Saying I'm Sorry (*Again*): Part III (Ant)

Cover of: I love you, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I love you, by Kevin Farran

I love you, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I love you. It's a beautiful book title and an apt summary of all my more intimate relationships. If we remove the second comma, my entire love life suddenly falls neatly into one of these two categories. Either I'm apologising to those I love because my love is simply never enough or I'm deeply sorry to someone for ever loving them in the first place. I suppose many of us are often sorry for loving someone when it goes wrong and wish with all our souls we could go back to intercede at some fateful moment past, but for me, the guilt comes for the havoc my loving seems to wreak on others. I feel I'm a tornado in a trailer park: unleashing calamities upon the most vulnerable, innocent and unsuspecting victims of all.

In Part I & II of this series, I explored two formative relationships gone awry because their unresolved questions refuse to release my mind from purgatory. I classify these two intersections under the "I'm sorry I love you" heading. I believe my affections were more burdensome to the recipients than they were worth and generated chaos where there was calm. But now I want to explore a relationship of the "I love you, I'm sorry" variety.

Before I do, however, I need to lapse into a brief interlude to discuss the twined beauty and beast of neurodiverse relationships. As always, I must emphasise that my experience is certainly not universal, but these paired traits I am about to discuss are incredibly common among those on the Autism spectrum. We seem to be given to express most things in extremes, in this case oscillating wildly from unwavering loyalty to suddenly and unapologetically severing ties. It certainly sounds paradoxical and I imagine is the emotional equivalent of a swift kick to the head. 

Loyalty is an oft cited positive Autistic trait. It is a wonderful thing not to be fickle, to be willing to lay down your life or sanity for a cause, an institution, or a friend, but it can also be extraordinarily costly, personally, emotionally, mentally, and physically. Autistics are very vulnerable to manipulative people who learn to use this trait (often conveniently coupled with naïvety) to their advantage. While I haven't discussed this particular topic with many Autistic men, the female identifying portion of the population would resoundingly prefer support and coaching on safety skills in this arena over being "trained" to conform to NT social norms. However, when that loyalty is appropriately bestowed upon a deserving recipient, it is a grand and noble thing.

The flip side of this coin is as insidious on its face and protective in the long run as loyalty is the other way around. While not a diagnostic criteria for ASD, a tendency to abruptly sever ties with little or no explanation is a common question on Autism screening tests. It is often chalked up to black and white thinking, and this is the only explanation that makes it make any sense to me. Otherwise, I have no idea why a switch suddenly flips in my head, telling me to walk away from someone I had deep affections for a moment before and never look back. Even when it hurts so unbearably much I'd rather be hit by a train, only forced proximity and outside intervention can unfurl the clenched fist of rejection once I've made up my mind. It's a pattern I've repeated far more times than I care to remember. I feel deeply sorry in retrospect for every time I've done it, but I had my reasons, they were logical, and I had to stick to them regardless of the consequences. I know this doesn't mean shit to the people I hurt.

I can only see in hindsight that I mattered enough to someone for my hasty departure to cause them suffering. It was only ever after I made up my mind to tarry no longer that their affections became clear enough to register. This has been a brutal source of confusion and misery throughout my life, but I now finally understand from whence this idiosyncrasy springs. I suppose this is why I now feel an ever more intense impulse to go out and say I'm sorry to everyone I ever did this to. Now I can explain it. Now that I understand the thing, I feel like my apology has more weight, is more sincere free from entanglement within my own self confusion. But I'm almost certain no one else gives a flying leap at a rolling donut.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this unrelenting need to apologise for these transgressions haunts my dreams. While I find myself occasionally wending through my unwaking world to seek forgiveness from some of the minor players in my life, there is one refrain that dominates: seeking absolution from Ant. I beg for it in my dreams because I cannot grant it to myself in the light of day.

