Missing social cues can be awkward in social situations leaving you doing or saying the wrong thing at the wrong times. It may cause the autistic person to run over other people when they are talking, not waiting for them to finish. They do not pick up the cue that it is their turn to speak. There is often also no filter between brain and mouth. Whatever pops into the brain usually flies out of the mouth making the autistic person extremely blunt, sometimes appearing rude.
There can be many consequences of missing social cues, but none may be more devastating, dangerous, and harmful than not seeing the signs within your own relationships, particularly ones with the opposite sex.
Chapter Thirteen
The Dangers of the Teenaged Autistic Girl and Her First Loves: Mind-Blindness
First loves, obsessions, passions, special interests, call it whatever you want, they can captivate and completely blind any young teenage girl’s mind. Girls are swept away in the idea of first love, the knight in shining armor, and forever after. This is a glorious time of love, learning to love, loss and pain; the time that mothers worry about their daughters, and fathers buy shot-guns.
Some girls caught up in the sweeping whirlwind of first love do not see the signs of the impending crash at the end of the road. They love idealistically, but after the hurt and broken bones heal they learn to take another look to watch for the road signs. Autistic girls not only do not see the signs, but they don’t see them the next time they are headed into the same brick wall either.
It happened over and over again, I missed the signs. I didn’t see them coming. I was left blindsided, alone and confused. I didn’t see the warnings; I didn’t see the road posts; I barreled down love’s highway at top speed with no breaks—every time.
I don’t get “hints”, I need direct language. Subtleties are lost on me. If you are not completely direct, and tell me something is wrong with the relationship, I will assume all is well. If all is well with me, then all is well with you. If it were not, you would have directly said something, wouldn’t you? If something I did bothered you, or I did something wrong, you wouldn’t pretend everything was fine, would you? I wouldn’t.
I always assumed that I understood people. I prided myself in being honest, upfront, and direct, assuming that everyone else around me behaved in the same manner. If you were in my life that meant I trusted you, and if I trusted you, I believed you. It was as simple as that.
I was just fourteen and attracted the attention of a boy older than I was. Smart, handsome, cool, and he could dance, what more did I need? The problem was he had a girlfriend; at least, it should have been a problem. Since his girlfriend was eighteen, and I was only fourteen, I was honored that he would come to my house when she was at work and that he hung out with me during my days at the candy store. After all, he was just trying to figure out a way to break up with her gently—for six months.
I began to obsess about him, seeing him whenever I could even if just for a few minutes sitting on my front porch in the night. It may have continued on forever, me waiting and believing, if someone else didn’t walk into my life and wipe him off the map. That is the way it worked with me. I didn’t hide it, “Sorry, I met someone else; now, go away.”
I never thought to be deceitful or even gentle for that matter. I told the truth very matter-of-factly. If I moved on from one interest to another they must have also and I put them out of my mind.
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s Syndrome include having an “encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus” as core symptom of AS.
I’ve had many special interests/preoccupations/passions/obsessions through the years beginning as young as three years old. My three-year-old self was completely preoccupied with baseball; my fifteen-year-old self—boys, or more precisely a boy.
That is not an unusual preoccupation for a fifteen-year-old girl, but what we need to look at is the intensity and focus. When you are so focused on a subject that it excludes everything and everyone else in your life, it is considered an unusual preoccupation or obsession. However, this preoccupation is what Aspies call special interests. For the autistic person our obsessions and passions are soothing, calming, a place to hide, decompress, regenerate—a place of quiet peace. But what happens when your special interest, your obsession, is a person?
Love can be joyous and healthy but obsession can be seen as unwanted attention, smothering affection, and in the extreme…stalking. To make matters worse, the mind-blind teenager will usually never know if she steps over this line. How much is too much exactly?
The first few months were perfect. We cruised the neighborhood with the windows down, wind in my hair—and his, which was possibly longer than my own. My friends faded into the background of my mind, nothing else mattered, and no one else existed. I was in my “one friend, one person allowed in my life at a time,” mode—other people were far from my thoughts.
I went to school—ok, to the candy store, went to McDonald’s, where I was working as a cashier, and then hopped into his car at night to drive around. I wanted to stay roaming the neighborhoods like that all night long, but he needed to meet his friends. Every night around eleven o’clock he dropped me off at home and left to hang out with the guys.
At first I tried to be accommodating, to make him happy. I needed to be home before midnight or my father would flip out anyway, I told myself. But as time went on it became harder, and harder to let go—to understand this strange need for his friends. Why not just stay hanging out with me? What was wrong with me? I began to take it personally, not understanding that others may have feelings and needs different than my own. I couldn’t see it; I couldn’t understand it; his behavior made no sense to me.
“If you loved me, you’d stay!”
On New Year’s Eve we had a fight. He didn’t stay. I called and left messages on his voicemail like a crazy stalker, hung-up and redialed again. The return calls never came. What did I do wrong?
