(Archives) Asperger Syndrome
Understanding Yourself at 47
(Editor’s Note: GCV’s Outgoing Rounds From the Edge of Madness is very raw and might trigger trauma survivors—a typo on the title. I’m moving people, work with me!)
As my marriage fell apart, my ex began speaking truths I wasn’t ready to hear. She’s a wonderful woman and a fantastic mother, but as we began to clash more, she turned to me one day and said, “Maybe you’re autistic?”
I had never thought of that. Ever.
I’m an accomplished man, but I’m nobody’s hero. That’s what Hollywood sells at stores. Like all of us, I’m a flawed and fallen man.
Yet, despite having an autistic daughter, I had never really researched her diagnosis to understand it truly.
I’m not proud of that.
Unfortunately, as they often say, the war is a cruel mistress.
Around mid-September, as my marriage unraveled further, her words struck deeper. The night before the Prairie Village Police Department rolled me up, she said, “I think you have Asperger syndrome.”
I didn’t believe her.
But I was curious.
So, I watched this video on YouTube, and as I did, I started disassociating. Reality blurred with what I was watching. It was mesmerizing.
After I was in the looney bin (take a joke) for the second time in one year, I brushed it off thoroughly.
I still didn’t believe it. Nah, that’s all bullshit.
Yep. Even after my ex, who is a special needs teacher, diagnosed me. Even though I saw my daughter, my “princess general,” speed-read through books in ways that amazed me. I didn’t want to believe it.
Do you know why?
Because I didn’t want her to grow up to be like me.
Different. Unusual. Misunderstood. Someone would say brilliant. I prefer to call it very well-read.
Yet, I wept when I watched this video on the road in some Airbnb in Oklahoma City.
But I still didn’t fully believe it. Not quite yet. LOL.
It wasn’t until I recently met a fellow Aspei (is that a thing?). My friend is also a member of the tribe and a convert if you will. During a conversation about my life and all its trauma, I asked her to “diagnose” me.
I don’t remember it word for word; however, I think it went:
“You’re a highly functioning savant who doesn’t mask, but that’s because you’ve been trained to read people.”
And then I wept again like I haven’t in a very long time.
I’m nearly 47 years old, recently divorced, and miss my daughter terribly. She’s my little princess general and can grow up to be anyone she pleases.
That’s my daughter, and she’s the only thing that matters to me. And that is G*d’s blessing.
I’m many things. So many things.
I’m a Jew, and I’m a full-throated Zionist. I’m also half Pashtun. Let’s say I’ve had Afghan warlords offer me plots of land. I speak Pashtu pretty well, and I have just enough Dari/Farsi to survive.
***New fact: I was also born in Mexico and know a lot about the cartels***
I’m also 100% permanently and totally disabled after spending ~1500 days in Iraq and Afghanistan. I also have something I like to call “espionage PTSD.” One of our newest and most brilliant writers,
, wrote about it recently.Mine is a little different, but we come from the same family of PTSD. That will take years for me to understand. But now, I’m also accepting this most recent diagnosis. I’m determined not just to understand it but to advocate for autism and become an expert in the field.
You can take that to the bank, my friends.
P.S. - I haven’t forgotten about this, but I’ve been a little preoccupied. LOLOL
I have a 5-year-old nephew who was diagnosed to be autistic when he was in Pakistan. Shortly after he arrived in Texas, he was diagnosed by his school. My brother was destroyed when he read the damning report. They wrote that he is highly autistic and he is getting worse. I shared the long diagnosis report with a Canadian friend who is a clinical psychologist who also did my sister's assessment (she is with down syndrome). She said that the diagnosis did not consider alot of factors that affected my nephew. We moved from Afghanistan to Pakistan two months after August 15 and shortly after, my nephew was separated from all these people who took care of him - uncles, aunts and grandparents. Yes, Afghan families live in big families and we all took care of my nephew. At age two, he was a curious boy. I remembered chatting with him while we were walking down the street in Islamabad to get groceries. He heard celebratory gunshots in Islamabad streets and he asked me if they were the Taliban. Shortly after I moved to Albania and Canada afterwards with two sisters and one brother and my mother, my nephew stopped talking. He was not functioning well. This separation from us, particularly my mother, was devastating for him. He was put in a Montessori school. There, he was exposed with English and Urdu languages and 3 years later (4 days before Trump inauguration - yes, they were lucky), they moved to Dallas, Texas. Now, they say he needs alot of work. Sorry for this long story, but I wanted to say that my nephew's situation was worsened by lots of things happening around him. My mother's special boy was affected by war, immigration and separation from loved ones. You dealt with two wars (1500 days) in Iraq and Afghanistan and suffer from watching the country you care about and its people torn apart and your friends struggling. That is some big shit happening in your life in addition to missing your daughter and whatever else happening in your life. All I'm saying is take it easy. I don't know you and you don't know me. But I know you are doing some good work and advocacy for my people. So I appreciate your support and hard work for our people.
Never been diagnosed myself, however, all three of my wives have been convinced that I am on the spectrum. Feels like home to me.