My dreams are always intense. Wild and fantastical worlds, complete with colour, sound, and even smells light up my nights and sometimes leave me feeling exhausted when I awake. I don't know whether it's sad, ironic, or just an early red flag I missed that one of the first presents Ant gave me was a dream journal. I thought it was a wonderful present initially, but when he added that I no longer needed to regale him with my nightly adventures as I could enter them in it instead, I was deflated. He was the first and last person to whom I ever tried to fully describe the magical realms of my dream world. So, it is certainly with more than a hint of irony that I now chase him through the hallways of my mind, endlessly trying to explain my actions and beg to resume our friendship.

I want to explain why I couldn't stand having face-to-face conversations to talk about our relationship problems, especially not when he insisted I make so much eye contact. I want to explain why I was so "embarrassingly" over the top at parties and incapable of making respectable small talk. I want to explain why I would invariably blow up and become a raging mess after every social occasion, why I just wanted to stay in bed sometimes even when the sun was shining, why I wanted to be alone with him and not out interacting with others so much of the time it drove him crazy.

I wish I could tell him that I didn't know I was worthy of love and therefore I didn't think I really mattered to him at all. I wish I could tell him that his insistence we share a tightly coupled schedule that allowed me no breathing room when I was completely overwhelmed by people and responsibilities fuelled the deepest burning resentment I'd ever experienced. I wish I could tell him that my suicidal ideation and adulterous fantasies were born out of an overwhelming and very real need for solitude. 

Through the lens of Autism, I can see all these stumbling blocks, inconsequential things to most people, but insurmountable obstacles to me. I am now able to look back and see how the mask I was forced to wear, a mask I'd only just started to don in the year before we met and welded into place with the guidance, tutelage and admonishments of those who "loved me most" during those years we were together, was slowly, silently strangling me. I had to get out to save my life.

I didn't leave because I stopped loving. I didn't leave because I wanted to be with someone else. I didn't leave because I needed something more convenient. I only left a little because I really wanted a cat… I left because I didn't know what I needed and even if I had, I sure as hell didn't know how to ask for it.

So, even though I've said I'm sorry before, and you've professed to forgive me even though it seemed disingenuous, here it is again, flung out into the ether because I don't want to disrupt your life again. As much as it would buoy my heart to count you among my friends in the world again, I sense that is not your wish at all. To you, the past is the past, what's done is done. I wish my brain could work that way too.

How Special is it?

I've been asked to write about my special interests outside of books. If they asked me, I could write a book about my love affair with books, but we already used up all our time talking about that and I'm sure I didn't say so many of the things I wanted to just about that topic before I was so abruptly redirected to a completely unrelated subject. I was not happy about this as I'm so rarely given free reign to discuss my special interests. Learning to close the tap before the deluge of ideas and thoughts about my subjects of interest spills out was one of the first lessons in masking I received those many years ago in the Philippines A lesson that's been reinforced many hundreds of times over in the intervening years: no one really wants to hear all you have to say on this subject, so just don't even get started.

Loving books isn't particularly unusual at any age. "Bookworm" is rather an endearing term and "bibliophile" hardly speaks of anything outlandish. Many people find comfort, solace, inspiration and adventure through books. Libraries and bookstores exist to foster this love of reading. So where does this morph into something "unusually intense"? I don't know. I think lots of people love the smell of books and the feeling of being surrounded by them. Do others experience unbridled joy when they walk into a library or bookstore? Am I unusual in my desire to read constantly? Is it "normal" to feel such affinity for the characters in books that their loss and triumphs are my own?

But I digress, I'm supposed to be talking about something other than books…

What I know was unusual was my intense passion for jazz that began when I was 12. Apart from my dad's Antonio Carlos Jobim record that I grew up with, I don't really know where I first heard jazz, but it was love from the first syncopated beat. I was resolute in my desire to play the tenor sax and poured myself into it from the first time it came out of the case. I’ll never forget the taste of the reed on my tongue and the incredible sound that resonated through my whole being the first time I blew through it.

