life. But one of my biggest sources of anxiety is also the way I anticipate and plan, because it means I am always thinking ahead to how things might be, but I can never be absolutely sure that that’s the way they will be.

For example, I have a couple of busy days coming up next week, when I have a series of orientations for new graduate students to go to, and I have already started working out the best plan for how to get where I need to go. I’ve looked up the times and locations I need to know (but I’ll be looking in more detail at the campus map the day before, to make sure I know how to get there), and made inquiries about whether my parking permit will be active or not yet (it won’t; sigh). I’ve added in a couple of to-dos that I should be able to handle in between meetings and other events, and made sure I know where I need to go for those, as well.

And all of this will be immensely helpful—but it’s also a lot of mental energy that I’m expending ahead of time, which may or may not reduce the mental energy I’ll need to actually navigate those two days. After all, I still don’t know how busy the campus will be, or where exactly I’ll be able to park. I don’t know exactly what all of the venues look like, or with whom I’ll be interacting, so those are things I’m going to have to incorporate on the fly. Anticipating does feel like it’s helpful, and I’m always happy that I’ve gotten myself organized ahead of time. But it’s also kind of draining. It’s like my brain is always going, always mapping things out; as soon as any new element enters the picture, I’m adding it to the map, rearranging if I need to.

This is why it can be so very stressful when a) something gets added or changed at the last minute, b) something takes much longer than expected, or c) something does not go at all as I had planned. The way I manage long, busy days is usually by rehearsing them in my head ahead of time; then at least I feel like I’ve practiced and therefore know that I can get through it all. When reality does not go according to that mapped-out rehearsal in my head (which it has an annoying habit of doing on a frustratingly frequent basis), I can implode.

Not all the time, though, and I’m a lot better about adapting than I used to be. And the good thing is that my brain just keeps on mapping, so after the initial breakdown, I am able to bounce back pretty quickly with a re-route. I suppose I just need to work on building more flexibility into the map in the first place, so it doesn’t feel like a total collapse when something doesn’t work out.

Archery and Anxiety

I have recently taken up archery, something I remember loving as a child and wanting to get back to for a long time. It’s been long enough, though, that it’s basically a new pursuit, which means there is a learning curve. And if you’ve ever tried archery, especially without much detailed instruction, you know that often that learning curve slides right into the intersection of bowstring with forearm.

In my case, it didn’t take long. Just a few days after we started, the string caught me right on the inside of the elbow, just at the top edge of my leather arm guard. (So I was trying to be careful, but…ow.) And then it hit me again, in almost the exact same place. And let me tell you, that tender spot inside the elbow is also one place that happens to bruise spectacularly when it gets hit by the bowstring. It’s a week later now, and it’s still a vivid purple and yellow.

This was motivation, however. With proper form, this kind of impact doesn’t happen, so I quickly learned what I was doing wrong, and how to improve my arm position and alignment. Other problems arose, however, when I tried to put this new understanding into practice.

I couldn’t help but flinch a little. Instead of releasing the arrow smoothly, with all of my focus on the target, part of my mind was worried about my arm, and my draw became more tentative. It wasn’t enough to send the arrow too wide, but it was enough to interfere. And, of course, it took a lot of the enjoyment out of practice and made me less enthusiastic about doing it.

It occurred to me later that this isn’t too different from social anxiety, at least how it often manifests for me. After suffering enough repeated social “failures,” I flinch away from engaging again; I anticipate that it’s going to hurt. So I often avoid social contact, and even when I try, I hold back. I don’t put all of myself into it. But of course, this makes me all the more likely to fail—people can tell that I’m not fully engaged, and maybe that makes me seem uninterested, inauthentic, or even dishonest. The arrow of my intention misses the mark.

It’s hard to get out of that cycle. As I continued to practice my archery, however, I found I was able to regain some confidence as my form improved. But first I had to just accept that each attempt might hurt. If I was doing things right, they wouldn’t—but I wouldn’t be doing things right if I let my fear distract me and keep me from fully committing to each shot. Instead I had to release the fear before I released the arrow.

I don’t hit my arm very often anymore, and I haven’t hit it so painfully again. But I also bought a different arm guard that protects me a little better and gives me more peace of mind as I’m learning. This lets me focus on really improving my form without getting stung by every single mistake.

