Hurting the Ones You Love

Well, here I am more than a year after my previous post. Now I am 40, and things have not been getting any easier. I recently found out about some health concerns -- real ones, the might-have-a-heart-attack-if variety -- so now I'm really middle-aged, I guess. But I've crafted a workout and diet regimen of a sort, with the help of a good friend, and two weeks in I still hate exercise but things are moving along, so we'll see how it goes.

What's on my mind at present is some trouble I've caused a particular friend. It seems that I really upset him earlier today with our discussions and, what I thought was joking about, "the gays." There are a large number of ridiculous ideas that ignorant heterosexual people have about "gays" and the gay lifestyle, worldview, and so on. It should be noted that my friend, whom I'll call "Ned" for this post, is gay. During our discussion and joking, I told Ned about a really stupid comment a former supervisor of mine made a long time ago, about how gay guys like nice stuff, but they often can't afford it, and so they might be more inclined to steal. The supervisor didn't even make the comment to me, but to my boss at the time (who was also gay), and so I heard about it second hand. I tried to emphasize that I was paraphrasing as I told the story.

Now I would think that a comment like that would seem absurd to anyone with a rational mind. It seems as absurd to me as the idea of denying same-sex couples the right to civil unions. What difference does it make to one person if another person gets married or not? Surely a gay couple getting married couldn't possibly be seen as "devaluing" a heterosexual couple's marriage. That's ridiculous to me. It feels ridiculous in an empirical, absolute kind of way. A thinking person couldn't possibly believe such a thing, or have a problem with gay marriage, could they? But as I have learned so many times of late, what I think is often not what others think. This is called the Theory of Mind in the Aspergian circles. Neurotypicals, or nypicals, usually do not have a hard time imagining what others might think in any given situation. Aspies, on the other hand, are very very bad at this. I am, apparently, one such person.

In the situation I found myself today, I assumed that Ned would find my former supervisor's comment, and my former supervisor, absurd. We would shake our heads together, and then that would be it. Regrettably, something about the way I positioned the comment as I told it to Ned, and about how I unfortunately didn't believe that the supervisor would get in trouble for making the comment, really really upset him. He was asking me questions about it, and I soon started feeling cornered and misunderstood (which, as an Aspie, is a familiar feeling), and of course also became frustrated and angry. I just kept repeating, "I was paraphrasing," as if that would explain that I didn't think the supervisor would have put it in such a way that she could have gotten in trouble. That, of course, wasn't the point, but I was too wound up to see it then. We parted ways without resolving the issue, and even an Aspie could tell that Ned was angry at that point. Ned and I have not spoken since.

Now, my wife was there, and later I called her as she was driving to Chicago to find out what the hell happened. I didn't get why what I reported that some idiot had said was casting me as the bad guy in our discussion. I thought we were all against the stupid prejudices of the ignorant together! But my wife explained that I what I said then, and several other times earlier today, were "like sandpaper on an old wound. And eventually, that spot gets raw."

So here I am again, just like I was still a college freshman, being described as "abrasive." What upset me further about the whole situation was that I didn't realize I had been abrading Ned repeatedly. Of course I didn't, because I don't read people well. I've learned over time that my sense of humor, my blunt and frank way of speaking, and my overall demeanor are generally off-putting to people that don't know me, and merely tolerated by people that do know me. How depressing. Once again, I'm the asshole.

This kind of situation tends to keep me angry for quite a while, because I have nowhere to put the blame but on myself. Yet I didn't feel like I had done anything wrong, because, well, I didn't mean to. And, to be honest, I get tired of screwing up all the time. That's what it feels like, anyway. Most of the time I feel like I blend in to nypical society pretty well, so when I fail utterly -- especially with people I care about -- it is very painful.

My wife also said to me, "It's very easy for you because you're a white guy," the implication being that I am in the comfortable majority in society (for the record, Ned is white too, and so is my wife). But I don't know that I agree. I look like a white guy, just like Ned looks like a white guy. And so people around here make racist or sexist jokes around Ned and I because of the assumptions they make based solely on our outward appearances. Ned doesn't have a tattoo on his forehead that reads "GAY", and I don't have one that reads "AUTISTIC", but we look normal enough.

The kinds of accommodations I make in order to get by in the neuro-typical world are very taxing for me, and I often get sick of having to do it. Similarly, Ned has to make accommodations too, to get by in the hetero-typical world, and I am sure he gets sick of it, too. I am not saying that I have it as hard as Ned -- I know that I don't, because society hasn't passed any laws to deny me any rights. And, difficult as a lot of things are for me to follow, that's one thing I do understand. I may not be able to feel how awful it is, but I do understand that it is awful.

Starting from the Middle

I have stalled and stalled and postponed and tarried and even prevaricated starting this blog, largely because I have a deep-seated all-or-nothing, go-big-or-go-home kind of programming. As a result, most of the time I just go home (or stay there). It hasn't really served me all that well, and here on my 39th birthday, I figured, if my friend Doug can blog, with two little daughters to corral all the time, why shouldn't I?

I have many things I aim to cover here, and we'll see how life goes in playing along. Time is often my enemy, and that, coupled with a kind of irrational perfectionism and completist sort of mentality, has forestalled my diving in to blogging properly. I have been fretting about "laying the appropriate groundwork" and "starting from the beginning" and things like that, but in the end my rational brain knows that it doesn't really matter, as this is mostly and exercise for my own fancy anyway. Maybe this will help to break my antiquated habit of double-spacing after a period, which will help if I ever get around to writing my thesis. So here I go, thoroughness be damned: starting from the middle (sort of).

On June 6, 2008, I was formally diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, which lies on the autism spectrum. It explained a lot, like, my whole life. Perhaps even the difficulty I have been having writing my master's thesis. The title is set (Characterization of a cysteine protease expressed in late-stage gametocytes by the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum), but not much else. Much of my current time is sucked up by the observation and tracking of the construction of the retirement home I shall soon (March 2008) share with my lovely wife of 14 years. I've been posting the process on my Flickr page.

Anyhow, yeah, Asperger syndrome. Me and thousands of others. I am sure I'll prattle on about Asperger's a fair piece here, too. I've been seeing a number of articles that touch upon ASD lately, like even in magazines like Wired, not to mention the recent genetic studies that suggest there is some sort of heritable factor. I wonder if this increasing visibility an indication that the perspectives and research on ASD are about to change, or if it is my newly-heightened awareness of the topic (more likely the latter). Time will tell, I suppose. In the meantime, John Robison's book and blog, both entitled "Look Me in the Eye," is an excellent peek into the Aspergian experience. I highly recommend them.

I think I'll stop here before this particular post gets any more chaotic. Peace & happy Halloween.