Do you need time?

We all need more time to understand things than we think we do, and are trying our dead-level best to overschedule; we’re all going place to place and taking in none of them. When I travel again, I’d like to stay at least a week if possible. It takes a while for my body clock to accept a new rhythm, particularly going east. Jet lag was objectively worse coming back to DC from Oregon than it was in the moments I was taking the obligatory Portland airport photo (iykyk). I am using jet lag as an example of needing time because it’s the best way I know how to explain autism to a layperson. Imagine feeling like you have the pressure of your emotions changing to that degree all the time rather than just after a long-haul flight. Taking on change is easier when you feel normal, right? Would you enjoy living in jet lag fog permanently?

This is why transition time is essential to the autistic brain, and why I am yet again grateful that I do not drive. I caused my last wreck from rumination. I’d talked to a close friend earlier in the day, and we hadn’t spoken for years before that. She’d ghosted me without a trace and then reappeared. It was jarring, a new environment for me, so I did what any normal person would do. I thought about it so hard I ran into a guardrail trying to blow town for Frederick, the closest Waffle House. I was about 800 feet from a triple order of hash browns with chili, cheese, and onions (superior to Frito Pie, fight me) when I took a curve a little too hard. Girls with blonde hair will do that to you.

Editor’s Note:

You should absolutely add Fritos to bean burritos at Taco Bell. Also, every once in a while when I hit 7-Eleven, I buy a snack bag of Fritos for the back of the pantry because I’m a Texan and I don’t make the rules. Sometimes you have to have Frito Pie and in that instance, there is no substitute so you might as well be prepared. Not being prepared is such a rookie Texan mistake, because whoever heard of homemade Fritos? You’re going to the store. It’s not that you can’t make AMAZEBALLS tortilla chips at home. I can and they’re fabulous. But they sure as hell don’t taste like Fritos…….. just like pastry chefs are going to use Oreos/Oreo crusts. They’re not going to reinvent that particular wheel.We’ve learned it over time.

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

What you learn with enough time is how to control your environment to the extent that you can and let go of the rest. I’m not going to be able to convince Supergrover that what she read as narcissism was actually an autistic meltdown. I am sure that she regularly thinks I am the most toxic person she’s ever met because I just keep throwing these truth bombs because I’m an asshole and not because I am genuinely curious and love her more than anything on earth. If I throw an emotional bomb, it means I care about the answer and want to hear it. I heard a line from “Friends” that expresses this so well…. when Chandler looks into Monica’s eyes and tells her that she’s high maintenance, but he likes maintaining her. I am not an asshole with a God complex, she has complex problems that cannot be solved with “yeah, I’m fine.” If you want to see a question as an attack, you will.

I honestly found out I was autistic because of this relationship. I had to find out two things. The first was why I was so empathetic on the inside and yet it came across as being self-absorbed. Everyone knows that autistic person, or we know each other. Bet.

I learned over time that the meltdowns happened in a cycle because I would unmask and start letting my brain run wild on these ADHD/Autistic tangents and she would take offense at me not acting like a woman, seriously, and I’m not being dismissive toward her. It’s that traditional women are programmed to fix/please and anticipate everyone else’s needs.

We used to be a little too much alike in that arena, but I felt safe enough to stop with her because she’s so goddamn strong. She lays down the truth bombs as easily and often as I do. It’s just that hers are in the context of what she knows, and mine are in the context of what I do. Her emotional bombs are surrounded by not understanding my neurodivergence, her stepping all over my ass while I’m trying to teach her why my reactions to her are so much more intense than her reactions to me and failing miserably. Why it feels like I’ll always go a little stupid in that dreamy-eyed kind of way when I think of her, and have to stuff that kind of emotion back because it’s part of a social mask I don’t have. Just so many sensory issues that I attach to her, like the smell of coffee or the feel of the t-shirt that I kidded her I ordered that “has her portrait on the front.”

I have already said that the building blocks of our relationship are adrenaline and dopamine. My ADHD/Autism created those memories of smell when my brain chemicals were the most flooded. It’s why I’m so attached to her with a love that won’t die, but not like I loved Dana. Like I love my parents and siblings. The thing is, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she loves me the same way, because when Sam dumped me I told her and then she said her Mama Wolverine claws were coming in. I have never been so grateful for anything in my entire life because my next line to her was that my biggest delight in life was thinking about just how pissed off she was about this. It was that night I formed my first company. It’s called Leslie Lanagan & Pet Monsters on a Fraying Leash, Inc. We’re waiting on our 501, though.

When I become the most upset, I have a meltdown and then burnout. In those moments, burnout looks like me losing function and going mute, only communicating through writing. I get sensory issues from eating because it’s an ADHD hyperfocus interruption and I switch to vegan protein shakes. If that’s not enough, I develop sensory issues with leaving my house, reinforced by depression, anxiety, and an overactive imagination. The overactive imagination is a straight up problem because everything I imagine is a hundred times worse due to rejection sensitivity dysphoria, a common trait among neurodivergent people because we’ve been programmed to think of ourselves as problematic.

