Before I had children I read a lot of Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin was hilarious and familiar and outrageous. Little did I know I would one day give birth to a Calvin. No one told me that being a mother would be just like surviving life as a comic strip parent to an alien child. No one told me that I had also been that child. I had no idea that a curiosity as big as the cosmos, imaginary friends and habitually questioning, if not also innocently sidestepping and blindsiding authority, were ...trying... to adults just struggling to survive in the real world. Damn that real world.
But imagination is a wonderful thing. Calvin's mother: "Whither goest thou, young rogue? Can there yet remain some villany thou hast not committed?"
Calvin: "Thou dost wrong me! Faith, I know not where I wander. Methinks the most capricious zephyr hath more design than I."
Which, now I'm aware of living both sides of the conversation, and the meta-conversation (escaping dull and demanding social conventions with the power of imagination), is all the more fitting.
Whither do I wander? To the idea of un-masking. Masking, among its many meanings, refers to an autist's learning to hide or subdue their quirks while mimicing others' behaviours, in order to pass as 'normal' in society. It may apply from buying a loaf of bread to whole life trajectories, becomes entrenched and is ultimately exhausting. Like we're always playing a role. Even worse, a meaningless role in a farcical, perhaps fatuous, absurdity. (Hmmm.... could be liberating! haha!) Because an autist can feel lost among aliens and has to expend extra energy translating - both the things others say and do, and their own responses, into 'normal' in order to communicate - it can feel like a hyper-draining and -demanding world out there. Where are the spaces that autists may be themselves? Ahh, teh interwebs. Bless you.
I want to mention these things because I think that 'extreme' - bwahahahahaha! - online gardening communities are refuge to a disproportionate number of aspies and autists. Where else do you go when the wider world doesn't make sense? Plants do. Animals do. Trains do. Dinosaurs and exoplanets and binary and 12th century lutes do. Some careers - engineering, librarianship, academia, come to mind - are, if you ignore the tea-room or make it a domain of tics and stims, potential refugia. But with or without apt employment we seek immersion in a world of special interest. If we're lucky, it happens also to protect us from this, ugh, 'reality' of which many are apparently so fond.
(If the morning light shining through acacia leaves and glinting from rimed pasture isn't real, what is? I contend a traffic jam is real because so many people conspire to make it real. :p Now is real. Patterns of light are real! The sun requires no conspirator! Wait! Or does it? O.o :p :p
Whither, whither, wander.... )
Ah, exhaustion. Un-masking in a safe space. We (I) crave to share a language. I began a blog here in hopes I could habituate myself to regular writing, in order to make something more of my thoughts and creative processes; so that I could share and make meaning and discover. So that I could become reliable. But I have a fly-crash-and-burn-hide-under-a-rock kind of pattern. I invest a lot of energy with great optimism, then discover my tank is empty. This, I recently discovered, is a common experience for those on the spectrum. From the scale of nervous breakdowns (had plenty of those), to just not being able to meet regular commitments, make promises for fear of letting people down or even make friendships for the dread of having Not Enough To Give, this is a familiar thing to me. Hello revelation! Does an explanation of Autistic Burnout make sense to anyone else?
http://www.theautisticadvocate...
(Long article, those those who are determinedly curious.)
Well, back to Calvin. My 'imaginary' friend wasn't a stuffed tiger, she was a tree. Her name was Myrtle. I had lots of tree-friends actually. Trees were warm and welcoming; their limbs embracing, their bark soothing, their leaves delightful and their simmering whispers in the breeze the kindest voices I ever heard. Reaching towards the sun makes sense. Reaching toward sweet water makes sense. Growing makes sense. I didn't feel so alien among the trees.
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