It's been more than a month since I last wrote. My writing habit comes and goes. For a while I have a ton of stuff running through my head. Then I go into that "empty box" where my head just doesn't feel like thinking of anything. Since I last wrote, I hopped back on the "what am I really supposed to be doing with myself" wagon. Thanks to that autistic tendency to want to try to fit in with different groups of people to see where you can fit in, I ended up losing my job as a security guard at the theater here in Minneapolis. People complained because I said things, rather I wrote things on their Facebook page, that made them feel uncomfortable. My explanation was that being autistic makes it hard for people to draw the boundary lines between what should be said when and to whom. This much is really true. But the fact that they fired me for it and merely relocated another guard to another position led me to file a charge of discrimination with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. I'm not even going to follow up on it, really. Whatever happens happens, and in the meantime I have moved on.
While being a "healer" always ends up being the answer to what I was really meant to do in life, building a clientele continues to be my weakest point. I can help a three-month old overcome colic when everything else failed, I can help a family member overcome vertigo when a medical doctor couldn't figure out what was wrong, I can uncover deeply-rooted emotional hangups that keep a person sick thanks to medical intuition, but I can't build a practice. Go figure. Just last night I figured that I really shouldn't be surprised. After all, not knowing how to correspond appropriately and with the right people has ALWAYS been my downfall. It still continues to be my downfall. But just like Dr. Temple Grandin, if not for the people who knew of her gift and stuck up for her, she probably would have succumbed to the same lack of social propriety.
On that note, I recently decided to make lemonade out of lemons. I designed a class specifically on living with autism spectrum disorders -- a class about ASDs taught by an audie. What a concept! I advertised it to several local community education programs, 117 of them to be exact. So far, I have about six of them that I scheduled this class with for their upcoming Fall community ed programs. I am also taking this opportunity to seek out the advice of a psychologist who may be able to give me some practical advice. The one who has experience working with audies was all booked up (surprise surprise). So the one I will have an appointment with this coming Wednesday specializes in anxiety disorders and depression. I can't say I have any issues there, but at least it was something that stood out as different from the rest of the people on my insurance provider list. The difference is that I know where to start -- I am a person with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder. I didn't know that just 13 months ago.
I guess there really is no "next chapter". I am just revisiting the previous one, but now knowing what my shortcoming is. And it's something I'll have to deal with and make known to potential employers. I have gone back to trying to promote myself through making phone calls and proposals for providing chiropractic and examination services. I even list in my most current brochure that I myself live with an ASD. I pretty much had to do that in hopes of cutting down on the amount of strange looks I get if and when people visit my office and see somebody they judge as not being "doctor-like". I have to make do with what is and forget about what isn't. Another thing I am looking into is what possibility there might be that I can get some kind of disability compensation. Sure I can work. But functioning is a different story. Functioning as a "neurotypical" may always be an impossibility. It would be nice if there was somebody who could walk in front of me whenever I am going to make a presentation or reach out to a new contact and say, "Here is a physician who can help you, as long as you overlook the fact that he may act differently because he is autistic."
Audies DO live in a world of their own. It is up to the neurotypical to learn how to coexist with them and communicate with them in a meaningful, functional, non-judgmental, progressive way.
