Autistic Hedgehog

Now What Do I Do? Please, Please Help.

neuroatypically-speaking:

[TW: Ableism, bullying, self-harm]

Normally I find myself answering requests for advice, either here or on Autistic Hedgehog, but this time I’m the one at a loss for what to do. (Sorry it’s so long, but I really am desperate for some help.)

On Wednesday my brother- and sister-in-law came for a visit. We (them, me and my husband) went to the Tutankhamun exhibit—which honestly turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, all told. The structure of it encouraged people to gather in large flocks like sheep and not move an inch for long minutes at a time, meaning I was constantly surrounded by the crowd and didn’t ever feel truly comfortable stopping to examine the artifacts (which were sadly all replicas anyway). That, as you might imagine, left me pretty exhausted and worn around the edges. 

The trouble really started sometime later, on the bus on the way to the bookstore and while at the bookstore. Somehow we got on the subject of TV, and on Elementary and BBC’s Sherlock. My husband and I love Elementary, but they’d never seen it because some people told them it was horrible. Of course, they love Sherlock. I pointed out that we hadn’t seen it and explained the reasons why—actors and creators involved saying horrible ableist, sexist, and other bigoted things, the show itself having, by all reports, tons of other problematic elements. 

Suddenly my husband and I were having that conversation. The one where the other party, secure in their privilege, is spouting things like “Well I don’t see anything problematic with it” and “Why would I want to look for problems in something?” and “I don’t just dismiss something simply because it might have problems.” Y’all know what I mean, you’ve seen the same arguments about a thousand bazillion times here on tumblr and elsewhere. (And the hypocrisy didn’t help. It’s okay for them to dismiss a show because some people told them it was horrible, but me not wanting to watch a show I have very good reasons to believe would offend and possibly even trigger me is somehow unfair?)

They know I’m autistic, btw, and I tried to explain Cumberbatch’s comments on the matter of playing Sherlock as autistic and the issue that’s brought with it, which brought on a “what if he was just saying that to stir conversation?” thought experiment apologism from my brother-in-law.

So of course, my long years of “training” kicked in and I’m like “Hey, I got the book I wanted, let’s just go buy it and go to dinner.” I was punished so much for being bullied (no, that was not a typo) that my kneejerk reaction to shit like that is “Fuck, if I defend myself there’ll be trouble and it’ll be my fault.”   

Then we’re at the restaurant and I’m hoping we can just avoid anymore of this stuff, but the universe is never that accommodating for me. Which meant that my brother-in-law, while checking Facebook on his phone, found a “hilarious” joke he just had to share with us:

Being popular on the internet is like sitting at the cool table at a mental institution.

Oh yeah, so funny I forgot to laugh. I know I don’t need to explain to y’all why that’s so horrible, and that’s a relief, because It gets old real fast having to explain that shit to privileged people.

Thus followed the typical “arguments” including the ever-popular classic: “It wasn’t an insult, it was just a joke.” And the whole thing about how it didn’t have anything to do with me, it wasn’t personal. (It was very personal. Autistic Hedgehog is close to 500 followers. I just got told my success with that deserves to be automatically stigmatized.) Then he had the nerve to ask me how many times I’d been in a mental hospital and I—and I’m quite proud of this—looked him straight in the face and told him it was none of his business.

That seemed to quiet him down and I thought that might be the end of it. We ate dinner and afterwards, I took out my phone and began looking at Tumblr. My in-laws already know that being around people stresses me out and sometimes I need to spend a few quiet minutes to myself, which isn’t a personal thing, it’s just me. Being at a restaurant, I didn’t really have that option. I thought a little time with my phone would help me fix some of my frayed edges, so I could get through being overwhelmed by the whole day and everything that had happened and we could just move on with our evening without further incidence.

The problem with trying to smooth my frayed edges is that while I’m frayed, I can tune out the rest of the world, but as the pieces start coming back together, the world comes back to me. I started to notice my husband and brother-in-law having a pretty heated discussion in Danish and it didn’t take long for me to realize they were talking about me (despite the fact that I know maybe 5 words in Danish, I’m not oblivious). 

They did eventually switch to English at which point followed a barrage, mostly from my brother-in-law (with some support from my sister-in-law) about how terrible it was, that I was acting like he was such an asshole when he wasn’t. And what’s the problem with that joke anyway? Oh, it’s stigmatizes mental illness and developmental disabilities? Well, that’s not his problem. And why should they always have to walk on eggshells? Um excuse me, I was the one walking on eggshells, biting my tongue, swallowing how offended and hurt I was and trying just to move on. I was not the one who brought it up again. 