It wasn't easy being a self-proclaimed jazz aficionado at the age of 13 (especially as most 13 year old girls wouldn't have the foggiest idea what 'aficionado' meant), particularly before the dawn of digital radio and social media. The majority of my peers, even those in the middle school jazz band, didn't share my intense passion for this art form and certainly weren't spending every free moment of the day practicing or listening to this incredible music. Our public radio station, which I could just manage to tune into from my bedroom, played jazz all day Saturday and segued into Blues Stage late that night. I would be glued to those speakers from dawn until I passed out late in the night, sucking up every note and riff.

My parents were tolerant and generally benignly neglectful on this front. As with the rest of my childhood, I was pretty well allowed to do whatever I wanted because I never caused any trouble. Who could argue with their kid for reading or practicing music all day? But it came to a bristling head when they insisted I must go to Honour's Camp at the end of 8th grade. For most of my classmates, this was an incredibly exciting experience that they worked hard to earn the right to attend for three years; for me it was a forced march out of my comfort zone that filled me with dread and anxiety. It also happened to fall on the weekend that the Army Corps Jazz Band was offering a workshop at the local high school. I pleaded with my parents not to make me go, giving this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study under the tutelage of some of the best jazz musicians in the country as my strongest argument. But they felt it best if I did things with kids my own age for once, thinking I would regret it if I missed out. Instead of bonding with my peers as I was supposed to, I was publicly humiliated the first evening then spent the rest of the weekend on my bunk (isolated from all the others in the cabin) listening to my walkman, which I had to hold up to the window to tune into my weekend jazz program. I still feel sick, 25 years after the fact, that I had to endure this torture and my parents were sorry too.

Fortunately, throughout most of my middle school and high school years, I was given access to groups of talented high school and college students who took me under their wings. I played with anyone anywhere any time I could. I would sit up all night listening to classic jazz recordings with well versed mentors, absorbing their worldly wisdom and internalising the brilliance of the masters they introduced me to. I had incredible talent, "chops" in the jazz vernacular, and was invited to play with professional bands.

I learned to sing jazz too and found I could easily emulate the styles of all the Great Ladies. Memorising lyrics and hearing all the parts of music is a life-long innate talent, so I took to vocals effortlessly. Singing was infinitely more portable than the tenor, so as life got more complicated, it came to the fore.

Not content just to listen to, sing and play jazz, I also needed to know all I could about the musicians behind the sounds. I read liner notes, biographies, magazine and newspaper articles. The Internet was only still in its infancy at this time, so there was no Dr. Google to feed my need to know, however I was thrilled that I could take a History of Jazz class at university and studied as hard for that, if not harder, than for calculus or chemistry (much to my detriment in those other classes, unfortunately).

In those years, I gravitated towards groups that shared this passion and chose my initial university on its reputation for excellence in science and music. I had ready access to my people and still maintain a few friendships forged from those two shared passions.

Sadly, I eventually had to accept that I was spreading myself too thin and focus my time and energy on science instead of jazz. This was a very difficult choice, one I foresaw coming from the very early years, but put off making until my hand was forced. My circumstances at my second university made it impossible to continue playing and listening to jazz regularly. Fortunately, there was a second revival for a few years whilst I was in grad school and dating a fellow Earth scientist who was also a talented pianist. Our shared passions for jazz, science, and the great outdoors allowed our relationship to flourish and was the cornerstone for our friendships with others. Sadly, again, the end of that relationship also marked the end of playing music for me. I still have my sax, and I would still love to play, but there is a great heaviness and despair that accompanies it. I know I can't put the time and energy into it that it would require to be great again, and so I ignore it completely. I hope that some day I can return to it, but for now it fills me with an intense sense of loss even to contemplate it.

Caught Between a Rock & a Hard Place :: Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don't…

As a self-IDed, not formally diagnosed female Aspie on the brink of 40, I'm facing some interesting criticisms on two fronts. Those closest to me have accepted this lens shift without much fuss and life is flowing far more smoothly as my stress levels drop along with my mask and others accept some of my idiosyncrasies rather than railing against them. The next circles out, the family members with whom I have less frequent interactions or more strained relations, are not accepting this new paradigm quite as gracefully.

