Maddie: Never Defeated

This is amazing and horrible timing for this blog post...

I'm pissed off...

REALLY pissed off.

Oh yeah...Hi there, how's it goin? Long time no see...

By the way, in general, life has been treating me well...good things happening in Maddie-Land.

But now, I'm pissed off.

Care to continue?

Fair warning: this is probably not going to be one of those "warm and fuzzy" posts that you can find some sort of enlightenment from. I'm typing everything at the top of my head, hoping it will help clear my thoughts.
The exact situation is not important, but I am revealing to you a kind of vulnerability you might not have seen before. It's like seeing a mother bird after she's had a predator try taking her eggs away from her...

I'd imagine she'd be pretty pissed off and not be too inclined to have self-control.

That's what my autism anger-bursts feel like...

Let's just say...I get "Cray-Cray".

It's normal for me to feel frustrated about things, or overwhelmed, stressed out, whatever...but to get me absolutely FUMING is a whole other story. If I do get like that, you'll probably never see it. I might tell you about it after the fact, but I tend to not reveal the actual emotion. It ain't pretty. I got from 1-10 on the anger scale pretty quickly...a lot of people on the spectrum do. It becomes more than an emotion...it evolves into a physical anger where you feel like every pulse in your body is blood ready to burst from your veins. It's been an hour since I've had a complete melt down...and my heart is still pounding. Typing this all right now literally feels therapeutic...I feel myself becoming more and more relaxed as I go along, and things seem less and less like the world is crashing down. The pressure on my finger tips on the keys on the keyboard feel like I am releasing the pent of feelings I was storing. I came home from school tonight completely out of control of my emotions. I literally felt like punching something and screaming at the top of my lungs. Instead of that un-healthy behavior that could potentially hurt myself, I've decided to blog.  

Again, what happened to get me to this point isn't really important...let's just say I was hurt by a friend I care about a lot. I wish I had told them that I felt angry at them in the moment, and instead I bottled it all up and broke down when I got home...I hate that I do this. I don't like confrontation, but in the moment, it seems better than facing the problem "head on". I think at times, I feel like I can't tell people when I am angry, because I hate myself when I am angry. Unfortunately, I've spent a lot of my life feeling angry, and it's not somewhere I like to re-visit nowadays...running away and being alone always seemed better than putting it all out there and risk losing that relationship. As a defense mechanism, I think I like being the person who chooses to leave vs. being pushed away.

I don't like being angry...but I know that there is some importance in allowing yourself to be angry if you let it out in a healthy away. Punching a wall would be...ouch...and drinking my problems away would be even more ouch. I figure that sharing with people the way I experience the world can help them not only understand people with Autism, but also themselves. I know in my blog I might come across like I have things all figured out about life...but I don't. I have a lot to learn. I'm glad I know how I am when I am angry. Addressing it keeps me from doing stupid things in the moment...ignoring it never helps.

I want to be better at letting people know what I feel about things and being honest with them. I shouldn't have to reserve what I think and feel to keep others comfortable. If they've hurt me, they should know about it. They'll never grow as a person if they aren't aware of the way they might be affecting someone. I know this is easier said than done, but I think it is something that a lot of us tend to forget. You don't have to blow up at people to get your point across...that line can be difficult to find, but it's an important one. The best way I have found is writing it out...verbally communicating it in the moment can be bad because you might wind up saying things you don't mean, or it can be difficult to articulate in a calm way what it is you are exactly trying to say.

I'm happy that I did this...I feel physically much less tense and I can think clearly without profanities clouding my coherent thought process. I figure things can go 1 of 2 ways...I could either let every time I face anger let it defeat me, or I can address it, solve it, and let it go. I've had a lot to overcome in my life...even when I feel worn out an ready to throw the towel, I've got to push through.

Anger can be a good thing...it can motivate people to seek change.

Guess what?

Maddie Dugan is never defeated.

Pinball Confusion

Autism has many faces. It's one of the most unique "conditions" out there. It is so diverse, mysterious, and quite possibly one of the most fascinating things a person can have. AND...it can affect anyone in many different ways.

It's been a weird journey being the "in between" of Autism...

Anytime I have mentioned that I have Autism to someone, most people generally have the same, glazed look on their face. I think I have mastered the art of mind reading, because as soon as it comes out of my mouth, people's brains start blowing fuses and the thing that was once their brain turns into a pinball machine. They are confused as to why the ball they are playing with in their game doesn't match up with the slots that they are aiming for. And, on top of that, a bagillion lights are going off making it unclear as to what game it is they are even playing anymore. No bonus rounds for them.

In other words...YOU? Really?

I wonder what people expect sometimes when someone tells them they are Autistic. Should I start rolling on the floor, flapping my arms, and foaming at the mouth? Autism doesn't equal freak show. With the look in their eyes, it's like they have opened a can of soda expecting coke and they get pepsi instead and they experience this weird shock. People's image of Autism is of the extremely low functioning, it seems like. If you do meet someone low functioning, they aren't representing the entirety of Autism. Even though there are children and adults on the very low functioning level, it shouldn't be the only thing people look for when encountering an Autistic person.

I don't have to be low functioning in order to be Autistic. I also don't have to have Asperger's syndrome. This also comes as a shock to people when I tell them I'm not Aspi. People's minds, if they know any amount of information on Autism, think someone either has to be, like I said, on the extreme level of low functioning or just have Asperger's. Just so everyone knows, I don't have the right qualifications to have the Asperger's diagnosis. Yet, everyone I talk to about my Autism automatically assumes this is what I have.