At one point my sister-in-law chimed in that she “has an autistic brother” (and no, miraculously enough I did not in fact go through the roof at that, though it was a near thing) and they always just treat him “normally” (nope, somehow managed to avoid going through the roof at that, too). And my brother-in-law in law says that they just talk around him like they would around anyone else because they don’t want to disable him. To which I said “But I am disabled” and I know autistics aren’t always good with tone, but the unspoken “and there’s nothing fucking wrong with that!” was pretty hard to miss. 

If I hadn’t been so overwhelmed and tattered, I might have had the wherewithal to point out that by treating him “normally” they’re teaching her brother to internalize hatred towards himself and people like him, but by that point I was losing it. They kept pressing me, barely giving me time to speak or gather my thoughts and anyone with eyeballs could see I was falling apart. Then my brother-in-law sent his enemy troops across the border to declare war.

“I don’t have a diagnosis that allows me to get away with things that other people consider rude.”

Supposedly he didn’t mean I was using my autism as an excuse, but so the fuck what. I’ve had people say things like that to me before. I’ve had it screamed at me, had it implied, had it said bluntly to my face, had people give me looks that expressed the sentiment with plenty of clarity. I’m actually usually pretty forgiving about people intentions, because of what happened to me in middle school, but this was too far across the line, intentions notwithstanding. I broke. I left the restaurant, I stood in the freezing cold waiting for my husband to join me, I cried my eyes out (which is a messy affair when you’re wearing five pounds of glittery eye makeup) and I just didn’t care anymore what people thought of my behavior. 

Some important points:

1. Apparently the argument my husband and brother-in-law were having was because me spending a few quality moments with my phone was rude, but the “joke” my brother-in-law made came from Facebook, which he checked on his phone periodically throughout the day.
2. My brother-in-law knows I don’t speak Danish, but proceeded to have a conversation about me, speaking in a language I don’t speak, while I was sitting right there. My husband has apologized for not turning the conversation over to English sooner, but hello, I was sitting right fucking there, if you have a problem with my behavior speak to me.
3. Often when we go out together, my husband, sister-in-law and brother-in-law will start speaking in Danish (all my Danish relatives do this sometimes). It used to sting, being left out of the conversation like that, but I’ve learned to accept that my in-laws are Danish and sometimes they’re gonna be Danish. I thought they understood that I’m autistic and sometimes I’m gonna be autistic. Yet somehow them checking me out of the conversation is a-okay, but me checking out of the conversation for reasons of mental health is rude.

Being a white, cis, straight, able-bodied Danish person is about the most privileged position in the world. It really is, and they pretty much never have to face their privilege because of it. My husband and I have had some serious knock-down, drag-out fights over it (don’t get me started on the Julian Assange Incident) and the thing is, he’s learned. So maybe they can learn too. Maybe they can learn to understand why they were stepping all over me. My husband says they feel bad for hurting me but…

But they’re not the ones stuck in the cycle of “I’m so angry, I’m so hurt, this is all my fault because I didn’t keep my mouth shut. I’m so angry, I’m so hurt, this is all my fault because I didn’t keep my mouth shut.” (Shampoo, rinse, repeat.) They’re not the ones who wanted to go home and find the nearest sharp object. They’re not the ones who were pushed into a meltdown by people they thought they could trust. My family accuses me of never forgiving, but the fact is my family never dealt in forgiveness. My mom used to say “life is too short to stay angry” which was code for “let’s sweep this under the rug and never deal with it” so bad things happened over and over again until forgiveness wasn’t possible. 

I don’t want to get caught in that cycle again. I don’t want to cause trouble between my husband and his family. At the same time, I’m nowhere near ready for forgiveness. I want to stay in my ball with my quills out, because I feel so hurt and betrayed and it’s the only way I know to protect myself. I want to accept that it’s okay that I’m angry, but I’m caught in all those years of being taught that everything I do is wrong, that I’m abnormal, that I’m cold, that I’m unfeeling and unforgiving, that I’m monstrous, that standing up for myself is wrong. (And I feel like a hypocrite, because I tell people on AH never to let others convince them that standing up for themselves is wrong, but it’s so, so hard to get over all those years.) 

It’s making me irritable about small, silly things. It’s disrupting my focus and my sleep. Part of me knows my in-laws aren’t shitty people, they just did a shitty thing, and part of me is so, so angry, and I don’t know how to reconcile the two. It’s hard to trust after everything I’ve been through, but I don’t want to be so inflexible that I always shut people out and never give them a second chance, and I don’t…I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to feel. I’m at such a loss and this time I’m the one that needs help. 

From my personal blog. I’m reblogging it here in the hopes that maybe some of my AH followers can help.