A few weeks ago, I went with the teen, my girlfriend’s daughter, to her new school’s open house, where you tour the facilities and meet the staff. She’s 14 now. Large high school, a maze of buildings, circuitous hallways, all crammed with aimlessly wandering people.
a very incomplete list of autistic experiences; no particular order
Putting your ear against the fridge in your kitchen to listen to the motor because the longer you listen to it, the more you constantly hear new sounds as the fridge-noise teases apart into increasingly distinct sub-noises that basement away into ever new components that your ear can’t stop chasing.
social anesthetic
When I was fifteen, I had never made a friend before and I was getting stressed out about it. I thought, you know, “This is weird.” The loneliness was overwhelming by then- it had been weighing on me for as long as I could remember. My efforts to connect with other kids always went awry…I was too confused by people. People are strange.
Tativille
I’m never able to get Jacques Tati’s 1967 film Playtime completely out of my head. There are phases where, for a few months, it’s on constant mental rotation…and then there are quieter times. And then the cycle repeats.
hymnal
When I was 12 and going into junior high, dad talked me into playing trumpet.
It was a weird adolescence.
I’ve mentioned this before, so I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself, but I never really developed much of an ability to use or understand body language. I thought words were the thing, and so I missed out on a lot of what other people were actually saying and everything kind of sucked. Childhood was no fun. I couldn’t connect with the other kids. Our social languages were too different.
Autism, Depression and Therapy
On Twitter, Anonymous asked, “How did you find a good therapist?”
uncanny plateau
this is a collection of off-topic material.
Frequently Asked Questions (that I made up)
I wanted to put together a list of Frequently Asked Questions. The problem is that no one really asks me anything. Mostly when people ask things, it’s the same question, usually from depressives who want to know how I survived depression. Since the honest answer is “therapy”, it makes for an abrupt and disappointing back and forth.
That just leaves me with questions I either get infrequently or not at all. Mostly the latter. Anyway, here’s my mostly-fraudulent version of a FAQ post.
10 Autism Interviews: a collection
I recently guest-posted two interviews at Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism. I thought I would share links to those here, along with every interview/conversation I’ve been part of over the years. The topics all converge around autism, but I’m grateful for the huge variety of insights and perspectives these discussions made possible.