It would be nice if I could wear some kind of similar gear to protect against social “stings,” but I think a good parallel is being willing to be vulnerable when connecting with other people, but also being aware that some pain can be guarded against. Sometimes that means learning to keep appropriate boundaries, because not all things are safe to reveal to all people. Sometimes it means avoiding people who hurt you through no fault of your own; unlike bowstring slap, social harm isn’t necessarily self-inflicted, and sometimes it’s not your form that is out of line.

But sometimes it’s enough just to notice that I’m preemptively flinching. Then I can take a look at what’s going on and figure out if it’s really warranted. Take this blog post, for example: I wrote the initial draft yesterday, and ever since I’ve been second-guessing whether I really want to put it out there. It’s not like it’s super-personal, but it’s a little personal, and I find myself wondering if I’m exposing myself to criticism by publishing it. (Actually, I wonder that with practically every blog post.) But it doesn’t do me any good to hold back, and if I flinched and second-guessed everything I would never get anything done.

So, with that, I release the arrow.

On Masking

I’ve been thinking about the concept of autistic masking, sometimes also called camouflaging. This is the act of concealing or suppressing one’s autistic traits in order to appear “normal.” Masking may include the suppression of “stimming” movements or sounds, putting up with sensory inputs that are painful, forcing oneself to make eye contact, or following previously-practiced social scripts in order to blend in and appear non-autistic.

Such masking takes a toll on multiple levels. As Laura Hull and her co-authors found in “Putting On My Best Normal,” camouflaging is frequently experienced as mentally and physically exhausting, due to the constant vigilance required. Masking one’s autistic traits can also lead to a lack of support (or a lack of diagnosis altogether) because one’s struggles aren’t evident. Lastly, it can make one feel inauthentic, even to the point of losing touch with one’s own identity. And if you can never truly be yourself, all the connections you make with other people feel false as well.

Now, most people wear masks at least some of the time. Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote a foundational book about this back in 1956, called The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. In it, he discusses the self as a performance: we try to manage the impressions others have of us by presenting ourselves in a certain light, hoping this will lead them to treat us the way we want to be treated. To do this, we choose what information to present about ourselves, and what to conceal.

This “impression management” is, essentially, masking: we reveal and conceal different parts of ourselves in order to be accepted and seen in the best possible light. Consider, too, how we present different aspects of ourselves in different contexts; the self we present in the workplace or classroom is not the same self we show to our friends at a party. (Theoretically, at least, if you go to parties.)

So, to some degree, masking is a universal phenomenon, and it can be a valuable social skill to have. Then why is autistic masking so often draining and even damaging? I believe the key lies in that opening phrase: to some degree.

Autism is such a pervasive difference in our “wiring” that masking it is a constant effort; it’s not like simply not mentioning some embarrassing incident, or making sure you don’t have spinach in your teeth. It’s more like trying to maintain strict control over every natural instinct you have in terms of how your body wants to move, how you express yourself, and how your mind works. So in trying to appear “normal,” autistics may need to mask a lot more than someone just trying to present themselves “at their best.” So of course it ends up being much more draining.

It’s also important to note that many aspects of masking can cause stress directly. Making eye contact is very uncomfortable, even painful, for many autistic people, but many of us do it to meet social expectations, or to make others more comfortable. Stimming movements such as rocking, finger-flicking, or tapping are often a way of relieving stress and/or burning off energy that has nowhere else to go, so restricting those behaviors then causes stress to increase in an already-uncomfortable social situation. Similarly, forcing oneself to put up with—or even pretend to enjoy—a sensory situation that is causing distress (but which no one else seems to mind) will increase stress as well, and can easily lead to a meltdown or shutdown later.

There is also a difference between voluntary masking and coerced masking. When someone is making a choice about how to present themselves in order to appear at their best, this is a voluntary decision. Sure, it’s stressful to put on your best social presentation during, say, a job interview, but that’s a choice you make to give a good first impression. When, however, you have been told over and over (explicitly or implicitly) that who you are is not acceptable, and yet you still wish to be accepted, your subsequent masking of those unacceptable traits is essentially coerced. In other words, when not masking is met with ridicule, bullying, and ostracism, you end up masking out of fear. So of course this will have negative effects.

This kind of coerced masking can even be completely unconscious, as it was for me before I learned about autism. I simply grew up absorbing the norms other people expected me to follow, even though they were often painful to follow (and when I was younger I probably didn’t follow them very well). Eventually this caused some serious burnout, because the exhaustion and constant vigilance mentioned above were just as real even though I didn’t know I was masking anything. Scratch that: I knew I was masking something, I just didn’t know it was autism. Ultimately, I was simply masking myself.

