Last week I hauled the boys to an outdoor playdate near a pool. In between the splashing and sunburn came a moment that often accompanies social events: the flashes of experience I linger over later, the happenings I sit on and overanalyse. I’ve done this my whole life, because #socialanxiety and also plain old #anxiety and also #introversion and….I could go on. Now that I have kids, though, I’m afforded many more experiences to study and feelings to interpret. Now that I have a kid diagnosed on the spectrum I have even more. It almost seems like Someone is doing this on purpose to me, hitting me right where it hurts and making me deal with it.
At one point, The Kid asked if he could do a wee in the garden. A “bush wee” as we call it here–it’s a cute way of saying “piss outside.” And, here, “garden” is not a word to describe an English outdoor masterpiece but, rather, a yard. A patch of grass. Anyway, I figure a couple of the benefits of having boys are (1) The Husband has to take them to the bathroom when they need to go and he’s around; and (2) when those conditions are not met, outdoor wees are often permissible. Let’s be honest–they’re probably too permissible in my book, because I’m lazy and it’s easy. So TK and Little Brother are used to dropping trou all over the place: music festivals, kerbsides, once on the side of a highway…you get it.
This trou-dropping is not about being on the spectrum. If anything, it’s a product of the parent I’m becoming because of this foreign sojourn–the very opposite of the rule-prioritising oligarch I planned to be before life and grace intervened. It’s about Australia, not autism: they’ve been spraying their golden showers all over this gorgeous country for two years now. And people who clutch their pearls over this…test me as a symbol of something I’m not. I think it’s actually a pretty good screening process for potential friends: you react in horror to my kids relieving themselves outside, we probably won’t be besties (see also: shock over f-bombs, hangovers, talks about mental health, etc).
Anyway, TK asked permission to go outside, and I considered running him inside before imagining the trail of dripping pool water certain to accompany us no matter how much towelling off occurred. So I asked my friend, the host, if bush wees were allowed at her place, and she said they were. So he did. No harm, no foul.
A few minutes later, though, a scene occurred that has defined so much of the angst in my life and the reason why I relate so deeply to the title of Mindy Kaling’s first book: two of the moms there were huddled together in the pool, and one of them cast a glance my (and TK’s way).
RED ALERT TO MY SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. I immediately felt my defences arise–on behalf of myself (my parenting, my personality, my very identity) and, especially, on behalf of TK. See, something often happens with people who aren’t around him much: there’s this thing they do, where they know something is “different” about him, and they stare. They take furtive glances; they study him surreptitiously. It’s creepy, and it’s common, and it annoys the shit out of me, and I often wonder if I’d do it myself if I were them, briefly, before I get back to eviscerating them in my head. On this particular occasion there were several glances and even instances of pointing out offences he’d committed (food dropped on the ground, for example; CALL THE F-ING POLICE). Both my anger and despondence were piqued.
A few minutes later, the boys none the wiser, we said our thank-yous and goodbyes and left. Cut to me on the car ride home, and for the next several hours (kidding, DAYS) analysing the whole thing.
A close friend who knows that I obsess over, well, everything, but especially how people treat TK, tells me that the differences that I think about people noticing are not actually that noticeable. I love her for this, because she means it, and because she loves TK, but she’s also around him a lot. Around us a lot. In other words, she would not have to enter a psychiatric facility if one of my kids pissed in her yard. And these are the people whose opinions should matter, right? The people who know us and love us?
Sounds like a great idea! TELL THAT TO MY EVER-WOUNDED PSYCHE. Because the truth is, there will always be a part of me that is operating from that raw, hurt place inside (my counsellor called it The Inner Child, yes I’ve seen some counsellors CAN YOU TELL) that the world damaged long ago and that is still struggling to recover from it. “The world” being, well, everyone in our history, reacting to everything about us that they notice: our size, our looks, our weird personalities. I’ve heard that there are a few rare people, Galinda-style, who sail through life without anything offensive in their natures drawing the attention of the world around them. But I think that, like unicorns and compassionate Trumps, these people don’t actually exist because none of us escapes childhood or adolescence fully unscathed. No, I think most of us–even (especially) the pearl-clutchers–come into adulthood with our factory settings switched to a default of “respond out of wounds.” Out of shame.
Ugh, shame. (noun) the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or another. Yep, that pretty much covers it. Painful.
So whether you once farted in front of a group of people, or had a phase of really bad acne, or were just a didn’t-fit-in-anywhere outsider (hello from your friend me, who nailed the trifecta!), maybe you know something about this? Maybe you have it buried deep beneath layers of since-improved-to-acceptable behaviour/size/hairstyle. I don’t know, I’m not your counsellor (can you imagine? We’d just talk about me the whole time).
It’s there, though. And dealing with it is messy and involves lots of thinking and feeling and admitting and all kinds of other activities that cut into social media time and override filters. But dealing with it is the only thing that keeps us honest. It’s the only thing that keeps us real.
And I’m beginning to think that, inconveniently, it’s the only thing that keeps us from dumping it all over our kids.
On my best days, I examine. On my worst ones, I obsess. Most of the time I’m riding the wave between the two and trying not to screw my kids up too much, only too aware of how so much of their stuff coincides with mine in a way that feels targeted…almost as though Someone is doing this on purpose for me, hitting me right where it hurts and helping me deal with it.
The other night we watched The Greatest Showman for the thousandth time and TK, ever with his eye for/obsession with detail (wonder where he gets that from) asked about the men who burned down Barnum’s building and beat up his employees. “Why did they do that?” he asked, and we talked about how some people are afraid of what is different–of what they don’t know. I didn’t get into the subject of shame and how closely it’s connected with hate; I figure we’ll get to that. He kept asking questions until the next scene, when all those “different” people showed up in a bar. “Look! It’s the good people!” TK exclaimed.
We watched as these outcasts danced and sang–two things hard to do if you’re clinging to shame. “They’re dancing,” I told him. “And singing,” he replied, then sang along, the refrain of the outcasts who know their name, where they’re from, where they now belong.
“And we will come back home.”