I should mention that there is also fascinating research suggesting that the number of autistic people who are nonbinary, queer, and poly is off the charts. My behavior suggests I’m not poly unless we’re talking about writing and physiciality, because emotional intimacy with multiple people is easy. Physically? Not so much. I’m just not wired that way. That doesn’t mean I’m not poly. It just means I probably wouldn’t meet someone on the ground and behave the same way. It remains to be seen whether I could manage that or not, and doing the work to see whether I’m doing the right thing for me or lending myself to getting into a situation where I can’t help myself and put someone I’ve made a monogamous agreement with completely uncomfortable because I broke the rules. Just because it happened organically doesn’t mean I didn’t cheat. Just because it only happened to me doesn’t mean I didn’t cheat. The road to hell was paved with good intentions.

I need to make it so clear that I cheated on Dana, but Supergrover didn’t cheat on Michael because of course since I’m queer, my reaction to her was different than her reaction to me. That doesn’t make my emotions to her invalid, just different. She also doesn’t have autism or ADHD, so none of her sensory issues are going to run as deep as mine, and she gave me some pictures that caused sensory issues, but not sexual ones. They activated my alpha dog and my mama wolverine. When I feel that way about someone, it makes me attracted to them…. and in fact, when I don’t feel connected to someone in that way, being physical doesn’t come up. Romance, as with all things, has two modes for me. Obsession and absolute disinterest. It’s why autistic people have trouble with relationships. If they have neurotypical partners who take everything personally, they will not be happy, and probably jump too quickly to the conclusion that their partners are lazy, unmotivated, and angry at them because of their rejection at lights out.

It was a relief to come to that resolution in my mind with Supergrover, that even though the relationship was not nor would ever be physical, I had learned a lot about the way I work in a relationship because she took so much personally that I never intended.

I remember telling her that it was really hard hearing about the abuse she endured as a child, that my heart walked out of my body and I just had to breathe through it. She thought I was trying to make her feel bad, but I was trying to explain both why our trauma bond was immediate and deep. She became a monotropic thought process, what I mean when I say she lives in my ink. I was telling her why I loved her with such intensity and drive, and that in some ways I was sorry that process came across as negative, but not sorry for loving her as much as I do. She’s amazing, and part of the reason that I haven’t fallen in love again is that I hold every woman to her standard and find other women uninteresting. Why would I put myself out there when intellectual stimulation is more important and no one gives it to me more than she does? No one will ever be able to beat her in that area, even though Zac and I are wrapped up in my special interest. It’s not because he’s not brilliant, it’s that we’re talking about history and she’s making it.

If you never believe another word I say, believe that.

She jokes that other women are the smartest woman in the room except her, but you don’t know the room where she said it and I do. She knows an actor I would kill to meet, and a director, and neither of them do what she does. She knows them by dumb luck, the same dumb luck that put us together. Karma is magic and I will never believe anything more than that. I got a gift from the universe at the exact moment it needed to drop in my lap, and my nose got red at that, the first signal I’m about to cry, when I wrote that. And yet, even Zac doesn’t know who she is and respects my privacy like I know when to stop pushing about work. She’s my “classified information,” for all practical intents and purposes. I could tell you if it wouldn’t embarrass her across the world, but I wouldn’t. I keep it tight to love her, not to diss you. The “classified information” joke just fits in with my whole vibe. I will never stop being, in the immortal words of Zac Wood, a “drooling fangirl” over CIA, but that’s only because I’ve seen the disparity between the way people treat soldiers and the way they treat spies. Civilians matter.

And I’m a judgmental bastard, just not of people. Of institutions and situations. It’s how I can feel every emotion in the spectrum about Supergrover. How love and fear are inextricably interrelated, why I have no problem walking on eggshells for years and yet struggled so hard with my needs being met that I finally walked away. It was killing my self esteem and better for me when I stopped letting it.

Doesn’t mean I don’t miss her, and at first it was every moment of every day. You don’t learn to let go overnight, and my writing has proved it. She’ll never be far from my thoughts, though, because in the last 10 years of my life, my thought processes and emotions regarding her have been so deeply ingrained. It’s why I even thought we’d be good for each other as partners in the first place, but not that I insisted on it. It was just too good a question not to ask, because it made sense at that point, a united front. But then my monotropic thought process spiraled out about that, too, and it was just bad juju. It was a question better left unanswered, I’m just autistic and ADHD. My autism made me hammer away at it and my ADHD gave me no impulse control.

I didn’t know how those diagnoses affected my behavior until I knew I had them. I only knew about one. I didn’t know about the other, that when I am in autistic mode relationships take over my whole brain because I’m also an INFJ. I wanted the best for both my red and yellow strings and got them tangled. It was a struggle to stop dwelling, but I’m glad I did it and I know the root cause.

I have learned not to let relationships take hold of me in that way because it makes me give all my energy toward making them a better person. All INFJs are attracted to teaching and social work sorts of positions because we want all of our close relationships to be the best people that they can be. I wasn’t obsessed with who Supergrover could be, but helping her to be her best self. An INFJ will not watch anyone stagnate.

