About Me

I wrote this self-introduction for the Autistic Women's Network:
I live in the mountains of Western NC, in the small but "oddly" cosmopolitan (so it's said) town of Asheville, NC. I am 54, diagnosed only 1 year ago with AS/HFA. I think i was both unlucky and lucky to have NOT been diagnosed in the era and location where i grew up - the deep south. For the first 5 years, we lived almost-off-the-map rural, and i was allowed to be a feral child, totally relating to the wild, and to the many animals, both domestic and wild, who lived with us and near us. Verbal ability was sometimes there, and sometimes not there for me, and minimal difficulties like late toilet training, not learning to tie my shoes or put on shirts or sweaters without getting snarled up just flew under the radar of my absent-minded mother, who has since self-identified as probably high end of the Spectrum herself. From that position, she was ill-equipped to understand, explain, or help me when i was bullied, beaten up or taunted by other children. She was unable to help me to have any idea of how to fit in. I remember her saying to me, "I don't know how to tell you how to fit in with other kids, because i never did myself".

I straddle the grey area between AS and HFA, with some characteristics more Aspie, and some more deeply Autistic, and it's been that way all along, since early childhood. I'm personally a supporter of the APA's proposal to do away with the distinction of AS and Autism, since it's beginning to seem that so many, if not most, people on the Spectrum do vary from one area to another, often quite dramatically. I was given several other diagnoses along the way to the ASD Dx, some of them were misdiagnoses, and others were more symptomatic (like Auditory Processing Disorder, being borderline Motor Impaired, Anxiety Disorder, OCD, and ADHD). Despite my motor coordination issues, i learned to draw, because i had a good eye, and i was determined if slow.

In the process of struggling through the educational system, after not even finishing junior high school, i eventually got a BFA in sculpture, and i sometimes amuse myself and others with arts and crafts, but i've been something of a dilettante, because of my ADHD characteristics, and because my primary perseveration is being an information junkie. I sometimes teach sewing classes. I am also working to put together a presentation series on sustainable living.

I feel like i am an adult but yet also still a child, even at this late point in life. I feel that my essential "point of view" is still from "the child", because so much of what i see is still seen with the same filters - or lack thereof. I can sometimes assume other masks, like the cynic, or the romantic, or the tough woman, even, but at the center of all the child sits, always uppermost, and child-i am puzzled by all i see in the world where i now live - an urban environment (it is a small urban environment, but urban nonetheless) where many of those of ARTistic inclination seem also to behave as being parts of small elite cliques. People like me are outsiders, not getting involved because of the cliquishness. I'm puzzled as well by the larger world of humans and the destruction that so many keep on doing, and the ever-readiness to judge and dominate other people.

In my search to fit in, without any guidance on how, i erroneously came to the conclusion that how one fit in was to wear the "right" clothes, and lacking the money to buy the "right" clothes, i decided i would just have to get the "look" by being creative about it. One of my childhood perseverations had been my "dressup" costume bag, full of old evening clothes donated by a friend of Mom's, and my mother had taught me to sew. I became very good, over many years, at altering and personalizing recycled clothing, and eventually after many years, i finally developed my own unique style based on what I love: the colours i love, the textures i love, the stylistic eras i love, etc. Now, i don't dress to fit in, but to please myself. There's an element of those old funny grownups-castoff-dressy clothes that has increasingly been a part of what's my comfort clothes, too!

I write, because i love words. I love to work with words and play with words. I wanted to be a writer for many years too, but i am not really able to focus well, yet, because the thoughts in my mind are these birds circling a tree, and they rarely seem to all want to light at the same time. I may try to write a book of short stories about my life one day. Writing is something i'm good at technically, and good at creatively too, usually. As far as speaking is concerned, sometimes i am able to speak coherently, and sometimes i'm scarcely able to put two words together. When i was younger, people said i was being difficult when i couldn't get what i was trying to say out of my mouth. After i was diagnosed, a couple of people in my family said i could not possibly be Autistic, because they had seen me speaking easily and naturally with my friends, of whom i always had a few. What they never saw was me, trying to speak to a supervisor, or a boyfriend, if i was put on the spot, and being unable to speak at all. I was then accused of being evasive, or "obviously guilty of something", since i wasn't able to speak up.

I still have difficulty speaking, and with focusing, but now, i am working on being ok with who i am because the world needs people like me, too, (as my friends tell me), not just people who are "productive", successful and/or geniuses. I now understand about myself that the verbal part of my brain, especially the oral-verbal part, does not work as fast as it does for some other people, especially in highly charged situations. I have something to say! It may just take me a long time to get it out! (Like this self-introduction.) I also have finally come to understand that when i am overstimulated, i need to get myself out of whatever situation is causing that, so that i can process the overloading feelings, and/or discharge the stress of too much sensory input at once. Some parts of my brain just don't work as fast, but they work in their own way, in their own time!