Liane Holliday Willey - Pretending to be Normal

After my parents had done all they could to push me along, Tom came just in time to drag me, sometimes screaming and kicking, to a place where I could find real comfort. With Tom’s help I have been able to move along the autistic spectrum from the childhood I can barely believe was mine to the relative ordinary I find these days. And as a testimony to his goodness for me, he has never given me more than a nod or a smile to tell me how I am doing. He keeps me safe. He reins me in. He lets me know if I am wandering too far in my thoughts or carrying on too long with my dialogue. I can look at him and see from his expression how my conversation is going and how my audience is taking me. And never do I come to feel he is acting possessively or egotistically or because he is annoyed or upset with me. Even when I only have a slight grip on the reality of his influence over me, I can tell he is trying to teach me and guide me, not keep himself from embarrassment or myself from shame. Because I always knew he was a very confident man who let no one’s perception of him tie him down, I knew, too, that he would never let how others saw me, affect him, or us, in any way.

He never missed a beat when he discovered I was different. He never discusses it unless I bring it up. He never alludes to it during my long-winded monologues. He never uses it as a sword to kill my enthusiasm for our relationship. And because he never uses who I am against me, I came to trust him.

Trust. An illusive concept, one so dependent on the ability to generalize, so tied to an ability to read the subtle nature of the human condition — no wonder it so often falls beyond the AS person’s world of discovery. But, when it is found, it becomes a life preserver, a means not toward an end, but an awakening. With someone I trust implicitly by my side, I know I will continue to grow and progress, to seek and to find.

Sometimes all I need to keep from falling over the edge is to look at Tom’s face. I am stunned by the looks of his face, not so much because he is an attractive man, but more because, in the structure of his face, I see so many of the visual elements that appeal to me — linear lines, symmetry, straightness, perfect alignments. His face is firm and anchored and definite. It is chiseled and solidly cast. It is a visual respite for me. I am oddly calmed when I look at his features, so calmed that I find just seeing him puts me at ease, just as looking at a peaceful stream comforts others and a lullaby soothes a baby.

I often wonder what course my life would have taken if I had met Tom back when I was a teenager twisting and turning my way through youth. I am tempted to think he would have saved me from the turmoil I swirled in; tempted, not convinced. I think it was best we met later on in life, because it took me years of self-study to recognize who I was and how I worked and what I needed to fix me up. Had Tom, or anyone else for that matter, caught me each time I fell, I worry that I would never have been able to figure out what made me tick. I needed to fall, scrape my knees, knot my heart, and try my very hardest before I could really see that I was more than simply a bit different. I needed to come face to face with all of my issues before I could admit I needed the support I now get from Tom. As I go on to lose more and more of my AS, I caution myself never to overburden him with my needs, to never fall in on him, to lean on him only when I am faced with those things that toss me in circles and make me take unusual turns. And as I continue to refine how and when Tom can help me, I try desperately hard to give him the kinds of things I can, things like loyalty and honesty and reliability and shared interests. Like bookends, we have learned to support each other when the stuff in the middle pushes us apart.

They say truth is more unbelievable than fiction and if my life is any indication, I would have to say, I agree. It is true that when the short scene above played before me in real life, I truly did think my baby had two heads. While I am not certain this illustrates the literal mindedness that often grabs hold of my AS, I do know it sets a perfect stage for my life as an AS parent. For the past twelve years, I have felt as if I live in a topsy-turvy world of bemused consciousness, somewhere in between what should be and what is. In our home, for example, my children provide me with just about as much role modeling as I provide them. While I am able to set forth the more mature hierarchy of moral and ethical standards, the kids are able to show me how I should act and behave in public. In fact, they often lead me through public arenas knowing that without their help, I am likely to both literally and figuratively lose my way. The kids force me, by their very existence, into a realm of reality that before their arrival was hardly of any matter to me. Because I deeply care that they are well cared for — well educated, happily engaged, and in all other ways, satisfied young beings — I try as hard as I can to control and monitor my behaviors and thoughts consistently. I try to be Every Mom.

While parenting brings out the most normal in me, it also showcases that about me which is the most unconventional and at times unacceptably challenging. As it is with most things, I find I cannot point to one or two of my challenges as an Asperger mom and shout — « Ahh, I am a failure!» No, it takes more than one fall to trip me up completely. It is in the sum total of my confused state of parenting awareness that gives me reason to quietly whisper — « Oops, I think I have made a mess of things, again!»

It has been my experience that each stage of my daughters’ lives is not only new to me, but foreign as well. Just when I think I have mastered one set of demands and expectations, another surfaces and throws me off balance. I realize I am not alone in this thought. Every parent I have ever spoken to confesses to a shared set of common complaints, confusions and mistakes. What intrigues me is their identification with the situations and difficulties they discuss. The parents I know seem to have the same kinds of experiences to recount and the same kinds of problems to relate. My worries and blunders come from places they do not seem to know exist. My issues are as foreign to them as their issues are to me. This used to bother me tremendously. It used to make me feel I was incapable of being an acceptable mom. Now that I know more about AS, I am not so hard on myself. I am not so critical. Finally, I can talk to other parents about their thoughts on parenting and discover, if not many, then at least one similarity: we are all able to understand it is possible to adore our children without adoring everything that goes hand in hand with childhood.