It’s really hard to get out of the habit of masking, though. For one thing, it does get to be a habit, especially after decades of doing it. For another, it’s sometimes hard to know the difference between the well-adjusted sort of social presentation that everyone does in order to keep good boundaries and maintain professionalism, and the self-negating camouflaging that capitulates to social norms that see autistic traits as inherently deficient. It’s a tricky position to be in, especially when you also want to be able to navigate the non-autistic world while still being true to yourself. And I don’t have a ready answer for how to do that; it’s still a work in progress.

Anxiety in Context

As part of my human services class, I wrote about the differences between an approach that attempts to help a person by understanding their problems in the context of their environment, versus one that focuses on something like childhood trauma as the root of their trouble. I used an example from my own life to illustrate the point I wanted to make, and given the content of that example, I thought the essay could pull double duty as my blog post for this week. 🙂

By focusing on the individual in context, we can take into account environmental factors that may be influencing a person’s internal state and related behavior. This approach locates the source of problems as being in the relationship between the individual and her environment. Potential solutions, therefore, will take into account environmental changes as well as personal changes, perhaps even extending up into changes in law or cultural expectations.

In contrast, a focus on personal history, such as childhood trauma, locates the source of problems as being within the individual herself, and seeks to address them on that level. Potential solutions will then revolve around personal changes within the individual herself, and not larger structural changes in society. It could be argued that considering the role of childhood trauma is taking the individual’s environment into account, but it is the environment of the past, and specific to that person’s history.

When I first started therapy, I was primarily seeking help with anxiety. Part of this manifested as high levels of social anxiety when interacting with other people. We discussed childhood experiences for quite some time, and I could definitely relate incidents of childhood bullying, betrayal, and ostracism to the anxiety I continued to feel in groups of people, or when meeting someone new for the first time. This located the problem within me, in my particular history and its reverberations.

Years later, however, I gained a different understanding of my social anxiety when I learned that I am autistic. Instead of this social anxiety arising specifically from past experiences, I saw it as arising from a life spent in a world that expected me to think and behave like everyone else, all while not knowing that I was autistic. In a way, this may still sound as if I am locating the problem within myself, specifically in my autism, but in truth the problem comes from the interaction between me and an environment that does not expect or understand neurodivergence.

This has become clearer to me as I gain more experience interacting with other autistic people. When my ways of thinking and acting are understood and accepted, I do not feel the same social anxiety that I do in other contexts. In other words, my social anxiety is a product of me being in a particular environment; if my environment changes to one with different social expectations, the anxiety goes away. Even just knowing that the problem is a transactional one makes a difference on those occasions where I can’t change the environment. Understanding where I might have difficulty allows me to change my approach, and also helps avoid excessive self-blame if things still go awry. I can see my anxiety as a bad environmental fit, rather than entirely a personal failing.

Changing My Routine

I’m enjoying a little time off at the moment; I’m in between school semesters, and my primary job hasn’t had any projects for me for the past couple of weeks. That means I’m going to have a light paycheck or two, but it’s been really refreshing to have time to read things outside of coursework, and to work on projects that have allowed me to really dive deep in a way I haven’t been able to for a while. It’s been good.

I am also trying to use this time to change up my daily routine, specifically how I structure my mornings and evenings. I tend to find this really difficult; I realize it’s hard for most people to change their habits, but on top of that, I don’t really have a set daily routine. So it’s not just a matter of changing what I do at various times, it’s getting myself to maintain a routine in the first place.

That feels ironic to me, because so much has been said about the fondness we autistic people have for our routines, and how little we like it when things change. In some ways I’m no different, but at the same time I like to have flexibility in my schedule as well. Some days I have more energy, or more creativity, or more ability to focus, and I’d prefer to be able to take advantage of those days in a way that makes sense, instead of having to do the same exact thing every day.

So while I do prefer “sameness” when it comes to doing the things I do (e.g., I like to do them in the same way, and I dislike being blocked from doing them that way, or stopped from doing them at all when I had planned to), that doesn’t always translate into routine. Unless I have some external pressure, like a fixed starting time for my work day, I just don’t maintain a daily routine.

To some degree, I really can’t; the fact that my job doesn’t always provide consistent work means that I don’t have the same schedule from day to day. My class schedule is not the same every day, either—and on days when I have class and work, I have to arrange my schedule differently in order to fit everything in. Add to this the aforementioned preference for paying attention to my varying energy/creativity/focus levels, and I much prefer to vary things as necessary.

