Pretending to Be Normal
“Hey Mom…Dad, I think I am Autistic.” Try forming that thought…those words into a life-changing realization in your head.
The third chapter of Pretending to Be Normal: Living with Asperger’s Syndrome is sitting beside me face down on the pillow in between chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 3 was the hardest to take in emotionally and mentally. The title of this chapter was Losing My Way and highlighted author Liane Holliday Willey’s struggle from small town sheltered life to college bound real life and how she lost herself and all her built up securities because of her AS.
“I think the real problem lay just below the surface of another of my most mysterious and difficult AS traits - my inability to understand my peer’s conversations. I understood their language, knew if they had made grammatical errors in their speech, and was able to make replies to anything that was spoken to me; but, I never really came to hear what they were really saying.”
In my head all, of these years, I have had the stubborn yet solid idea that I am a social person but this one statement from Willey unnervingly unraveled all of those thoughts into something that I have truly deeply known for about myself for years but was never willing to succumb to because of my intense yearning for social and societal normalcy. She goes on to talk about the cruelty in others not recognizing her existence, how she was taken advantage of because of her own social yearnings, the sexual harassment she couldn’t avoid, and her struggles trying to fix all the socially and mentally awkward things that were so very wrong with her.
My chest is heavy and my eyes are puffy as I finish typing that paragraph because for the first time in my life someone like me is writing the words that connect deeply to my own confusing world. They are writing about a type of learning and behavioral disability that for once has connected me to this gigantic round spinning thing we live on. I am not afraid to admit that I am now very scared of…me.
The third chapter of Pretending to Be Normal: Living with Asperger’s Syndrome is sitting beside me face down on the pillow in between chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 3 was the hardest to take in emotionally and mentally. The title of this chapter was Losing My Way and highlighted author Liane Holliday Willey’s struggle from small town sheltered life to college bound real life and how she lost herself and all her built up securities because of her AS.
“I think the real problem lay just below the surface of another of my most mysterious and difficult AS traits - my inability to understand my peer’s conversations. I understood their language, knew if they had made grammatical errors in their speech, and was able to make replies to anything that was spoken to me; but, I never really came to hear what they were really saying.”
In my head all, of these years, I have had the stubborn yet solid idea that I am a social person but this one statement from Willey unnervingly unraveled all of those thoughts into something that I have truly deeply known for about myself for years but was never willing to succumb to because of my intense yearning for social and societal normalcy. She goes on to talk about the cruelty in others not recognizing her existence, how she was taken advantage of because of her own social yearnings, the sexual harassment she couldn’t avoid, and her struggles trying to fix all the socially and mentally awkward things that were so very wrong with her.
My chest is heavy and my eyes are puffy as I finish typing that paragraph because for the first time in my life someone like me is writing the words that connect deeply to my own confusing world. They are writing about a type of learning and behavioral disability that for once has connected me to this gigantic round spinning thing we live on. I am not afraid to admit that I am now very scared of…me.