It's been a week. (9/11/14)

I began my first day of work last week, Wednesday.  So just over a week from today, when I now write.  I'm exhausted.  I should have been writing each day about the new things that happened, stuff I learned, stuff I was bad at but might get better at... I just couldn't.  I got home from work and assorted other activities each day and went right to bed.  Transitions are hard.  

The job is good.  The people are basically good, caring people.  They're anti-corporate, in that they like sweeping impersonal company policies about as much as I do.  And like me, they play by the rules as much as they need to, and do what they can to make life easier for others despite it.  For instance, we need a filing cabinet moved.  It's a big heavy filing cabinet.  We can't move it ourselves, because that's not allowed by corporate.  So a request has been put in, and there the cabinet sits, awaiting appropriate personnel to get around to it.  In the meantime, we grouse, but we don't try to move it.  

I still don't have full access to the electronic services I need to do my job, so I've been taking care of a project another person wants done.  So much filing.  Carrying heavy file folders stuffed full of information.  I have to carry it into another part of the building, which contains a school/day care for severely affected kids, up to age 18.  They can be violent, so it's a little anxiety-provoking to walk in with an armful of files.  Once, when I was in the file closet putting things away, I heard loud bellowing and weeping through the door.  I waited for it to go away before I snuck back into my side of the building.  I've informed people that it should be fine, and am putting up a face to support that.  I have mixed feelings on it, though.  I don't want to drop an armful of files onto any kid's head, regardless of what they've done to me personally.  And I can't help but feel a little kinship with them, despite that I was never that violent or disturbed as a kid.  Some of them are on the spectrum, too.

I read an article on several peoples' experiences with working with disturbed children.  Much more disturbed children than are in my workplace building, I think.  You don't hear a lot about these experiences, perhaps because they're intensely depressing.  But I read it all, wondering quietly what made me different than them.  What made any human, really, different than them.  We call these children uncivilized when they scream and throw things, but you need only look into a domestic abuse situation to find that same behavior.  And in people who are otherwise trusted to drive motor vehicles, hold down a job, and interact with people on a day to day basis.  

It bothers me.  

There's nothing I can do right now, I think.  I don't have the training to handle the kids in the other side of the building.  If I want to become a speaker on autism, I don't have the time, either.  But if I'm going to speak for people on the spectrum, I have to face that those people are people on the spectrum too.  I have to do my best by them, not just by the high functioning group of people I visit every month or two.  

I asked Ari Ne'eman, a few years ago at a conference, what we high functioning people on the spectrum can do for the lower-functioning people on the spectrum.  He didn't really seem to know, but offered words to the effect of, "the best we can.  Ask them what they want, and respect their words and wishes."  I have no better answer than this.  Every person on the spectrum is different.  To enter one person's world, in order to see the way they see, takes an immense amount of energy and effort.  It's hard, even if you know what you have to do.  The idea of needing to do that for thousands, even tens of thousands, of low-functioning autistics, is staggering.  I'd say impossible, frankly.  I'll only live to 70-90, assuming no disastrous events.  I'm already more than a quarter of the way through my lifespan, and I spent much of that just trying to figure myself out and learn the rules of society in general.  

I don't feel prepared.  Not even slightly.  

The building I work in is headed by a doctor, and she has mentioned, at some point, wanting my feedback about how the place operates.  She knows I'm on the spectrum.  In fact, she's one of the reasons I was hired.  I don't know what to say to her.  I don't remember being as young as the kids she works with.  They max out here at age 5 or 6, because that's all insurance will pay for in Michigan.  When I was that young, I was barely into elementary school.  I was already different, then, and alone because of it, but I was also already being bullied.  What do I possibly have to offer to the doctor?  She knows kids way better than I do.  Perhaps the only thing I know that she doesn't, is that some kids are never listened to.  We treat kids like mice, you know.  They have no say in their lives, because they're assumed to not have anything useful to say.  Too inexperienced.  Not enough knowledge of the world.  I remember being frustrated by that.  I had plenty to say, and people wouldn't listen.  Perhaps some of it was naive.  Perhaps some of it was uselessly out of touch.  But would it have killed them to listen?  

I don't know.  I'm a high functioning autistic person.  I have no idea what situations these kids come from.  I haven't told the tutors I'm on the spectrum, but I feel like I should... and the same with the parents.  So that maybe they can see a better future.  But then I look at my own life, and wonder whether it's really something to boast about.  I live in a crappy tiny apartment, work a single "real" part time job which doesn't pay all my expenses, and spend much of my free time away from people.  

And now I hear people telling me I'm being too hard on myself, because that's how predictive memory works.  Chris (my boyfriend) would tell me that.  My mother would tell me that.  Ann Mary would, too.  They're biased, of course, but so am I.  I don't know.  Maybe the illusion itself would be enough for those people.  They'd see me, in business casual clothes, holding a secretarial position like a neurotypical person would.  Answering phones with a calm, professional voice that has little in common with my real voice.  An illusion.  I bike to work to save gas.  My car is nearly worn out.  The professional voice is a mask, with a carefully trained set of responses.  The business casual clothes are an annoyance I have to put up with.  It's all a pretty illusion.  Perhaps the illusion is enough.  At least until I can take center stage and give people an idea of who I really am.  

Or maybe the stage is just another illusion.  I try to be as real and as honest as I can be, but if celebrities, politicians, and stand up comedians are anything to judge by, the stage is a hard place to be.  Will I be strong enough?  I hope so...