I do like some degree of predictability, though, at least on a week-by-week basis. I hate last-minute scheduling that adds something new on the same day, and if I have to reschedule something I would rather push it out to the next week than try to fit it into a week I already have laid out in my head. Because I do — I can see the “fixed points” of the coming week laid out ahead of me like an obstacle course. That gives me some idea of how to fit other work in around them, and some sense of which will be my busy days. When I wake up in the morning, too, I automatically start reviewing those fixed obligations, to get a feel for how I need to time everything else, like work and study and meals and dog walking. Adding in another commitment, even (ugh) a phone call, can throw that timing right off, and everything needs to be reshuffled.

I think most people don’t realize how much effort it takes to do all that reshuffling in my head when the “fixed points” get moved. They probably see me as inflexible when really I’m just overwhelmed because I know how much energy it takes — and that’s extra energy on top of what I need to actually do the things on my schedule. So as soon as I hear about last-minute schedule changes, I’m already spinning out all of the contingencies that ripple out from that change, all the things that need to be rearranged from the carefully-timed plan. It usually all works out (I try not to schedule myself too tightly) but until I’ve got a new plan, I’m anxious. And the less time I’m given to fit in the new thing, the more anxious I get.

Unfortunately, I don’t often get the level of predictability I would prefer, and that is one thing I would really like to change about my work situation. But since I do have this downtime now, I am hoping that I can set up some morning and evening habits that will start to feel established before my obstacle course of a schedule gets filled up again.

Three Things On My Mind

I started three separate topics for a blog post this week, thinking I could use one or all of them, but frankly none of them is really coming together. For each one, I started to expand upon my observations and draw conclusions…but then things just fizzled and I couldn’t find the point. So here’s just a glimpse into some of the things swirling in my brain at the moment:

1. I’m done with my school semester! I’m very proud of the work that I did in both of my classes, and I’m looking forward to my spring courses, but I also need a break. Luckily, I have a little over a month off — which of course I have already started filling with work on personal projects. I tend to be reluctant to talk about things still in the works, but those are proving very exciting to me, and I’m looking forward to having some time to dive into them.

2. Gift shopping sucks. I spend so much time trying to find something the other person would like, when their interests and tastes are so much different from mine (and screw you, Theory of Mind theorists who say autistic people can’t understand this) that it stresses me out that I might get it wrong. In fact, I get jarring flashbacks to times I was criticized (sometimes quite harshly) for not spending enough, or not choosing the right thing, or some other gift-giving failure. I recognize that this was entirely not ok, but that doesn’t make it easy to shake off. So gift shopping sucks…but at least it’s done for this year.

3. I’ve made some new friends this year, and reconnected with an old friend I hadn’t spoken with in a long time — but I’m wary. So many times I have thought I found a friend who really “got” me, when in reality, I got them. At first that can feel like the same thing, but in the end it’s not. Ultimately, it takes some time to let things build and figure out whether there is some mutual understanding building, or if it’s more uneven. But that’s what makes me wary.

So yeah, just a few things pulling my thoughts about (and of course there are more, in all sorts of directions). But overall I am heading into my long weekend feeling ready for a rest — which for me includes lots of reading, writing, programming, and crafting, now that I have a little “down time.” Hah!

Running Just Below the Line

I have felt on the verge of a meltdown for the past several days. Stress built up steadily for all of last week, and being out of town for the weekend meant that I was not able to maintain my usual routine that brings me into the next week more refreshed. Being aware of this has allowed me to avert some of the negative effects this might have caused, but I still feel like I am running just below the red line. So I started thinking about meltdowns, including the word’s origins in the management of nuclear reactors.

Nuclear reactors run on heat; they essentially use atomic fission as a fancy way to boil water. But too much heat can become dangerous, so there are mechanisms in place to keep the temperature under control. The main one is to circulate water through the system to keep things cooled down to a manageable level. This needs to be done on a continuous basis; even if active fission is not currently happening, the system still needs to be cooled. Things in there are just hot, and it takes a lot of effort to keep that heat balanced and contained.

I often feel like I run hot inside. If operations are proceeding on their usual routine, it’s manageable — I might not even feel it if I’m doing a good job of balancing out stressors with some nice, cooling downtime. Working on projects I’m interested in also feels cooling, even though it can involve a sense of passionate intensity; it’s a different kind of heat, I guess. But I need to have that balance.

If the water circulation in a reactor is stopped, the heat from the fuel rods will boil away any existing water until they are no longer immersed in coolant. At this point, they can literally start to melt, creating a pool of very hot, highly radioactive material on the floor below. If this is left alone, it can get so hot that it melts through the surrounding containers, spreading radioactive contaminants into the outside world.