Stereotypes are all kinds of fun, aren't they?

This game of pinball I keep having to play with people just gets more and more exciting.

Stereotype pinball...interesting concept.

I'll never forget the one person, who I least suspected to, flat out tell me I wasn't Autistic or anywhere near the spectrum...

I had a therapist for many years of my life, I believe from the age of 10 to around the age of 17 or 18. I have technically been in therapy since the age of 2 (yes, 2...) but the therapist I am going to talk about was the one I had for the longest period of time. I grew to love her. At first, I hated her. A lot. I even told her that a couple of times. I hated her clothes, her hair, pretty much anything I could pick at her for, I hated. I was a little brat at times back then...
At the age of 10 was when I was ready to ditch the whole special education system, so it was then when I thought I didn't need therapy anymore, either. Actually, the big reason I wanted to leave special Ed was because of the embarrassing, large lady with a leg limp and a loud, Jewish mother voice who would come pull me out of my normal class. As if people didn't think I was weird enough, this lady would come bursting through the door and pretty much yelled for me to come follow her...the stares of my peers and snickering was enough for me to want to jump out of the window and go bury my head in the sand box. There wasn't a lot that really mortified me back then after a certain period of time and I was a little de-sensitized to bullying, but this lady managed to accomplish making my existence as an elementary student more of a nightmare than it already was.

WOW, getting a little side-tracked there...I hate having so much to talk about :-)

So, back to my therapist. Going to therapy became like going to see the large, Jewish limpy lady, only no one knew I saw my therapist except my family. It was the concept of it all...having to go see someone and further my feelings of handicap. My therapist was actually a really nice lady. When I was younger, however, I was done feeling like a freak...to me, going to therapy was seeing myself as the child who rolls around on the floor, flapping her arms and foaming at the mouth. I was done feeling like that because it's how I felt every time I got made fun of at school. My therapist helped me through a lot of those feelings, though...after while, I discovered that I was at my best when I was at therapy, in the sense that I was able to be completely myself without worrying how any one else would look at me. It became a place of weekly sanctuary...I personally think everyone would be a lot happier in this world if they went to therapy.

One day, in therapy (I was around the age of 16), we got to talking about my Autism, and I shared with her my feelings of resentment about being Autistic when I was younger, and how I look back at how much I have changed over the years. She looked at me, puzzled.

Remember that pinball machine I mentioned earlier? Hers was going off the charts. And hers looked like the Simpson's pinball, where every time you miss the ball you hear a loud "DOH!" from Homer.

She told me I wasn't Autistic. 

Proffesional with a Master's degree in Psychology say WHAAAAAAAAAAAAA??

That was the first time in my life that someone, an adult, who had known me for a very long time, told me I wasn't Autistic. She explained that, on my records, I probably had the right diagnosis as a young child, but that in the time that I saw her from the age of 10, she never would have given me that diagnosis. Stunned, I tried explaining all of my sensory integration stuff and how when I get tired you can see it, and she wasn't having any of it. She told me that even with all of that, she wouldn't label me as Autistic. She told me nowadays I just had dysthymia, which is a long-term, chronic depression. I got that, at the time, I was pretty depressed. But, not having Autism?

I got that I was high functioning after I developed throughout my childhood. I wasn't super low functioning, but didn't meet the requirements for Asperger's. It's not like I had been lying to myself...or that adults at school or my parents had lied to me. I felt very confused after she had said that to me. I can understand, after seeing me one day a week, for an hour each time, how you might not see the "Autistic" parts of myself.  Even though I had some pent up resentment from the label from when I was younger, I didn't know how could just "be me" without the label always on the back of my mind. It's like she had taken everything I was ever told, drenched it in gasoline and set fire to it. I had resentment about Autism because of the bullying, but it didn't mean that I hadn't clicked with many of the traits that come with it, or that there were parts of Autism that I wasn't actually kind of proud to have...

Over the years, since that therapy session. I've realized some things about myself. I discovered, thanks to my neurologist, that I am in the high functioning category of Autism. I also discovered the idea of a spectrum...that things aren't 2 sided in the world of Autism. I fall where I fall on it, and I don't need approval to be where I fall. I also figured out, with a little soul searching, that labels are over-rated. I know myself...really well. I see all the traits about myself laid out on a table, and even though I consider myself to be Autistic, it doesn't define me. No one's diagnosis should ever define them.

With all the pinball machines I have seen in my life, I don't really let it negatively affect me anymore. I see it as an opportunity for social change...Autism awareness goes past trying to find a cure or whatever. It's about seeing all it has to offer to our world. I might not fit some Autism stereotype, but I embrace the impact it has had on my life without letting it consume all of who I am. Just the other day, I was out with my best friend and his new girl friend, and I was talking about something and just casually brought up having Autism and kept going on with my story. I could see the pinball machine going off in her mind, but I didn't really care. If she really wanted to know more about it, she would have asked, I didn't need to fully explain my diagnosis or validate it for her. It was made clear that it was a part of me without it consuming the conversation. I could carry on and have a good time and just being me.

Pinball machines are all uniquely made, when you think about it...

Not one game is the same. Every game will have different challenges and a different end result. 

You can't always win. Some people are just going to be ignorant. I'm cool with that.

 I'll keep playing anyway.

<3 Maddie