Hello, My name is Elric, and I was, up until I finally returned to formal schooling, a true natural philosopher. It would be decades before I discovered that there are names for people with my differences, Asperger’s (now called ASD1), Sensory Input Disorder, by the time I was 7-years-old I had already developed both PTSD (Grosse, 2020) and MDD (Massive Depression Disorder), what I did not know is that there were other people like me and that people were studying these various conditions and they are trying to understand and help where they can. Before then, I believed myself alone.
I found as a very young boy that I was completely alien to the people around me, I failed to understand feelings and emotions (both internal and external). I was forced to study them and try to understand who and what they were, and more importantly how and why we were different and if it was going to matter. My parental units consisted of a wanna-be mafioso (would have been ‘made’ if he was not a junkie), and the girl he seduced when she was 16 and later took her in after her divorce at age 23, he was 19 years older than her.
When I was old enough to attend public school, I was surprised and pleased to see that they, my parents, were the anomalies and that people acted in public as they did on the T.V. Of course, I had to wonder if this was just how people acted together and if everyone’s home was violent and full of both physical and psychological pain or if that was just my family? Unfortunately, I was not equipped to interact with the people I met so I kept back a step and watched them, trying to learn from them. Later I turned to literature; English books from the classes above mine, dictionaries from all grade levels (as they became available, in the 5th grade my teacher, Ms. Anderson went out and purchased an Oxford college edition and gave it to me), the complete Encyclopedia Britannica. As I moved towards college, I had established a track record of very high marks with the unlimited urge to learn, to understand, and maybe one day know why I feel different, disconnected, alone. As I finished the 9th grade my mother was committed and I stopped formal education and began working. It took me almost exactly twenty years to come back and get my G.E.D. (not because I needed to study more or anything, life just got away from me for a while) and then it took me ten more years to sign up for college classes.
Do I think my story is unique? No, not really. Yes, I am an outlier, for sure; not an addict, my worst addiction was severe alcoholism, and I never beat my wife or children (which is not to say I was not abusive, just not physically). I am divorced after 25 years, true. My children are gone, forever… who knows? The thing is, how do I write about “group think” or any other form of mob mentality when I have never been a part of a group that thought for me. Not in school, not at work, and I do not socialize too much beyond that as I tend to have poor results.
When I have been a part of a group, I usually assume a position of instruction or leadership. I do not ask people to do things, I tell them what I need them to do. Always with an equal amount of “pay” (reward? exchanged energies/ expense?), I do not take from people, I trade. When the group rejects my direction I either exert greater control (assuming I have some sort of leverage such as being the warehouse manager or when people did, briefly, congregate in my house) and/ or consider the actual need and usefulness of said group. When I find myself in a place with no agency, I walk away. I have ever been subject to abuse from my peers; as a child, I was small, stopped growing at age 5, and did not start again until I was 11 years old. I was four feet tall and weighed eighty-seven pounds my freshman year and I had a bad attitude, PTSD, and zero willingness to back down…
I was labeled a “loner” early in life and it still holds true today. I attended four concerts in my life, three heavy metal and one classical Chopin (Nocturn is a favorite as I learned Violin young and have always loved piano), as much as I enjoyed each show, I hated the crowd. I have been to several theaters as I absolutely adore plays, even attending the same show several times but it was difficult and I do not believe I could repeat the experience now, even as much as I miss theater. Agoraphobia is the label they put on it. For me humans are to be experienced in one on one or small group situations; theme parks, theaters, even taking my children to the park when they were small was difficult if not impossible. I drank my way through those things because the strange people, the strange places, the feelings of suffocation, and the compression I feel when the weight of a crowd is upon me is too much to bear.
Having spent every day of my life asking questions and trying to understand all the myriad “whys”, it was never easy for anyone to convince me of or talk me into much of anything. At my worst, I was gullible where people that were nice to me were concerned and tended to, and honestly still tend to, take such people at their word. It was just funny when I was 8 and the nice lady that watched me sometimes told me that they, Mexicans, are called “wetbacks” because their backs get wet when the dolphins ferry them across the Rio Grande River and brings them to America.