When I don’t get my cooling time, I can feel things start to come apart. My chest tightens, and I start to feel tension around my eyes. I feel stifled, bottled up, in need of something to release the pressure. At this point, every new frustration, no matter how small, ratchets up the heat a little bit more. And if it’s a big frustration? Now we’re in trouble.

But notice that a meltdown is not an explosion. It is a melt. It is damage sustained by the reactor due to its own heat. That damage can spread outside if its containment becomes broken enough, of course, and that is always the main focus of public concern. But it starts in the core. Whatever else happens, the first casualty is the reactor itself.

My meltdowns don’t hurt other people. Perhaps they’re more like partial meltdowns, when the fuel rods have started to melt, but are able to be cooled before they burn through containment. I cry, I scream, I find other ways to dissipate the heat. So after an initial show of concern, all seems under control, and the public breathes a sigh of relief.

The reactor core, though? Still damaged. Still unbalanced. And still in need of cooling for a good long time.

Conferences And All They Entail

Yesterday, I attended the AANE (Asperger/Autism Network) 2017 Spring Conference, which was titled Hiding in Plain Sight: Shining Light on Women with Asperger/Autism Profiles. It seemed primarily geared toward professionals working with people on the autism spectrum, but two of the keynote speakers were autistic women, and there were quite a few of us in the audience as well.

VoxVisual wrote up an excellent recap at her blog already, which is great, because I am still too wiped out to be that organized. <grin> And honestly, I don’t know that I would have too much to add when it comes to describing the speakers, the venue, and the overall experience. So go read her summary, if you want to get an idea of what the conference was about.

(And yay, we got to meet! 🙂 That was really cool, even if we had to postpone dinner plans due to exhaustion.)

But while I don’t want to duplicate her efforts in recapping the conference, I do want to write about my subjective experience of planning for, getting to, and physically attending it. First of all, I was selected to read an essay I had submitted, as one of six personal accounts of being a woman on the autism spectrum. (You can read that essay here, if you like.) So even before conference day, I was interacting with the organizers to polish up my essay and make sure I was ready to present it. The volunteers I emailed and talked with were very good about setting expectations and answering all of my questions — clearly they (as women on the spectrum themselves) were aware of some of the anxieties that might arise.

The week before the conference day, I made sure to print out all of the information I would need — directions, schedule, a clean copy of my essay to read — and make a checklist of other things I would need to bring. I wanted to bring plenty of water, for example, and I would be bringing my own lunch. Lunch was included in the conference registration, but having recently cut wheat out of my diet, I was concerned about the gluten content of the sandwiches offered. Besides, I figured the day would be stressful enough without subjecting my body to unfamiliar food (which doesn’t always agree with me).

Google Maps told me the drive would be about two hours each way, but I would be driving in toward Boston (and back out again) around rush hour, so I gave myself extra time. It ended up taking me about 2 1/2 hours each direction; I left home around 6 am and got to the conference center (after parking and making my way through several wings of the hospital building) a little after 8:30. The first speaker didn’t start until 9, so that was perfect.

Check-in was easy, but walking into a large crowd of people outside the venue was disorienting. And it wasn’t just the people: there were tables with food and coffee, other tables with pamphlets and fliers for the organizations who put together the conference, and too many other things to look at. So I went in to find my seat; at least I knew I was supposed to sit down in the front, and when I got there someone recognized my name tag and directed me to a seat.

Since I was early, though, I stood back up to see if I could find Vox. We had told each other what we would be wearing, and shown each other pictures, so this turned out to be easy. 🙂 I felt like we immediately clicked, and spent the rest of the time before 9 chatting about several different things. (As would come up later at lunch, with some other women, socializing with other Aspies/autistics can be soooo much easier!)

I went back to my seat just before 9, where I met a couple of the organizers and some of the other speakers. I felt a little exposed sitting in the front row, right in front of the podium where most of the speakers would be standing (and therefore where the camera for the live-stream would be pointed). This didn’t become evident until the second speaker, though, because the first was himself being live-streamed from the UK. Being in the front row also meant I was looking up most of the time in order to see the slides, or up at a different angle to look at the speakers’ faces. The venue was fairly bright, too, and sometimes the sound was too loud, while other times it was too quiet.

