Hello again everyone. Creative Karma your resident Autistic is back to share a little more of her world.
This blog may not be one of those things I update everyday, I mean hey, I do have other things that drag me away but recently some new things that have happened that perfectly illustrate the very things I have been talking about on this blog.
Most times, I'd say about 90% of the time, the people that tend to unintentionally step on the toes of an Autistic are those that are completely unaware that what they have said or done that normally wouldn't bother anyone else has hit a nerve with this one specific person.
But that still leave the other 10%.
It might surprise anyone that the other 10% can easily be the families of those who live with someone with autism of some kind.
The statement seems really odd to say. How can someone that has lived with and autistic person for 15 or more years of their lives still manage to do something or other that sends their autistic relative, child, or what have you to a "bad place".
Well, I can tell you that it's pretty simple most of the time. People work, people leave the house, and people don't stay in the same room at all times with the other. So even someone who has an autistic child under their roof doesn't always have to converse or deal with that autistic person so a slip can happen.
The very same slip an autistic person can make that shows their autism at an inconvenient time is something that even those that don't have autism can have. This is because they may have just spent all day working in an environment where they didn't have to think about what they were saying or doing because most likely no one in that office or place of business had autism. So they come home tired and they don't think and it just happens.
I suppose that very thing happened to me just the other day when I assumed that just a quick run out to get a chore done was going to be just that. I had no reason at the time to believe otherwise because no one had told me about the change in plans. Yet, in the heat of that moment the surprise was sprung on me and I was shaken to the core.
Honestly, I even doubt that anyone around me knew about my internal state or that between the time they left after that announcement and the next moment they saw me that I'd cried a few tears. And that despite the pain of swallowing back the tears and the urge to give into my desperation, I did. I wiped my eyes, told myself I would force myself to make it through it because I could eventually go back home and lay down and it would all be okay.
While I couldn't help the lack of smiles that I normally give people when I'm in a good mood, the act of holding back my feelings in a situation that honestly didn't call for them took away my happy mood but allowed me to keep moving on with the rest of them.
And as I have found helpful, I sent my mind to another place when I could. I could look out the window and watch the birds, the clouds, the trees, anything. I could create stories in my head that I could control and allow the conversations around me to wash over me and not overwhelm me.
Eventually, the day ended and I headed home to lay back in my bedroom with the door closed and allow myself to finally relax. And while I did not break down and cry, I felt the sense of happiness to be back in a calm place that I could close off and call my own and simply not do anything if I didn't want to.
Looking back on this experience, I realized that I'd inadvertently stepped into a solution for those problems in the future. That whether I was at a workplace or just out in a shopping mall I could draw those feelings of my world spinning out of control and use the positive aspects of the motions around me to calm those flights of fancy which would allow me to continue with my day long enough to make it back to a place where I could relax my shoulders and be happy I made it through the day.
But despite finding this source of help for my special brand of Autism, even I know that it's not going to go away. I will have to have that on the back burner waiting for me to use but it will happen again. I will always be the sort of odd chic out on the inside with a thin layer of the common chic on the outside to contain my wild nature.
In a way, I like myself this way. If I wasn't this type of person, would I still be a blogger? Would I like to write stories? Would drawing the characters in my head give me the same sense of joy? The more I think about those questions, the more I sense that the answer would be an astounding no.
To go along with that thought and to bring an end to this post, I will bring out another quote I discovered when I was setting up my white erase calendar on my door with a new quote of the month. This quote I decided to do about Autism since I'm an May baby.
"Autists are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It's that you're destroying the peg." -Paul Collins
This blog may not be one of those things I update everyday, I mean hey, I do have other things that drag me away but recently some new things that have happened that perfectly illustrate the very things I have been talking about on this blog.
Most times, I'd say about 90% of the time, the people that tend to unintentionally step on the toes of an Autistic are those that are completely unaware that what they have said or done that normally wouldn't bother anyone else has hit a nerve with this one specific person.
But that still leave the other 10%.
It might surprise anyone that the other 10% can easily be the families of those who live with someone with autism of some kind.
The statement seems really odd to say. How can someone that has lived with and autistic person for 15 or more years of their lives still manage to do something or other that sends their autistic relative, child, or what have you to a "bad place".
Well, I can tell you that it's pretty simple most of the time. People work, people leave the house, and people don't stay in the same room at all times with the other. So even someone who has an autistic child under their roof doesn't always have to converse or deal with that autistic person so a slip can happen.
The very same slip an autistic person can make that shows their autism at an inconvenient time is something that even those that don't have autism can have. This is because they may have just spent all day working in an environment where they didn't have to think about what they were saying or doing because most likely no one in that office or place of business had autism. So they come home tired and they don't think and it just happens.
I suppose that very thing happened to me just the other day when I assumed that just a quick run out to get a chore done was going to be just that. I had no reason at the time to believe otherwise because no one had told me about the change in plans. Yet, in the heat of that moment the surprise was sprung on me and I was shaken to the core.
Honestly, I even doubt that anyone around me knew about my internal state or that between the time they left after that announcement and the next moment they saw me that I'd cried a few tears. And that despite the pain of swallowing back the tears and the urge to give into my desperation, I did. I wiped my eyes, told myself I would force myself to make it through it because I could eventually go back home and lay down and it would all be okay.
While I couldn't help the lack of smiles that I normally give people when I'm in a good mood, the act of holding back my feelings in a situation that honestly didn't call for them took away my happy mood but allowed me to keep moving on with the rest of them.
And as I have found helpful, I sent my mind to another place when I could. I could look out the window and watch the birds, the clouds, the trees, anything. I could create stories in my head that I could control and allow the conversations around me to wash over me and not overwhelm me.
Eventually, the day ended and I headed home to lay back in my bedroom with the door closed and allow myself to finally relax. And while I did not break down and cry, I felt the sense of happiness to be back in a calm place that I could close off and call my own and simply not do anything if I didn't want to.
Looking back on this experience, I realized that I'd inadvertently stepped into a solution for those problems in the future. That whether I was at a workplace or just out in a shopping mall I could draw those feelings of my world spinning out of control and use the positive aspects of the motions around me to calm those flights of fancy which would allow me to continue with my day long enough to make it back to a place where I could relax my shoulders and be happy I made it through the day.
But despite finding this source of help for my special brand of Autism, even I know that it's not going to go away. I will have to have that on the back burner waiting for me to use but it will happen again. I will always be the sort of odd chic out on the inside with a thin layer of the common chic on the outside to contain my wild nature.
In a way, I like myself this way. If I wasn't this type of person, would I still be a blogger? Would I like to write stories? Would drawing the characters in my head give me the same sense of joy? The more I think about those questions, the more I sense that the answer would be an astounding no.
To go along with that thought and to bring an end to this post, I will bring out another quote I discovered when I was setting up my white erase calendar on my door with a new quote of the month. This quote I decided to do about Autism since I'm an May baby.
"Autists are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It's that you're destroying the peg." -Paul Collins
