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Saturday, December 4, 2010

I hate my Asperger's. *string of expletives*

I'm a 31-year-old Aspie, which means, essentially, "perpetual child who needs to be chided and redirected in her behavior."  Nothing fills me with seething rage quite like being told to shut my mouth.  Yet, since I can't figure out what to say and what not to say in certain situations, it is the duty of those who love me to let me know when to shut it, due to the fact that what I say sometimes unintentionally hurts others or causes issues with my family or my professional life.  So, yeah, people I love telling me to shut up is a necessary evil, for my own good, yet it makes me want to jump off a 30-story building with hatred for myself (for being a child) and rage at the person doing the shutting up (for treating me like a child).  This has happened FOUR times now in the last week, and I'm so filled with anger that I'm about to move to Siberia and never interact with another human being again.

"Please don't do that, sweetie, it's dangerous and you could hurt someone."  A phrase I utter to the little dudes 100 times a day, a way of redirection and chiding and getting them to stop doing something that they don't want to stop doing while using terms of endearment and a quiet tone to soften the blow of treating them like the children they are.  People who know and love me redirect me in this way frequently, and it's effing infuriating.  "Let's not talk about that right now, Karen."  "This topic is best left for another time, Karen."  "By the way, as an afterthought, let's leave this topic off the internet, Karen."  What I hear is, "Shut up, Karen, you complete moron.  You have no idea how to behave."  Truth.

I learned all about this in my horrible, no-good, very bad social training.  I had to make stupid lists of things I am allowed to talk about (green lighted), things I can only talk about with family and friends (yellow-lighted), and things I can only talk to my mom or Eric about (red lighted), and I KNOW it's necessary so that I'm not embarrassing myself and my family and can keep a job, but I effing hate it.  It reminds me of this abusive d-bag I used to date who used to tell me when the conversation was over and I could stop talking.  He gave me lists of conversations and matters that he considered closed and that I was never to bring up again.  Arguments we'd had where I'd had no closure, people I used to know, talking about my past, etc. were big no-nos, and if I brought them up after he'd told me to banish them from my vocabulary, I'd be verbally abused for days or weeks at a time, all of my past (corrected) mistakes shoved in my face at all waking hours.

As it is, that is how my Asperger's training makes me feel.  Silenced.  I can't speak what's on my mind, because I can't put 2 and 2 together to figure out the effect of my actions.  I can sit here and think about what I'm going to say, and go through and think to myself, "now how are my readers and/or listeners going to react to this?" and feel that what I am saying is fine, and then, somehow, some way, it isn't.  Someone gets hurt or offended or blah-blah, and poof, suddenly everyone has to tell me what's appropriate.

I really should be sending these blogs to an editor for approval before posting them to make sure the content is appropriate, seeing that I'm all of 5 years old and everything.

Yeah, I'm bitter.  FOD, Asperger's.

1 You Said What?:

mollyrobin said...

Karen, I love this. It makes SO much sense to me. I am constantly redirecting my son on what is inappropriate talk in public and what can be talked about at home and what should not ever be talked about. Sometimes, just the way he puts things need to change for him to be "acceptable"....that said, we are SO blessed to have gotten him in an environment at an early age (I wish five years ago we knew)that will HELP him and not silence him. Last year, for example, he was suspended for 'talking' about guns and bombs on the playground. One of the little boys told his mom, who came into the school. Shit you not....."bomb" in their home is a bad bad word. I was like WTF....are you serious? So my son has to be home for three days because he does not grasp our ridiculous censorship rules concerning things that little boys usually love to make believe about? The thing is, 95% of the kids out there CAN comply, because they can "shut their mouths and censor their talk"....my little Aspie can't. Good writing Karen....love your blog!