By the noon lunch break, I had finished all of my water (I was very warm for most of the day, as well) and was developing a low-level tension headache. My neck and shoulders were tight, something that had crept up on me without my really noticing it. I think it was all of the ambient noise from the crowd — people turning pages as they followed along with the speakers in their printed slide packets, occasional whispered conversations, people moving around. These are the same sorts of things that had stressed me out while working in an open-plan office, things I didn’t even consciously notice until I learned I was autistic and tried wearing noise-canceling headphones. I guess I still don’t notice them until they’ve built up into tension and pain.

(As an aside, it was interesting to read Vox’s observations of the reactions from the audience, and what things seemed to surprise or interest — or upset — them. Since I was in the front row, I didn’t get a perspective on that.)

Lunch conversation was great, and it was good to get some food. (I also snagged some more water.) It probably wasn’t the best idea when I suggested we seek out a table in the larger hospital cafeteria to eat — it was busy, and sometimes hard to hear each other over the dull roar — but it wasn’t clear where else we could have settled down to eat. The rooms near the conference venue were already pretty full by the time we all got our food.

Settling back down for the afternoon, I was already pretty fried. As I mentioned earlier, I was really warm during most of the day. It was a very cold day, but I thought I had dressed in a way that struck a balance between keeping warm outside and not being too bundled up inside. Apparently I should have worn something a little lighter. It also didn’t help that I was scheduled to present my essay in the mid-afternoon, so I had most of the day to be nervous in anticipation of that. My nerves weren’t too bad in the morning, but during Liane Holliday Willey’s talk after lunch, it was all I could think about.

I also felt like my voice was going to be hoarse from all the talking over lunch and during breaks — but I didn’t want to drink too much water before I had to talk, because I hate the feeling of having to pee while trying to focus on something else. So I decided it was probably for the best for my mouth to be a little dry; it would probably help my voice sound a little clearer than if I had too much moisture.

(Seriously, these are the logistical practicalities that run through my head all the time. All. The. Time.)

In the end, I was very happy with the way my presentation went. My knees were shaking, but my voice wasn’t, and I had a podium on which to steady my hands. After I was done, I was very happy to be sitting in the front row, because I only had a few steps to walk before I was back at my seat and out of the public eye. And I definitely felt my shoulders relax — though not completely — when it was over.

Maybe because of that feeling of finally-now-I-can-relax, I kind of floated through the last talk of the day. It also was a bit less relevant for me, as it related more to parenthood, but I did enjoy some aspects of it. Mostly I was just getting hit by the cumulative weight of all of the sensory input of the venue, the social interactions during lunch and breaks, and the cognitive processing of listening to all of the talks, as well as all of the logistical planning required to navigate through the day. I managed to have a few more — really excellent, I have to say — interactions after the event was over, but yeah, I was very much done.

My brain was foggy with all of that by the time I left, and I still had a 2 1/2 hour drive home — over half of it in the dark. At least in this direction I was leaving the city traffic behind, and most of the night driving was on familiar terrain. I had listened to an audiobook on the way in, but by evening I was talked out and needed music. So I put all of my Dar Williams albums on shuffle and sang along with her for the whole way home. 🙂

Overall, this was a great day, and I enjoyed the conference immensely. While I think there may have been some ways in which the venue might have been improved as far as sensory issues — Vox mentioned several in her post — I also feel like a lot of the things that eventually wore me out were just…going to wear me out. I also think I might have been better off sitting somewhere in the back for the morning, and only down in front during the talk right before my presentation. I would have felt a bit less “on display” and also would have been farther away from the epicenter of all the light and sound.

I feel like there is so much more to say — for example, I really, really enjoyed listening to the keynote speakers and the other first-person accounts, and think they provided a lot of good information and perspective, especially to those in the audience who weren’t on the spectrum. But I wanted to write this up as an example of how…involved it can be to attend something like this as an autistic person. And now I’m going to enjoy a nice quiet weekend to unwind, because I can. 🙂

Seen

I just want to be seen.

All of me, not just the parts I carefully choose to show you. That “me” is based on your preconceptions, my fears, and our history (or lack thereof). I just want to be seen.

I don’t want to be seen.

Let your eyes slide right past me, my words go unnoticed. When you ask me a question, I panic, fearing to reveal too much. I don’t want to be seen.

There is no contradiction here.

I just want to be seen…and loved for what you see. I don’t want to be seen…and rejected, ridiculed, reviled. Which direction I go depends on your reaction, and the reactions of all who have come before you, whether you know them or not. It depends on how much risk I want to take, to gamble that this time will be different. And you should know: the odds are not even.