What autism feels like
A tribute to the heart
A story. There is an open-plan office. I am in a team with six others, all staring at our computer screens. I say something across the room to a member of another team. In response he shouts at me, loses his temper, swears at me. I retreat inside my autistic monolith, assess the situation, check if I have said anything untoward. So far as I can tell, I haven’t, which leads me to the conclusion that whatever caused him to explode like that had more to do with him than with me. I therefore keep quiet and go back to my work.
My colleagues, in the meantime, look up from their computer screens showing varying degrees of shock. After my interlocutor has gone out of the room, they check with me if I’m ok. To which I reply, yes, thank you, I’m fine, and say that I think I inadvertently pressed a button in him.
Reviewing that incident now, there is another question. There were shockwaves of anger that came from that person, directed towards me. What happened to them? Where did they go? It is a fundamental law that energy cannot be created or destroyed, which means that it has to go somewhere. After much internal investigation, the answer seems to be that those shockwaves reached the heart, who then had no theatre, no outplay, no means of assimilating them. So they stayed in storage, like a grubby outer cloak. (Please take this description as literally or as figuratively as you like. For me it feels literal.)
If that is so, it means that the autistic responses which saved my sanity also weighed on the heart. That is why I give thanks to the heart. It (or she?) fielded those hurts and barbs, knowing that the person I had chosen to become was incapable of assimilating and processing them at the time.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Can the heart be lightened? That is a dangerous course of action, to be considered carefully. It may mean evoking, feeling for the first time some or all of those experiences that were put into storage. Otherwise, how can they be released?
Is the brain on board? Does it have a reason to go ahead with this course of action? If not, then don’t do it. Does the heart feel safe enough, valued enough, trusted enough? If not, how does one set about gaining that trust, showing the value? Is the home situation stable enough, safe enough, to enable a person to even consider embarking on such a journey?
On the other hand, are there life tasks that are better accomplished with the protection of autism? This is by no means a cut-and-dried matter, even once it has been perceived. It is up to each of us to make the choices that seem most appropriate to our own life trajectory.
A final ponder. The concept of lightness or heaviness of the heart goes back a long way. It leads to the question: which gods are looking for a light heart? And which ones rejoice in a single-minded, clear-thinking brain? Athena certainly did, when she met Odysseus. But that is another story. How many of us can achieve both, I wonder.