For the next few months I could think of nothing else. He wouldn’t even speak to me, giving no reason at all.
I began dating someone else, just to keep my mind off things and keep myself occupied. Make no mistake about it; he knew all about my obsession with my ex-boyfriend, and how I desperately wanted him to dance with me at my sweet sixteen. Why that boy hung around me I’ll never know.
It had never occurred to me that I was hurting someone’s feelings, how could I if I was truthful with them? He knew that if my ex showed up at my Sweet Sixteen party, that it would be the end of things. I told him I would let him dance with me on my birthday if you-know-who didn’t show up. I was still holding out hope. I’d invited him, and I thought maybe just maybe he would show-up and surprise me—and he did.
The night was a blur; we were back together and that is how it would always be, wouldn’t it? I’d never considered any other scenario in my head—ever.
These relationships were all encompassing; I wanted to spend every free moment together and assumed that he wanted that too.
Life at home with my parents was getting more difficult. I fought with my father constantly. He was violent when he drank, and I was antagonistic. I truly didn’t care what he thought, what he said, or what he did. I had no respect for him whatsoever. My father demanding my blind obedience and respect was a ridiculous notion in my mind. “Respect needs to be earned,” I told him. My father’s response was always the same, “I’m your father, and you had better respect me.”
That never worked. I couldn’t pretend, I told him the truth, and it got me beat—again. It was during that time I really noticed my hypo-sensitivity to pain. If I withdrew into myself, and put on a calm face, I felt no pain. He could throw me, punch me, fling me down the stairs, and I was able to stand and say, “Go ahead, do it again. Why don’t you just kill me this time?”
I had two responses to
my father’s violence; a withdrawal and calm or a violent fighting back. This night, after the violent explosion, he threw me out and told me not to come back, so I left.
I only allowed the tears to flow when I got to the train station up the block. My hands trembled as I dialed my boyfriend’s home phone number and sobbed into the receiver. His sister answered the phone. After hearing my sobs she hopped in her car and picked me up. I spent the next couple of months sleeping on their sofa.
I tried to join a new family. It made no real difference to me that this family was not my own. They took me in, included me, and cared for me. It also didn’t matter what my boyfriend thought about the situation. He never talked to me about it, I guess I was supposed to see the signs; get the “hints”, but I didn’t.
It only took him a couple of weeks to mysteriously stop speaking to me again. This was the second time he had done this—just cut me out without an explanation or without talking to me. I thought we would talk tomorrow, in fact, every day I thought we would talk tomorrow. Months went by and tomorrow never came. I never once considered that he simply didn’t want me there. When the family was preparing to move, I assumed I was going with them. His mom had a new daughter now—me.
I didn’t understand the subtleties, only a direct approach worked and I was stunned. When his mom had to break it to me after weeks of hinting I was devastated. She couldn’t allow me to live with them if her son didn’t want me there. She was right of course, but how did I not see this coming? Was I so inside of my own world, in my own head, that I was constantly misinterpreting the people around me?
“AS makes it difficult to learn from where you have been. It makes it difficult to generalize and problem solve.” ~ Liane Holliday Willey. Pretending to be Normal: Living with Asperger’s Syndrome
I did not learn from this situation, I did not see the signs the next time around. This was twice the same person shut me out without speaking to me, and I never considered it would happen again, but of course, it did.
About a year later, when I was beginning college, we were back together again, and I was back to my old self—misinterpreting, misunderstanding, and assuming his intentions were the same as my own. Together forever, every waking moment, sharing life and every breath—an adolescent idealistic look at life and love, one I should have long since shed.
I didn’t change; he didn’t change, and I am sure by now I don’t have to tell you how that episode ended, because if you guessed that it ended much in the same manner as the last two times you would be correct. How could I be so stupid? So blind?
He flew off to Daytona Beach for Spring Break with his friends. Assuming he would be thrilled to see me, I surprised him, I showed up. I drove 800 miles to be with him, to affect my surprise, and he pushed me away. He needed to be with his friends. In the end he ignored me and would not speak to me at all.
Chapter Fourteen
The Autistic College Student: Conjured Confidence, Failed Relationships, and Executive Dysfunction
I had no sense of self. In many ways I still struggle with this today. Constantly having difficulty knowing who I am, or how I want to be is disorienting. I jumped from persona to persona, from emulation to emulation, until I found something that worked.
My self-image was in shambles, a mess which I had no idea how to clean up. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me, or why people pushed me away. Why was I never enough? Why did others want more than just me? I didn’t need more than just them. In fact, I couldn’t incorporate more than just them.
The social scenes surrounding my late teens and early twenties were focused in bars and nightclubs. This environment would have been the cause of near immediate sensory overload had it not been for the alcohol. I made a habit of chugging down as many drinks as possible within the first few minutes of an outing. This way I was free from the head pounding music, and all the voices talking at the same time.
