Journeys with Autism

Something difficult happened in the midst of my volunteer job yesterday. I got very emotional about it at the time, but I’m okay about it now. After looking at the situation and talking with my husband this morning, I’ve figured out a lot about how Asperger’s affects me and why I get so emotional.

Some background: Last Thursday, while volunteering at the store, I worked on organizing the shelves that hold newly arrived books. We have many other bookshelves that are already categorized and labelled, but the “New Arrivals” shelves weren’t. There were perhaps 200 books, and most were simply shelved wherever there was room. I offered to organize the books, and the manager in charge said, “Go ahead. Bend those shelves to your will.” So I did. I figured out what categories the books should go into, and I labelled the shelves accordingly.

It wasn’t an easy task. First of all, there was the necessity of getting books from the higher shelves and the lower shelves. With my gravitational insecurity, it was very difficult for me to go up and down like that, but I managed. Then, the book area is next to the children’s area. Around 3:00 pm, lots of kids came in, and they were rather loud and frenetic. Finally, I stayed an hour later than usual, breaking my own rule about avoiding sensory overload by limiting my shifts to 2 hours each.

I knew that I should have stopped at 2 hours, but the job wasn’t done yet, you know? It is next to impossible for me to stop doing something before it’s done, especially when I’m organizing something. If I leave the task when it’s two-thirds done, it is not organized. There is still chaos afoot. At least, that’s how my Aspie brain sees it.

So, I got home, and I was a bit of a basket case. I can’t remember exactly what I was feeling, but when my husband got home, I said, “I need to watch a TV show, and you need to hold me really, really tight.” In the course of the evening, my husband gently reminded me that when I overstay my welcome anywhere in the world, the result is usually not good.

Anyway, I recovered, and I had a wonderful feeling about the job I’d done. My husband went to the store on Friday, and when he came home, he gave me all sorts of compliments about the bookshelves. When I got to work yesterday, the manager also gave me good feedback. She told me I could do some more reorganizing in the book section if I wanted to.

So I went over to the book section and what did I see? The labels that I had put up were all gone and the books were all mixed up.

I kid you not.

I asked the manager what had happened. She said she wasn’t sure. There is a volunteer who takes care of new books on Sunday (when the store is closed), and people pretty much communicate with her via notes. So, it was most likely the volunteer who had undone my work. I don’t know why she undid everything. Perhaps she felt that I’d intruded on her territory. Apparently, she’s been doing the books for a long time. Or maybe my logic didn’t work for her. (I know it’s hard to believe, but stay with me here.)

When I saw all my work undone, I got really teary. I knew I was going to start crying, so I went into the bathroom and sobbed for a little while. Then, I went back into the store, did some other tasks, helped a customer find something she needed (which was a welcome break from my personal drama), and went home.

This morning, I was feeling so sad that I didn’t want to go back to the store anymore. I knew I would go back, but the feeling was there. My husband and I discussed it, and he said, “I see a pattern here. You find yourself in a situation that really works. People love what you bring to the place, and you love being there. Everything is wonderful until, one day, something goes wrong. And when it goes wrong, you leave.”

He was absolutely right.

So then I did what I usually do when he is absolutely right. I revert to my old habit of searching my psyche for what deep, dark reason I must have for perpetuating this kind of pattern. Was this a childhood issue resurfacing? Am I just immature? I was really stuck. And then, my dear husband said, “It’s like what you were saying on your blog yesterday. You stand at the border of a group. You figure out the rules. You enter the group when you’re reasonably sure you’ve got the rules all figured out. And then, at some point, you inevitably realize that you don’t have the rules all figured out. When that happens, you feel completely alienated, and you leave.”

He’s good, isn’t he? And he says all these things in such a non-judgmental voice, too.

So what have I learned about my Asperger’s from this little scenario?

1. I expect people to think like I do. When I rearranged the books into a logical order, I assumed that everyone would be happy. I didn’t allow for the fact that I might be stepping on someone’s toes, or that another person might find my sense of order confining, or that anyone would undo my work without checking to see what was going on.

2. Because I don’t intuitively understand the rules, I have to do a lot of thinking about them. When I’m faced with the fact that I missed something, I feel so scared, alienated, and upset that I want to cry. I suddenly remember that I don’t perceive things like other people do, which leads me to the conclusion that I’m not important and that I don’t belong. I feel like a little, lost kid watching all the grown-ups go about their lives while I’m crying over something that everyone else would consider trivial.

3. If I keep working when I know I’m getting overloaded, or if I keep working in defiance of my gravitational insecurity, nature will see to it that something falls apart. Sometimes, that’s the only way I get the message.

Just about every time that I’ve gotten upset and left a place, it was because the rules changed in some sort of painful way. In some situations, there was actual harm done to me or to the people I love. When I wasn’t able to mend the harm, I couldn’t stay and pretend that nothing had happened. So I left. But in this case, no lasting harm was done, so there is no reason to leave.

You will be glad to know that I went back to work today. It was a little crowded. I got tired easily and felt very out of sync, but that’s okay. It happens. Tomorrow is another day.

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg