Happy Autism Awareness Month!

 

Social Awareness / Social Difficulty

Happy Autism Awareness Month!

    Let’s talk about the enormous elephant in the room! The basis of autism is that it’s a social disorder. So it’s a given that there is going to be social awareness and social difficulty. No, I’m not talking about keeping up with the latest social trends, whatever that is. How do you even keep up with or even determine a social trend? I do understand that a trend is basically what people like the most, but how does that even get started?

    Social awareness is being aware of your surroundings and others around you. When interacting with people, to be able to read body language and become aware of the individual’s intentions and feelings. This is something that I have gotten better at, but there are still times were certain things will go over my head. I sometimes get so stuck in my thoughts that I would lose track of where I have been.

    This one time, I ran out of a grocery store because the thoughts in my head said to look outside for my parents. I was little too and made my parents panic.

    Another thing that is common in autism is getting the urge to run off. I believe people use the term “runner”. It’s very common in younger kids that are on the spectrum. It’s where your imagination randomly gives you the urge to run and off you go. It’s because our brains are always cranking non-stop and when you are a little kid (toddler - elementary school age) you don’t know how to control it, let alone realize what is happening. You just know that your brain said to run, so you run. It’s not just little kids, but adults too. Even I occasionally have these urges to just start running. There are times were I’m out with my husband and have a sudden urge to move faster and he pulls me back and pulls me out of it.

    When I was in school, the only people I would interact with were my classmates during class. You know, the social interactions that were more enforced by the situation. Other than that, I would keep to myself reading a book in the library. At home, I would hang out with my sister, our friends in the neighborhood, and family, or stay in my room. For a while, I apparently acted younger than my age. My parents would always ask, Why don’t you act your age? At the time, I didn’t notice that I was acting younger than my age, so I just shrugged my shoulders and said I don’t know because I didn’t even know that I was acting younger than my age. How does one act their age? This confused me. Reflecting on it now, I speculated that the reason is that the people I was always around for a while were either younger than me or adults (the parents). Doesn’t one need to be around people their age to even know how to act their age? Just wondering...I did hang out with people that were my age. A lot more when I was in high school. At least I tried. 

    For the first two years of high school, I had only one friend who hardly attended school. She would skip school (she had her own problems) and then come over to my house when school let out for the day. Regardless of my having to do homework. In school, I would keep to myself, walk laps around the school, stick my nose in a book, play games at a computer, and finish homework before my first class. It was easier to keep to myself. Everyone seemed to be in little cliques, making it hard to interact with people. I mainly questioned how people manage to gather and hang out like this. It seemed so automatic. Part of me wanted to dive into the social world, but for some odd reason, it was like hitting a brick wall trying to figure out how. I did join some clubs after school, such as the equestrian club, German club, knitting club, as well as orchestra. Got two ropes and three medals during graduation for my extra curriculum.

    My hair looks like this because I curled it and then the humidity outside said not today and it went flat the second I stepped outside. It was so hot out.

    I also had my crushes as well. My first crush had no interest in me and was obvious about it but not obvious enough. I knitted a hat for him after I gave it to him. I found it in the trash and pulled it out and gave it to him again. It went over my head that he was showing me that he was not interested. I kept crushing on him like a fool until he transferred to another school. Not because of me. My school was over-populated to the where the school system built another school and half of the students left, and he was one of them. I was so glad that he did in the end, as I was annoyed with him due to the fact that I liked him. I had another crush during my last year. I tried getting in contact with him after graduation through Facebook. I’d get no answer, so I’m thinking that he has not seen it, so I tried it again and again. The next thing I know, he calls me a stalker and my heart broke. It never occurred to me that he was ignoring me or ghosting me and that he expected me to pick up on that. I didn’t understand this until a friend explained it to me when I told them about it. My love life was non-existent in high school, but don’t worry because I did finally fall for the right one and now I’m married to 007.

    There were, of course, other things that caused me to be this way, such as a malnourished, immune-system imbalance (no, my parents didn’t starve me), and also recovering from brain surgery, which doesn’t happen overnight. For a while, I suffered from a little retardation after the surgery. (I don’t mean stupid! I know a lot of people will use the term retarded as a derogatory term for stupid. It means slow.) Retardation is when your brain is functioning slower than normal, causing you to be slower than the average person. My teachers had to help me type my papers to get them done on time. I didn’t know why I was this way. 

    At the time, I didn’t even know what I was going through, or even going through something. I just knew that I was slower than others and found it embarrassing and annoying. My parents did the best that they could with me and I did throw them into quite a loop. First, it was my hydrocephalus, then it was my ADD, and I also had seizures. Later on, we discovered my autism and then found out that I have an intolerance to gluten and casein in cow dairy and that I was missing nutrients. Once my parents found the solutions to my problems, I began maturing the way I was supposed to. After going gluten and dairy-free and taking vitamin supplements, I opened up more and made friends. Some I’m still friends with today. I actually went through some sort of social rush. I finally had friends to hang out with that wanted to hang out with me for the first time. I almost didn’t want school to end because of it. When I changed my diet, my teachers began to see a different side of me and asked how I felt. I’d say I feel great, that it felt like a fog lifted, and I had more energy. I can see things more clearly and I’m more open and aware.