Good Friends For My Autism: Creating Bonds
by Eric E. Cane
It’s not an exaggeration to say that I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for two of my closest friends. It’s actually a fact. If you’ve read some of my other essays you know that, in the past, I’ve had a very tenuous grasp and attempts to remove myself from the equation of life more than once. I am not alone in this, as I know we with autism tend to have a higher rate of depression than the general population.
Good support structures make our presence more assured, helping ease us into and through challenges and the abject confusion of having to deal with other entities who don’t follow even the simplest paths of logic toward an outcome.
I know I’m not alone in having family members either deny our autism or completely misunderstand what it is. Part of this difficulty, for some of us, is that we are able to mask well enough in our lives that people may only see us as quirky, aloof, or just a bit off from the norm. This isn’t something we do by choice, but as a method of survival.
But that doesn’t make the disappointment, hurt, sadness, sense of being alone any less. In fact, that many of us don’t have our direct family understanding what we are going through is like a kick in the gut. I’ll save some of my experience in this for another essay.
Back to friends.
Our ability to open up to anyone, to let out our thoughts in a stream-of-conscious flow gets, how shall I say, “refined” as we experience more distancing from others who don’t realize what we have in our capacity for soliloquy. We clamp down on that form of expression — a lot — in order to not challenge the patience or incur an avoidance penalty from those around us for being ourselves.
This means we take longer to get to know. The real us, that is — assuming we actually have any realization of it ourselves, which is something not guaranteed in the slightest. And it doesn’t help that the general public is fed a stream of “this is what autism looks like”, when it is more to generate fear, click engagement, or for selling some product that will “cure” it. Cure humanity of us.
For those brave souls who do have the patience, curiosity, and deep interest in strange beings from another planet, the benefits are many. We are deeply loyal. Though we may not always know how to show it, we express our love in ways alien to most primates, but with honesty and authentic enthusiasm. We have a way of looking at things that are sometimes quite outside the box because that is where our brains seem to originate. We do well in that space. And we may even make you smile or laugh with our ability to trip over our words or with our odd mannerisms.
Yes, there are downsides — as in any kind of relationship. Many of us enjoy a consistent experience. And I mean really consistent in things we do, what we like to eat, what things make us smile and give a sense of wonder over and over again even for the millionth time we’ve watched it (yeah, Star Trek, I’m referring to you).
We can also have shutdowns from sensory overload. This same sensory experience that can give us a deeper grasp of hundreds of details others may not notice at all, and by which helps us see things differently it is also part of the mechanism that can overwhelm us and bring our lives to a halt as we try to recover.
Some of us have overt expressions of joy or anxiety that can make others feel uncomfortable. Mannerisms that are as natural to us as blinking, but which we have to hide to fit in so as not to incur the avoidance penalty.
And we can have meltdowns which may present in a variety of ways subtle or overt, but which have mostly to do with an internal mechanism of buildup without release. Sometimes there is no other way to purge ourselves of this extreme tension except through screaming, wild mannerisms, or high-throughput verbiage out of a restricted-bandwidth lung, tongue, teeth, lips orifice.
Even with all this, including our sometimes depression from struggles we may not even be aware of, I think we are interesting enough and have great value to anyone desiring committed and deeply loyal relationships from individuals who can embody both nuance and consistency at the same time.
Below are qualities that make a person good for me. Yes, it goes both ways. Our own standards or desires shouldn’t be suppressed or devalued simply because we want friends, a spouse, or a partner to help us on that theory of everything we’ve been working on for so long. Our value has to start with the simple recognition that we have and are a value to ourselves and others.
My friends’ best and inherent qualities that work well with me (in no particular order):
- Respect (this kind of is actually number one).
- Patience.
- Curiosity.
- Ability to ponder-create, my way of taking a subject, idea, or something gleaned from conversation and exploring new possibilities with it — even absurd ones.
- Loyalty.
- Speak the truth — I don’t think people realize how much we on the autism spectrum truly appreciate actual sharp and pointy raw truth — with citations! Subtext and subtlety are great if you don’t want us to understand, but we more appreciate a clear path through the woods. If they are speaking a truth that is emotionally-contaminated, they recognize it as such and express the qualifier as well. This lets me know their feelings separate from the truth of what they are expressing and helps me understand that their logic isn’t flawed, just that they are dealing with the same thing that can derail my own logic at times.
- Ability to recognize my challenges and (gloriously) work to ease them in even tiny ways that I may not even realize I need at the time.
- Understanding that I may not have the best awareness of time. My focus is such that sometimes hours pass I feel only minutes have passed. To not take this personally (as in “you don’t value my time”), but as a brain difference that even with alarms I may not pull away from my theory of everything easily or at all. This has happened all my life to the point my family early on nicknamed me “Sooner”, as in he’ll get to the table to eat sooner or later — yes, even to do things like put nourishment in my body so it can continue to live I can be late!
- Can step in to help communicate for me when I don’t have a script prepared for speaking or where I may be overwhelmed from sensory input and my words don’t work well or at all. Yes, even simple things like ordering food at a restaurant or responding to a question a family member asks. Scripts are real. I frequently need them.
- Aren’t bothered by my subtle or not so subtle atypical physical expressions of anxiety or joy.
- Don’t take as offense when my eyes are off looking away from them when carrying on a conversation. My eyes look to the images in my head to help form words is the best way I can describe it for others. It has nothing to do with attention, as I also look to the images formed in my head from when another person speaks. If I’m looking at the images, I understand better. If I have to look at the eyes, then the images are lost to me, and I then have to deal with a bunch more information that has nothing to do with the words coming out of their mouth.
- Always put each other up. By that, I mean we continually encourage the best out of each other. They do this for me and show me that I am valuable to them. We are infected deeply with this contagion.
This isn’t an exhaustive list. My closest friends stopped their very lives to make sure I would go on living. That’s something hard to qualify or require of someone, but they did so without a thought. I think that’s powerful. I would do the same for them in an instant. That’s a friend. It’s what we do. We help each other go on together in this life, hand-in-hand or simply, powerfully, side-by-side.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you like my writing and want more, please let me know by sharing, clapping, or leaving a note. I do value your responses.
