Pathologically Genuine, Post I. The Autistic Journey

I really don’t know how to be anything but genuine even when being genuine is stupid. For example, one might be genuinely bleeding, but it is not a promising idea to announce that to a shark

I am autistic.

I think I am pathologically genuine because of being autistic, so that is the title of the book behind this preface. Being pathologically genuine means that I really don’t know how to be anything but genuine even when being genuine is stupid. For example, one might be genuinely bleeding, but it is not a promising idea to announce that to a shark. Although I never did something like that while swimming in the ocean, I have figuratively done so on too many occasions. But most of the time being pathologically genuine is a positive thing. It seems to facilitate trust, especially in university teaching.

I was unaware that I had been autistic for fifty-nine years. I had no context to explain why I wanted to hide underground in a cave every fourth of July, puke my guts out at the site of pudding, scream in angst because my mother wanted to make the four-year old me wear a shirt with buttons, and obsessively and repetitively tickle my face with any object that worked.

Girls seemed to me to be the scariest animals on the planet – scarier even than a Tyrannosaurus rex on crack. I mean rejection can hurt more than losing body parts or being eaten alive.

You might imagine that many things made no sense to me. I began to think of myself as a fucked-up horse who despite desperately trying to roam the plains of life with my herd mates, never seemed to know what was going on. I seemed to always end up in my own corner of the range, or galloping to a different beat or in the wrong direction from all the other horses. At times I was self-righteous telling myself that I was lucky to not be like all the other horses who were just addicted to being normal. But that was the only way I knew how to deflect the sense of isolation. In reality, I just felt like an outcast most of the time holding in a lot of anger at the rest of the herd for not fully accepting me.

I found refuge before I knew I was autistic by focusing on anything other than social interactions. Somewhere along the line, I realized that work was the only thing that made sense to me. If I studied or worked hard, then good things happened. Relationships weren’t like that. The more I tried the more I made a fool of myself, and the harsher the rejection. Hard work, though, led me to a successful career as a biologist, senior academic administrator, a teacher that cares deeply about students, and ultimately to be someone who wants to help neurodiverse people live comfortably and confidently in a neurotypical world.

Discovering I was autistic was transformational. It was magical to me. I mean, I learned that I wasn’t the messed-up horse I thought I was. I was just a zebra in the wrong herd. I realized that I sensed and processed information differently and moved like a zebra and not a horse. And I thought to myself “you know, it’s good to be a zebra.” With that recognition, most of the anger I held towards the neurotypical horses in my herd just melted away.

There is an advantage in discovering one is autistic late in life. It is like finding all the missing pages of a book you were reading, but you didn’t realize they were missing, so you thought the book was terrible. Finding the missing pages of my book made it feel like a Pulitzer Prize winner instead of its pages only being useful to line a bird cage.

Autism took me to dark places of emotional pain and suicidal thoughts. Yet sometimes darkness can be one’s friend, too. For example, I need to relax in the dark for a couple of hours before going to bed. There are also many days where I need to safely withdraw like a turtle into the darkness to “soar, fearless, inside myself in a small dome of safe, starless heaven.¹” Autism also led to my being a nomad, searching for a sense of belonging that I didn’t and likely will never find. But, my being nomadic insures that I will never be on the TV show, “Hoarders.”

My story about autism, also, requires many dogs to have a starring role. I would always rather be with a dog, even though that means that I am often covered in dog hair and sometimes I have to walk outside in my underwear late at night, during a hurricane, so they can pee. Dogs are totally “unpathologically” genuine. They don’t care about human social cues, and they don’t get upset by what you wear or when their hair is all over your shirt and pants.

I think I have learned to embrace and leverage my autistic traits in positive ways. I may have even developed some useful insight into what it was like to be an autistic person making my way through academe. And there are aspects of my life that are just hilarious so I hope my stories make you laugh. I also hope you can find some useful wisdom in the following chapters.

In case you were wondering, I only tickled my face about two dozen times while writing the previous paragraphs. I made the mistake of looking into the eyes of my beloved dog while writing this paragraph. Sometimes those eyes heal my soul and flood my brain with oxytocin. But eye contact makes me susceptible to her Vulcan mind meld skills. So, excuse me as I stop tickling my face and get up to give her a treat before moving on.

¹Emerson, Claudia. 2005. Late Wife: Poems (Southern Messenger Poets), Louisiana State University Press

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