On one hand I get the common refrains, "but you don't look autistic", "but you're not a math savant", "but you're not emotionless". I am just making this all up and seeking attention/trying to be special because clearly my life isn't complicated enough. Right. Everyone wants to be labelled with a disorder/disability because that's just sooooo awesome…

On the other hand I get, "but how could you NOT know you're autistic??!!" Well, let's see… Prior to starting this journey of self discovery a few months ago my knowledge of autism/Asperger's was limited to its portrayal in popular culture (e.g. Rainman, the curious incident of the dog in the night, Big Bang Theory) and what a few friends of mine were struggling with in their sons. These expressions of autism in no way reflect my life experiences, so why would I identify in this way. I studied physical science, not human psychology. I've spent my life ensconced in academia where autistic traits are both commonplace and generally advantageous, therefore pretty "normal". Plus, the diagnostic criteria for women changed significantly long after I left school or any environment wherein someone might suggest I seek diagnosis. Yes, apparently many people "in the know" tagged me as an Aspie long before I had a clue, but no one ever mentioned it to me.

But now I await the formal tick in the box. I've opened the professional Pandora's box to see if there are other confounding issues. Maybe I'm "subcritical" and only just express some Autistic traits, but below the diagnostic threshold. It's a weird and uncomfortable place to be. Some days I wonder who I actually am.

This comes at a time when I don't seem to be able to satisfy anyone, making it all the more exhausting and exasperating. Too many people wanting completely conflicting things from me all the time. The constant tug-of-war for my attention, affection, energies, time, and ideas is pulling me apart at the seams. When I need more time for self care than ever before in my life, there is no allowance for this from anyone else. The second I carve out space for myself, I'm failing someone else.

I feel crushed by expectation and demand; emptied from filling others. My batteries are drained and I just want a nap. Perhaps for a month. Or more… If I'm deemed "on the spectrum" then maybe this is Autistic burnout. Otherwise, I guess I'm just a lazy whinger who needs to pull up her socks.

Echoes of love left behind through blurred boundaries

I'm not particularly good at boundaries. I struggle with the nuance between 'acquaintance' and 'friend'; even using the German Bekannte never really helped me define these shades of grey. Hence, I've been badly burned many times by opening myself up completely and unreservedly to people I thought were Friends, who didn't have quite the same affinity for me. Wearing my heart on my sleeve has won me some true blue friends, but it has also left me open to derision and stabs in the back. I now realise this challenge is strongly tied to my inability to correctly read people and social situations.

I've been contemplating this issue in the context of Dunbar's number, which quantifies the number of meaningful relationship a person can maintain. (See: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-greatest-number-of-friends-a-person-can-have ) Listening to Dr. Dunbar explain his theory and the evidence to support it, I found myself both baffled and intrigued. The first time I heard an interview with him, it was prior to identifying myself as an Aspien and I thought it was simply outrageous to claim this to be a universal limiting truth as it felt so far removed from my own experience. Re-listening to the interview post Aspie-awakening, I had a completely different take on his ideas through the Autistic lens.

Dunbar posits (with a good deal of historical and social data to back him up) that humans have always been limited to about 150 people in their social network. This requires more specific defining in today's world of vast online social networks: these are people with whom one can maintain "stable interpersonal relationships" and is limited by the size of the neocortex. Now, I'm not a cognitive scientist, but it seems logical to draw the conclusion that if the neocortex is directly involved in one's ability to maintain stable interpersonal relationships, then this is somewhere we might look to find significant differences between NT and ND individuals.

In his interview with Dr Dunbar on the NPR Podcast, TED Radio Hour, Guy Raz describes this network of ~150 people as a series of widening circles with ever diminishing intensity. Each wider circle contains more people with whom we (ostensibly) are able to maintain a certain level of friendship. At the outer reaches of this circle, we reach a thinning edge where we pass from people we truly know and can trust in the present to all the others who are known to us in a lesser capacity or too far in the past to still be worthwhile. Dunbar explains that this limit exists because of the space those in the inner-most circles occupy in our brains.

