I also have a number of weak areas being on the autism spectrum. When put into a social situation, I am like a fish with a bicycle. I have trouble with emotion - I have difficulty identifying my own emotions (it's called Alexithymia) - when someone I am close to (i.e. a friend or family member) is upset, I REALLY can't deal with it! Luckily for me, I don't exhibit the Aspie meltdowns - the going from 0 to 10 with an inability to calm oneself down. I spent much of my childhood and adolescence trying to learn those calming techniques and, as a result, I don't really "meltdown" anymore. So, despite all of my flaws and weaknesses, I have some pretty unique strengths.
However, recently, I have been seeing the world through a half-empty glass. For much of the past decade, I have struggled with depression which, in turn, has caused me to have a negative outlook on humanity, and life in general. I lost sight of a lot of what I cared about, and started seeing what was wrong with my life. I would get up in the morning and think, "What's the point?" and not be able to come up with an answer.
Then, about six years ago, I realized that I had lost my love for life, and what had mattered to me in the past had slipped from my daily view. So, I sought out help. With the help of a friend, I found a counselor who could help me think out things when my stress was high (which it seemed to be perpetually). Slowly, over time, he helped me find myself and reprioritize my life. I realized that I was getting up every day to teach at a school where the mission of the school was to change kids with Asperger's and NLD into more "normal" kids. They also went from caring about their faculty to caring about the bottom line - $$. So, I began to put my family and my mental health FIRST, and my job second.
Changing my priorities was an important step in finding myself in the morass of negativity and despair that I had been enveloped by. Little by little, I began to see the light above the fog that surrounded me, but I still was unable to get out of it. My wife (who has finally begun counseling - YAY!) was anxious about my job. What if putting my family and mental health first caused me to lose my job? How would we survive if I wasn't working? I absorbed that anxiety coming off of her, and turned it into more stress, which caused more bad decisions. I ended up up staying in that job for four more years before coming to the mutual decision that the job was no longer a good fit for me. Despite hating to leave the students who, I found out with my diagnosis during my last year there, were just like me, I knew it was the right thing to do.
Here I am, two years later, and I am still peeling off layers of grime that have obscured the real me from the world. This grime, the result of working eight years in a school which can't see the unique strengths that kids with Asperger's and NLD have and instead have tried to use layers of makeup to change who they are and make them more like everyone else, is still affecting me two years later. I still occasionally go into downswings where I see the world as half-empty (or, sometimes, with a leak in it that causes it to be losing water), but they rarely last as long as they used to. However, each time I come out of a downswing, peeling off a little more of that grime, I get a little better and the coating of grime gets thinner. I have realized that I have a wonderful family that cares for me (no matter how much they sometimes drive me NUTS!), a job at a school where I am appreciated, rather than viewed as just another "warm body to monitor the students" (an actual quote from one of the learning specialists…). I am special, and I DO matter just as I am, despite what the administration at my old school tried to get me to believe...
Not only that, I have also rediscovered a goal of mine - I want to make the world a better place. I want to help others find themselves, especially those who, like me, have Asperger's or Autism and have trouble figuring out how they fit in with the rest of the world. I want them to realize that, no matter how different they are, no matter what difficulties they may face, there is a spot for them in this jigsaw puzzle called life. They just need to learn to be themselves, and not who others want them to be. As Jim Henson said, (from The Muppet Movie)