It was all reinforced by the fact that it’s easier for me to talk to other people about their problems than it is for me to talk about mine, because then I can stop social masking. I can stop remembering to make my thought processes masked and just listen.

I notice things that no one else does and people call me brilliant for pointing it out when it’s something they love and hurtful even when I don’t mean harm. It’s a lost place to be when your self-esteem is dependent on other people to that extreme, because when you take off your social masking and other people react poorly, you drift toward making masking the priority and it drains your energy before you even have the spoons to leave the house. The meltdown/burnout cycle is real and it’s deep.

Neurotypical people can only take so much before they decide you’re too much for them, and that has been true of neurodivergent people since we were born. “Autism Speaks” has an awful video where a mother says in front of her child that she thought about strapping her into the car and killing them both. I am sure that she thought she could get away with it because her daughter wasn’t “high functioning,” whatever the fuck that means, and she has no idea what her daughter is capable of processing emotionally without being verbal. What if the internal tape that plays in her head is “my mom wanted to kill me and didn’t.” Being “high functioning” is being able to speak for the mute and letting them speak for me when I am….. more specifically, I am non-verbal a lot of the time but I can reach out through text.

I need the world to adapt around me, and I am not being selfish or egocentric when the problem runs as deep as children feeling like their parents don’t want them. I am not alone when I say that I feel the pain of being too much for people, driving my depression and anxiety. Everyone wants to stop me from drowning, but few people are willing to help me from falling into the river in the first place.

Supergrover did the best she could, just not fast enough for my autism not to kick in. A trauma bond is a hell of a drug. It’s what made me rearrange my life around her and not Dana. It was the same deal with her- I never wanted to have a situation with another partner where I leaked information that wasn’t supposed to go to them because I felt so bad when I did it. She forgave me and moved on, but thought it was impulsive to solve the problem.

When you have situations where your sensory issues attach to a problem and it gets deep fast, you move quickly…. often what leads to getting married in a hurry and things like that. You are always trying to create a secure environment and you’ll grasp at straws because acceptance of your neurodivergence is transient. Because of this, Supergrover is the longest of any of my significant relationships by almost three years. It was more significant to me because it was in my wheelhouse, the writing.

Her greatest gift to me was that time, and I’ve loved it despite walking away in frustration. I needed a secure environment and couldn’t get one, so I grasped at the comfort of isolation whether I wanted it or not.

I want more because she’s wonderful. I also love her enough to let her go because the relationship didn’t serve us presently like it did in the past. I didn’t have room for other people like Zac, and in some ways my pathways are so changed there might not ever be. Sam got in under the wire, but even then my attention didn’t completely turn.

I need more time to spend with her, but only in reflection if need be. I learned so much from her, and it’s time to take all that away because I don’t want to pour love into her if she does not accept it. I would rather be alone with my thoughts in that case. The affect she has on me is tremendous and I cannot underestimate its effect. She doesn’t think of her (or me) in this way, so it clouds our judgment on whether we’re telling the truth. We both have trauma reflexes, and don’t treat each other like we’re worthy of being treated like goddesses. That’s because the root of our anger is how we feel about ourselves. We are both fixer/pleasers, and both easily jump to the conclusion that the other means the worst.

For instance, when Supergrover said “I can do nothing about the past. I can do something about the present,” and “this is all I can manage,” I took it to mean I would never get anything I wanted and to die mad about it. What I didn’t say is “what can you do about the present that you haven’t in the past?” I saw the writing on the wall and pushed her away.

I will never know if I was correct, but I do know that our relationship had that cycle for 10 years and I didn’t want to do it anymore. There was quite a difference between Mama Wolverine and ignoring me because you think I’m goading and provoking you instead of asking me questions in return. We both got defensive immediately.

I never wanted a war, but I started it. I am only suffering under the terms and conditions of the surrender. My bad behavior was supposedly forgiven and I haven’t been able to express a need without nuclear war for eight years. I didn’t think she was lying because she said she forgave me. I thought she was lying to herself about how much she wanted to be friends with me because she always seemed pissed off. I know enough to know that the world doesn’t revolve around me, but I can feel the energetic difference between “I’m busy” and “I’m ignoring you” even in text.

For instance, I have lots of friends that I hope aren’t mad at me because I’ve gone mute and can’t handle conversations right now. I have enough energy for an occasional Facebook comment, but mostly I am spending my energy on changing my own thought processes here. I will never be able to sustain myself if I don’t. It is how my life is coming together, not how it is falling apart.

I had huge sensory issues that Zac didn’t tell me he had a roommate before I arrived on Sunday, but I told him that and he apologized. He wasn’t trying to offend me, just spaced it, but that didn’t render my feelings invalid. He’s a solid dude and remembers so many things I don’t remember saying, so I know he does listen to me, deeply, I just have to roll with it because he’s neurodivergent like me.

It’s why I need Zac, and why I need time.