I contemplated this "brain space" paradigm in light of my own experience. My first reaction was that I most certainly have more than 150 people within what I would consider to be a "stable interpersonal relationship", with whom I could pick up wherever we left off however many months/years/decades ago. I placed that number far closer to 400 and wondered why this might be so. Then it slowly dawned on me that maybe this is where my Autistic brain starts to get things "wrong" socially.

I believe that I most likely have a very skewed notion of what constitutes a close relationship and I must admit that I find it nearly impossible to contemplate that people I have not seen in many years may have moved on and changed. I started to recognise that the somewhat shocked/maybe irked, "um, hi, what do you want?" response of "close friends" I hadn't seen or been in contact with for many years might well be a function of the lack of reciprocity in holding others in my head and heart. I have never really been able to understand how someone I felt so close to in the past could just move on when there had been no falling out of any sort.

I discussed this all with my husband and his take was that I indeed have very few people within those first few realms of "close friends". He suggested that what I interpret as a strong friendship really just boils down to people putting up with my quirks and allowing me to bounce back into their life whenever I have a mind to do so. So, perhaps I simply spread out my neocortex space very thinly to an enormous network of people because I have absolutely no idea how to actually form strong, resilient friendships. This is both sad and kind of a special skill (in a weird, slightly antisocial way) because I often think of myself as a "node" connecting many different people I know only tangentially with other people they deeply connect with.

Another blurry boundary for me is the surface between other's emotional bubbles and my own. If people's emotions were objects in a painting, my world would look like Monet's Water Lilies. I tend to experience other's emotions as my own, which is odd at best and horribly confusing and upsetting at worst. The notion that Aspies don't have feelings or lack empathy is patently false. If anything, we may have unbuffered receptors of the emotional world around us, which can be completely overwhelming if not kept in check or blocked out completely. Walking around like the emotional equivalent of an open gaping wound often leads to an involuntary emotional system shut-down (hello, appearing emotionless!) or a meltdown (cue looking mentally unstable!) when it's all just too much.

This unfortunate combination of poor boundary conditions is the basis for the most painful series of human interactions in my life, the ramifications of which continually reverberate through both my conscious and unconscious mind. It creates a situation that makes it almost impossible for me to maintain my Self when I feel genuinely close to someone. I slide rapidly into the character they need/want me to be. I dissociate like salt in water, my atoms forgetting the crucial bonds within my whole.

My pattern is to lurch along in this disassociated state for a while before some crisis alerts me that I'm at risk of irrevocable loss. In a panicked act of self-preservation, I dump the baby out with the bath water and flee. I shut down all feelings of love, friendship, kinship, closeness, togetherness, etc. that were shared between us and steel myself with the hardened belief that it was a one-way farce all along and that the other person will be better off/happier without me. Some time later, I discover that I caused the other person immense pain and I feel confused and ashamed. I want to mend the friendship and apologise deeply and sincerely, but I'm convinced that all trust is obliterated, that there is no redemption for me in their eyes.

My dreams are haunted by endless echos of apologies to those I've hurt with my perceived callousness. I chase old loves and friends through abandoned hallways, across oceans, down ski slopes and unfathomable other worlds calling out pleas for forgiveness, assuring them I still love them, always will, because loss of love isn't why I left. I left because I felt too much. I couldn't handle so much feeling. I didn't know what to do with it all. It stole my tongue and left me deaf and dumb. My dreams are the only place the words will ever come out because my rational mind knows that by now time has pushed me beyond the edge of their neocortex into a footnote of friendships past.

Some might say I just want closure or to apologise to make myself feel better, but I truly wish I could go back and wipe away the hurt I inflicted, explain that none of it was intentional, put that little piece of my heart in a box and give it back to the person to whom it belongs and ask that they carry me as I do them. As I come into accepting my authentic autistic self, there's an overwhelming urge to go back to those old lost loves and friends and offer up my "disability" as an explanation for the pain I caused, but I think that would just do more damage than good. The only way is forward.