Flippin’ Out

My wife and I know that we can usually expect an aspie explosion from our daughter on days when she has a social-heavy event. So why can’t I ever see the same thing happening with me?

Hi there! We’re the people who will ruin your day long after you’ve dealt with us!

Today the family went on a hike through the woods with my daughter’s nature club. We had a good time, although near the end my son started getting a little tired. I honestly didn’t feel too stressed about the whole thing, but I’ll admit I didn’t feel quite “settled” during the afternoon. During the rest of the night, I felt myself getting easily irritated by every little thing – I threw a fit because I couldn’t find the correct pan to cook brownies in! I had just about had it. For lack of a better way to explain it, I was just pissed off. So I did what we often tell our daughter to do when she needs to de-stress.

I went up to my room.

Leave me alone; tantrum in progress…

This must be what it felt like for my daughter to go to school. She’d be completely fine at school… well not completely fine, but you get the idea. She’d get through the day, get home, and have a flippin’ fit on us until we had to send her to her room before she went completely ballistic. Then the teachers would be like “We don’t see any social issues with her, she’s perfectly fine.” Yeah, tell that to the smashed broken toys that are littered around the house because my daughter couldn’t get them lined up in just the right way. I’m an adult, so I don’t end up smashing my stuff, but I can still throw tantrums. Maybe I need the same thing she does: a little time after a social gathering to decompress myself, at the very least to avoid acting like a jerk and getting everyone in my family pissed off at me.

Yeah, I’ll be upstairs until the urge to stab me has died down.

My Nemesis

As an aspie, I have some real difficulties hanging in on a conversation that I’ve lost interest in. I can stick it out for a while, but eventually I get to the point where I’m looking for the fastest way out of a conversation. So what happens when the conversation just keeps going deeper and deeper, and DEEPER with no end in sight?

I explode on the inside, that’s what happens.

Yup. That’s me.

One of my coworkers just absolutely cannot tell a simple straight story. Every conversation goes off on tangent after tangent, and sometimes on sub-tangents of those original tangents, etc. I’ve actually thought to myself, “How the fuck did we get here?” and I honestly can’t figure it out. Just the other day she went from getting a haircut to the Bachelor to visiting her mom to gaining weight from eating too much popcorn to… you know what, to be honest, I completely lost track after that. There was some discussion about a French Press coffee maker vs. a Keurig at some point, but everything else I zoned out on.

PLEASE STAHP

The hardest part about dealing with all of this is that eventually she goes backwards down the path and picks up where she left off before the tangents. Which means each time she switches subjects, the conversation is guaranteed to be longer and longer, and L  O  N  G  E  R……

(GRRMXFLDRXNCH!!!!!!!!!)

Other than this one thing, she’s very nice. I just get to the point where I want to stand up and say, “Ok, I’m done. I can’t take anymore. Let me know when you get back to the part about watching the Smurfs with your cousin.”

Hey, that reminds me of this video I saw on the RedTube…

I Can’t Win

I’m often seriously misunderstood. I’m not antisocial, it just seems like I am because I have Aspergers. I want to talk to people and be liked, but I’m deathly afraid of doing something weird and screwing up. So I avoid talking to people, but I hate the awkward silence that comes with it. And when I just can’t take the silence anymore, when I swallow my fear and reach out, I feel completely foolish.

I take my son to preschool almost every morning. Whenever I’m there, it seems like all the other parents are friendly, making small talk and what not. They’re doing basically all of the stuff I can’t do, which of course makes me feel inadequate and stupid. So I usually get him ready to go into class and rush out of there as soon as I can, which then makes me look antisocial and unfriendly. Which is wonderful, because the one thing I want above all else is to look like a total and complete dick to these people.

Today I tried something different. I was the first one there with my son today, and one of the other dad’s came in behind me with his daughter. The awkward silence was PAINFUL. So I started chatting. Yes, me. CHATTING. And it was as bad as you’d expect. I don’t even remember what I was talking about, but I kept getting those half-hearted laughs you give someone when you don’t want to hurt their feelings but you just want them to shut the fuck up so you can get back to living your life uninterrupted by the weirdo who won’t stop talking to you.

It sucks. I’m sure a lot of us Aspies are like this: desperate to reach out, yet unable to do so in a “normal” way. So we wall off. We hide. Until we find out that you’re interested in something – ANYTHING! – that we can talk about. That’s why Aspies will talk your head off; we don’t want to lose the feeling of connecting with people.