Tonight, an Aspie friend wrote and asked me whether I have problems with meltdowns. It was a timely question, because yesterday, I had seen a meltdown coming and had managed to diffuse it. So I thought I’d share my experience.
Yesterday morning, I had an appointment with an occupational therapist for a sensory integration assessment. I had had some trouble locating an OT who works with adults, but I had finally found one. When she offered me her first available appointment, I grabbed it.
That was my first mistake. The OT’s office is an hour’s drive from home, and the appointment was in the morning. I would have to get up earlier than usual, and my morning routine would be completely interrupted. Somehow, all those changes to my routine seemed inconsequential. Ironically, I was so focused on wanting the assessment that I lost sight of how my nervous system might fit into the equation.
On the positive side, I was realistic enough to know that when I got home, I’d need a lot of time to rest and recharge. So in the days preceding the assessment, I discussed the situation with my husband. We both agreed that I’d be good for very little when I got back, and that he’d do the afternoon carpooling to pick up my daughter.
It was a good plan. It truly was. But like many plans, it didn’t quite work out.
The assessment lasted 2½ hours and went very well, but it was very tiring. During the hour-long drive home, I comforted myself with thoughts of how nice it would be to hibernate in my loft for a few hours and do something to soothe my overloaded nervous system. Sometimes, my plans are so vivid that I forget that they haven’t happened yet.
Anyway, I got home, and my husband was feeling really sick. He’d been feeling lousy for about a week, and it had all caught up with him. He’d gone to the doctor and needed me to bring a prescription for antibiotics to the pharmacy. He also said he wasn’t sure whether he could do the carpooling.
This kind of situation is meltdown territory for me.
I was completely overloaded, and I needed to recharge, but then life demanded something else of me—something else that I deeply wanted to be able to do.
So I just stood there, paralyzed.
And then the moment arrived, the moment at which I always go to war against myself, the moment that begins the meltdown. I’d never seen it so clearly before. The key to the meltdown is the moment that I become aware of the dissonance between what my heart wants me to do and what I am actually able to do. When that moment arrives, I feel like an utter failure.
As I looked at my husband feeling so sick, my first impulse was to pick up his prescription, make him tea, pick up my daughter, make him some food, tend to his needs, and let him get some rest. After all, those are the normal things that other people can do on half a night’s sleep while talking on their cell phones, right?
That was the impulse of my heart.
But then my nervous system started saying “Please. Please, don’t push it. Please, I need to rest. Really. I don’t want to set off any alarms. I’m just saying…”
So, recognizing that I was getting caught between two competing aims, I was able to verbalize something about my distress. I said, “I’m very overloaded and I don’t know how much more I can do.” I didn’t say it quite as calmly as it sounds now, but believe me, I was trying.
Because my husband is a very patient and solution-oriented person, he didn’t mind talking about it, and we worked it out. He rested, and then he felt a bit better. He drove to the bus stop, and I went to the pharmacy. When he left, he said that he would like to have his prescription when he got home, so that he could just take it and rest. I agreed.
Problem solved.
Almost.
I went to the pharmacy, gave the nice man at the counter the prescription, and found out that it would take an hour to get it filled. I nearly started to cry. I did not want to go back out in an hour. It was freezing cold and I was so tired. I wanted to climb into my hobbit hole and be left alone. But I also wanted to get my husband his prescription before he got home. After all, he was doing the driving. I was just walking to the pharmacy.
But I knew that I was spent. I couldn’t stay out for an hour, and I couldn’t go back out into the world one more time. So I called him. I’m not happy to say that in my pain, I left a somewhat pissed off message on his cell phone, as though he were the cause of the problem. It went something like this: “WHY are you not picking up your phone? Are you there? Well, anyway, I just found out that your prescription is going to take an HOUR to fill and I CANNOT go back to the pharmacy, so if you want to get your prescription, YOU’RE going to have to figure something else out, so CALL me when you get this. Okay. Bye.”
I spent the next ten minutes in a state of high anger (by myself) and then realized that I didn’t need to be angry at anyone. I was just overloaded. Then I started to cry, which was a vast improvement, let me tell you. When my husband called me back, I apologized, and he said he understood and that it wasn’t a big deal. My daughter drove to the pharmacy, and they got his prescription.
Problem solved. Really.
Except of course, that I still wish I could power through this and do what others find relatively easy. Intellectually, I realize that while my husband was sick yesterday, I am dealing with a disability every day. On a good day, the AS feels like a very interesting and pleasantly eccentric way of being. On a bad day, it feels like a very limiting disability.
My husband does not feel deprived because of the AS. He loves me, and I love him. We find lots of ways to work around my limits so that I can do what I do well. We both benefit from the process of strategizing, and he seems very happy with the outcome, even on a difficult day.
As for me, I’m working to accept myself as I am and to know that I have many other ways of loving.
This morning, we were both feeling sick, and we were having a quiet day at home. At one point, I went into the living room and said, “You know, I feel so sick today, but then I see you, and it doesn’t really matter. It makes me happy just to look at you and to know that you’re here.”
He smiled and said, “I know. I feel just the same way about you.”
© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg
