The older I get the more inclined I am to see the past in a new light. It’s rather like seeing all the things that have happened to me so far as being happenings on a long, bright summer’s day with no night.
Well, perhaps just a little night.
It’s fair to say that I have lived an extraordinary life for someone who identifies as just another boring person on a heavily populated planet, a bit irksome sometimes, sometimes a bit loud, but not at all special.
OK, I’ll accept that I’m ‘unique’ because we’re all born with that burden but at least I’ve avoided being an obsessive, avoided each and every spectrum its now possible to be on, and I’ve never ever voted National.
That’s not a bad record, all in all.
OK, maybe I’m a bit obsessive – karate at eighty, four hundred theatre works – and yes, gender and sexuality are a spectrum or so I’m told, but none of this Aspergers or autism stuff. At school I was just naughty and lazy and ‘must try harder’.
There was no back door out not for me, not for anyone.
A wee story is needed.
When my darling boy was tested and found to be on the Asperger’s Scale, the counsellor said, having listed all the indicators, that it was often hereditary. I laughed, said to the room but aimed directly at Cushla, ‘well, he certainly didn’t get it from you’.
The room was not pleased by my quip, and six unamused eyes bored into deep into my face.
And my soul.
My quip, in retrospect, was pretty damned unkind.
Home, and in private, Google told me I was wrong about it being hereditary, and that maybe, just maybe, the young man may possibly have inherited a smidgeon of his Aspergers from me.
Maybe I wasn’t just lazy and naughty and should have tried harder at school, maybe this explains why school was such a hateful trial for me, why I lived in fear of the teachers all the time, and why, when Barry Eagle made a deal with me, I excelled academically for the first time in my stupid life and have often done so since. Maybe I was actually challenged by a ‘syndrome’ that hadn’t been invented yet, that wasn’t an educational ‘thing’ that a confused and terrified young working-class clod like me could have, and maybe it was OK after all, to have been scared shitless of Pat Daly and his snide nastiness, and of Ted Lunn and his contemptable, post war, parade ground bawl.
Maybe it was OK after all.
Later, when the diagnosis evolved to HFA (High Functioning Autism) with the addition of super smart (on the 98th percentile intellectually) so much made sense at last and now we think of this diagnosis as a gift, the gift that just keeps giving.
Maybe if this was known in 1955 … but it wasn’t and, like so many other things in my life, I sort of got there in the end.
Is arriving decades late to the party also an indicator?
I’d rather think that arriving at all is the most profound of blessings and I’ve certainly nailed that on so many fronts.
So, I’m not special, and, ironically, I’m frequently reminded of this. It’s true though, I’m just an ordinary Jo(sephine) measured on all the calibrations that matter to me, and that make my life precious.
To me (and maybe a tiny few close to me).
I’ve certainly been lucky in that, even though it took fifty years, I have been able to act on what I have known about myself since I was eight years old and to transition to being the person I have really always been, but in ways that are more visible, more public, more performative, more useful, and more personally satisfying than they might ever have been before as my mate Lex the Bloke.
While I’m not special, my journey certainly is. It requires a constant re-evaluation of who I am, and where I fit into society. While it may seem, at times, that this is challenging, in the main it’s a joy. I know who I am, I know how I came about, I have the acceptance of my immediate family, and a (relatively) small number of friends, and that really matters. I regret that circumstances have been such that my connection with my older children and my grandchildren is fraught, and I take responsibility for my shortcomings and decades of poor decisions. I don’t want it to be like this, but that’s how it is. I can live with it and it’s pretty clear now that they can too. I never expected to get to be eighty let alone live long enough to make it into the new millennium. As a teenager, I did the numbers and worked out that by the time 1999 rolled over to year 2000, I would be 55 and it was never anticipated that I would live that long. Why I thought that I don’t know. The truth is I did, and I’m exceptionally happy that I am still here and that the prospects for my future are not too bad. Terminal – no-one gets out alive – but there’s no date inked into my diary with ‘this is it’ next to it so, I guess I’ll just keep rocking on. Twice in my cricketing career, I reached 88 not out but never made it to the magical 100. My plan is, if I can make 88 again and still be not out, I will work bloody hard to make those extra 12 runs and, as long as the skipper doesn’t declare, I might achieve my ton. A six over extra cover would be the icing on the cake.
That’d be better than cool, eh?
dykiegirl 