How autism has made me a better me

Comprehensive exams . . . ah, the fun. My comps process has dragged out much longer than it has any right to, but the reasons behind said dragging are the topic for another blog (and besides, a lot of you have already heard me rant far too much about the whole thing). Anyway, as the semester wrapped up, I threw myself into comps prep. Which led me back to the resources I've collected since I began graduate school . . . and a lot of laughter. At myself.

I found the three-ring binders I kept for every graduate seminar I've ever enrolled in. And, holy frick, for that first year of my PhD program I was obnoxiously organized. I had color-coded binders. One color for each class. And inside each binder was a notebook--which matched the color of the binder--for my notes. And, oh!, I mustn't forget the tabs! I created tabs for every article in the binder for easy retrieval. Of course I labeled each binder with the course number and course name--on the front and on the spine.

Um, can you say anal?

It was during that first year of my PhD program that the word autism crept into my tabbed, labeled, and color-coded world. My first suspicions that Nick had autism hit during winter break when my almost two-year-old kept sneaking out to the garage during a family get-together to read off the numbers and letters on license plates. Then, during the spring semester, we went through the long, long dance of "finding out"--I took Nick to his pediatrician, to an audiologist, to a speech evaluation, and eventually to weekly speech therapy appointments, and he finally got his first label: "severe language delay."

That summer, the first summer of my PhD career, my boys got more decisive labels, both on the same day: Nick got "autism" and Noah got "Asperger's."

The binders changed after that. The tabs disappeared. The color coding vanished.

By the end of my coursework, the binders were simply the place where I threw the disorganized leftovers of a seminar. I didn't even bother to place a damn thing in the rings. And labels with course names and numbers--ha, I don't think so.

By now you might be wondering about the title of my blog. How could my descent into messiness correlate with a better me? Oh, but it certainly does, it certainly does.

You see, autism taught me the things that really matter and taught me not to waste time on the things that don't matter. Here are some of the things I learned:

1. Neatness and organization are completely over-rated. Yes, I have very neat, very organized files for the boys' medical information. That stuff needs to be organized because it's vitally important that I be able to pull lab reports and speech evals and progress reports whenever a therapist or doctor or teacher or case manager asks for them. But, dude, how important is it that I have old course readings organized? Not at all.

2. Traditional home-making tasks are over-rated, too. Here's where you, some of my dear friends, annoy the hell out of me (if you don't mind me saying in the most loving way). I see some of you stressing out so much about having The Right Furniture and The Perfectly-Cooked Meal and The Coordinating Throw Pillows and The Immaculate Lawn and The Dust-Free Bookshelves and The Witty-Yet-Cute Christmas Letters. My goodness, if you could only hear how much you stress over these sorts of things. How much time do you waste on creating The Perfect Home when you could be, I dunno, finger-painting with your kids?

I don't have a coffee table because my kids, well, they have ASDs and love, no NEED, to spin and run back and forth. I have a ball-pit instead of a dining table in my dining room. I let my kids cover themselves from head to toe in shaving cream because it fulfills their sensory needs.

My house is clean, but it will never be magazine-worthy. And so what? It's a home where my children can thrive, and that's what matters.

3. Competition isn't all that important. Now this may sound like a weird thing for me to say . . . because I've always been competitive. I love to win, I love to be the best. But I realized the other night when I was having drinks with a couple of girlfriends that somewhere along the way competition had lost its value. One of my friends was talking about how it was hard to go out with groups of her grad-student friends because there was always that pressure--everyone had to top everyone else with their stories of their kick-ass achievements in the academy. She was talking about the pressure she felt to match (or exceed) the successes of her colleagues . . . and I realized that pressure was foreign to me. Don't get me wrong--I'm a good scholar and I work hard. I just don't drive myself into the ground for my work like I would have before I met autism. I work faster and revise much less because its more important to me to help Nick learn to say one word than it is to turn 5000 of my brilliant words into amazingly brilliant words.

4. Leave bullshit at the door. I suppose it wasn't until my time became so taxed that I realized how much bullshit there was in my life. I think we all have some bullshit to varying degrees in our worlds. That "friend" who always makes you feel a little smaller with her digs. The leech who drains your soul. The obligations you hate but feel obligated to follow through on. I probably would have let the bullshit continue to suck the blood out of me if it hadn't been for the demands autism and grad school put on me. There was just so little of me left over after dealing with those two things, so very little, and I just couldn't spend the little left on bullshit.

So I stopped doing the things that I didn't want to do, and I stopped spending time with the people who drained me. I became a healthier person because of it (though I was critiqued by some for it).

5. I learned to treasure joys even more than before. Maybe it was seeing just how draining the bullshit can be that made me realize how precious the joyful things in life are. Yikes, I'm sounding greeting-card-like, I fear. But the things and people that make me smile, I heart them.

6. I am eminently stronger than I ever could have dreamed. Eminently. Okay, I don't want to sound like I'm one of Jenny McCarthy's "Warrior Mothers" (because I'd like to think I'm more complex than a societal stereotype), but autism taught me I can kick much ass. Clawing to get your child approved for ALTCS, firing habilitators and OTs and STs that aren't giving your child what he needs, battling through IEP meetings, fighting the state when it wants to cut your child's services . . . man, that makes you strong. Incredibly freakin' strong.