I similarly am having a difficult time thinking about how or what to write about the effects of breaking social norms. Since I have never been in the “normal” category beyond my blood type I do not really have much perspective. I suppose when I was really little, back in Chicago, there were a few occasions when they took us to different people’s houses (for drugs, money, or sex) and I quickly learned not to ask other kids, especially older ones, questions that made them think about what our parents were doing in a different room together. I usually knew exactly what and why they were doing whatever, and I understood that there were things that people could not say or do or the response would be violent but… that is not a “norms” situation, not really.
My primary experience expands on that when I entered kindergarten and later in the first grade where I learned not to raise my hand for every question because kids that did not enjoy or that struggled to learn hated me for loving to read and for asking good questions. I even learned to recognize when other students do not receive information as given and to ask questions that helped the teacher explain in a way that allowed the student to understand. That is part of how I became a sort of how-to-learn tutor in the 5th grade, not teaching class materials to other students but teaching them ways to approach and consider the information as suits them personally. This is the primary reason I have thought about being a teacher my entire life and the reason II would like to try to become a middle or high school psychologist, I loved helping each one I was able to in whatever way I was able to.
My only adult experience with the subject I would hazard to say would be my friend Mr. Tom (George but “that’s my dad’s name” …). He called himself Tom, he was raised in Japan on a Marine base, served in the Air Force during Vietnam, and build rockets near Washington D.C. before finally retiring to Florida where I met him in 2011. After we had become friends over a period of around a month, we had a very emotional conversation about something that had happened in his life. I listened, asked questions, and held his hand when he needed it. I noticed that he was surprised when I reached out and took his hand and squeezed it a little as he cried and told me about his mother so when he finished out and was spent for lack of a better word, I asked him to stand and when he did, I quickly stepped in and wrapped him up in a great hug. I was 38 and he was a decade older and I could feel the difference in how we were raised. I, by my own guidance, he by a WWII Marine. He almost jumped back, he went ridged and kept his arms wide and I held on tighter and said to him, I love you Mr. Tom, you are a gift and a blessing to me in my life. You are not alone, and then he hugged me back. No surprise later when he told me that his father did not hug and neither had he, until now. Then he told me he was sad he had never hugged a man before and asked me if I would give him another. From then on, we always hug when we part.
The final option I was considering was the first one, self-feedback/ thought record. I thought about that one for a while but could not figure out how to get into and talk about that too much without having a really bad day(s), well a worse than the week I have been having already day. I am in therapy, I journal, I meditate, I try to exercise daily, but most of all, for the last year, I have taken the Stoics’ approach (which is surprisingly Buddhist in nature) to the consideration of my thoughts and feelings. For the past year, I have suffered from my issues, my negative thoughts, and ideations chief among them my entire life. This last year, instead of letting them toss me like a raft in the Pacific I have begun the above-mentioned practices. I find that examining, exploring, and where possible, tracking down the origin (original instance) to a thought process /belief is very beneficial, informational, and enlightening. Some of the things I have remembered from my childhood have rocked me to my core but only because I find understanding for a belief or response I have to a stimulus and thereby understand why “I do that” and by seeing it in its entirety, I begin the process of writing new code where the bad lines are found.
Well, there it is, my essay three. I am not sure how pretty it is. I know it sort of answers three different proposed topics, 6, 5, and 1, but I was actually writing about those three in order to write towards the ninth proposal. My hope was to cover all of these topics and show my personal connection and understanding of the concepts as well as of myself (my self). I hope that this is well received and that I was successful in my attempt to do all of these things, in my attempt to draw all three of these concepts together in a way that frames my understanding and experiences and which allows you to understand as well.
References
Grosse, S. (2020, November 24). Children with PTSD: Teachers Can Make a Difference. ProQuest.com. Retrieved November 23, 2021, from https://www.proquest.com/docview/2456871553.