I was able to dance in my own world on the dance floor for hours on end, until I either couldn’t stand or couldn’t hold one more ounce of liquor. I didn’t need to be out with friends; I could even go out alone and make friends. The kind I didn’t need to ask their names, or bother to get to know in the morning.
My poor self-esteem was masked by a conjured self-confidence, and proven by the attention of men. I was often said to be, “just like a guy” by many of my friends. Modesty did not live in me.
I didn’t understand women. Females hovered in groups giggling, and wondering if they were getting a man’s attention. I never wondered, no need to, I was direct. I saw no sense in playing games, and wondering if a guy liked me.
This partying night owl I played was confident. She didn’t play games. If she saw something she liked, she went after it. Rejection had no effect whatsoever on her, she simply moved on to the next guy she picked out.
I simply had no human connections. I couldn’t be used for sex, because I would have been considered the user. I had no real interest in these men, just for what I’d purposed them for at the time. I couldn’t be hurt because I was wholly disconnected. Connections are confusing; connections hurt.
Dancing and puberty had been good for my body image. I rivaled some of those images in the magazines. I had no need to be bashful. As a female, however, I was socially unacceptable—only men behaved in such crude ways.
The idea of these separate gender roles, these double standards baffled me. Why were things socially acceptable for men, but not for women? Who made up these rules anyway?
I spent most of my college nights on dance floors across New York City with whichever guy I fancied at the time. I was uninhibited, and popular, but not someone you would take seriously. I never took any of them seriously and fiercely pushed away any man that would try to keep any part of me for himself. I was my own person, belonged to no one, and would commit to no one. The minute someone became serious, I’d flee.
Although I worked at breaking free of anyone who would attempt to hold on to me, I eventually found myself in “love” again. I should have known better, but this one guy fought harder than the rest—he persisted even through my unspeakable cruelty.
We only knew each other for a couple of weeks before we flew off for a week’s vacation in Jamaica pretending to be newlyweds. The shine of this knight’s armor blinded my eyes, and the lure of “happily ever after” opened the gates that I should have slammed shut. Those walls were there for protection after all, I just didn’t realize the person I needed protection from was me.
The two of us lived in a small apartment in Bay Ridge. We lived like a newly married couple, though we were not, it was a game of house. I suppose I was interesting and exciting at first, but when I let someone in, the one person was supposed to be the only person.
I was adopted into his group of friends, who treated me like I belonged. There was no time spent apart if we were not at work. We bowled on teams together, went out with friends together, to family outings together—lived together. So, how could I have missed it?
“I’m moving back home,” he said one day out of the blue.
“What? What do you mean?”
“I’d been thinking about it for a while. I told my mother last night.”
A while? We’d only lived together for three short months. He still wanted to be with me, he just did not want to live together. I, once again, was dumbfounded. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what I was being told. There were no signs, no evidence of issues in our relationship, and he sure never said anything to me. But none of that mattered; he left me alone in that apartment with rent due and nowhere to go.
Getting what I wanted (people) came easy to me; keeping them was impossible.
If only I had someone who understood, someone who recognized the difficulties I was having maybe I would have learned to read the signs. The problem with being caught off-guard constantly was that I felt ripped out of my own life. In an instant everything changed with no warning. There was no time to adjust to a failing relationship, to
resign myself to the way things were about to change, or to even try and work things out. I had no warning—ever. By the time I found out things had gone wrong, it was way past the point of fixing it. Life was chipping away at my self-esteem, my self-worth, my self-image one relationship at a time.
My first semester at John Jay College of Criminal Justice went as smoothly as I could expect. I had no problems with the academics and had straight A’s across the board—easy peasy. But what I did not have was any college friends. For the most part I didn’t mind, I was living back at home, and I worked two jobs. Life was busy, and that hid the fact that I was alone.
A full course load at John Jay only took up two weekdays. The remaining three I spent working as a bank teller. On the weekends I worked at a catering hall as a cocktail waitress. I was determined to not have to live back home for very long.
I had trouble staying focused and interested. I majored in Forensic Science, but chemistry didn’t hold my interest. So I transferred to St. John’s University in Staten Island where I took several English and Creative Writing and Psychology classes.
Girls all around me were pledging for sororities. They walked in groups, ate lunch together, and basically kept away from me. I only attracted the attention of boys, this act I already had down pat. Despite the attention I focused on my studies, St. John’s only outlasted John Jay by one semester.
St. John’s was a bigger challenge than John Jay. Not because of the academics, because I found the coursework to be more difficult at John Jay; but because the campus was larger. I had a recurrence of my first experience with junior high school and place-blindness. The additional stress from constantly being lost and late for class contributed to my dropping out of college after a total of three semesters. My brain was perpetually overloaded.
Twirling Naked in the Streets and No One Noticed; Growing Up With Undiagnosed Autism Page 9