Autism/ASD Acceptance: Body Image Issues and how it affects us

I started seeing the school psychologist when was I was a teenager, and continued therapy throughout high school, college, and into my adult life.  It was something that I considered shameful.  A dirty secret that I kept hidden...because I was afraid people would hate me more than they already did.  Instead, I spent years in therapy learning to live in a neurotypical world, because I wanted to be accepted.  It took me most of my adult life to realize...it's NOT my job to make you like me.  I shouldn't have to seek the acceptance of others to value my own life...to be proud of who I am.

Autism/ASD presents a whole set of complications by themselves.  While I'm not autistic, I do have an autism spectrum disorder...formerly called "Asperger's Syndrome."  Most of us still use that term.  I mean, isn't it enough that you had to give it a label.  Was it really necessary to change it?  Like life isn't confusing enough?  We spend a good bit of time either feeling...nothing?...I guess or trying to figure out what we're feeling so we can put a label on it and find a social cue to express it so that you can understand what we're feeling...which is funny since most of us don't even understand what we're feeling.  Then there's the anxiety that comes with not being sure that we're "doing it right," because heaven forbid we offend someone because we don't know how to function in your world.  Of course that's nothing compared to the depressive episodes that occur for every reason imaginable... everything from guilt for making you feel uncomfortable to worrying that somehow the color of our socks will make someone hate us. We also have this beyond-obsessive hyperfocus-thing that causes us to put all of our attention into the worst possible emotions. It cycles, until we're in a state of absolute emotional overload, and ALL of that can happen in a matter of minutes and last for weeks.  The condition is not without its perks, but that's not the point of this blog.

As I've mentioned in previous blogs, I've had issues with my weight for most of my life. It's no secret that I was "the fat kid" in school, and it was made evident to me on a regular basis that fat = bad. It didn't matter that I played tennis, volleyball, softball, and swam.  I was fat...fat is slow...fat is ugly...fat is wrong...fat means you are useless. That's how I felt then...and sometimes that's how I feel now.  I no longer look at myself as a monster, but I struggle with body image issues daily. Some days I'm ok with being overweight, and other days I hate the sight of myself in the mirror.  My husband tells me I'm sexy all the time.  Some days I smile and say thanks, and others I think he's a big ole liar who needs to have his eyes checked. Typically, I get through the bad days rather quickly, but then there's that pesky Asperger hyperfocus.  All it takes is one comment from one person, and BAM! I'm in a spiral. In seconds I'll convince myself that everyone hates me because of my weight: 320 lbs of disgusting, wasted flesh. I'll go all day without touching food, until long about the midnight hour my head is throbbing because my blood sugar is in the tank.  My heart will race. My blood pressure will go up...here comes the anxiety. "Oh gods, I'm dying."  And here we go... I'm in the kitchen shoveling food in my face like a prize hog at a slop trough til I'm so full it feels like my gall bladder is trying to shove my lungs up into my nasal cavity. "Oh gods, I'm dying."  Off to the bathroom to hug the toilet and try to throw up.  There I sit...on the floor with the most ridiculous, illogical, emotionally charged thoughts pouring through my mind: "I'm fat. Starve yourself.  I'm going into hypoglycemic shock. Gorge.  I'm having a heart attack from overeating. Puke."  Jumping through extremes is what Asperger's do best.  I think its mostly because emotional extremes are easy to recognize and label, and definitely easy to express.

At this point, about half of you are feeling sorry for me on some level, and some of you are concerned that I'm bulimic. Some of you are going "why didn't we know this?"  Let me address those things.  Don't pity me.  Your pity is painful and unnecessary.  I'm not bulimic.  I don't binge and purge with any regularity. In fact, the overeating is a coping mechanism for stress, because I'm over reacting to not having eaten all day, and the purging is because I've overfilled my stomach to the point that its physically causing me pain. Take all that and combine it with my unnatural fear of death and ASD obsessiveness, and its a hot mess.  All of it though, stems from 1 thing - body image issues.

This isn't an adults-only problem.  It starts way back in kindergarten health class when we are teaching kids about nutrition (which we absolutely should do.) The problem is, we are not doing a very good job of sending the right message.  The message should be that "making unhealthy choices with nutrition may cause a person to be overweight, which can complicate health." The message that we actually send is "fat is bad."  Children don't look at another child and think, "His weight is going to damage his kidneys. I'm concerned for his health."  Children look at an overweight child and say, "That kid is fat and gross."  This message becomes about how we look, rather than our health, and it absolutely damages self-esteem.  It persists through childhood and into adolescence, a time when development includes changes in body type.  Some people get thinner.  Some people gain weight. Some people get taller.  Some, not so much.  Bone structure, muscle density, skin elasticity, oil production, and secondary sex traits all manifest during those years.  It's at this point that gym class becomes the bane of every person that doesn't fit "society's acceptable body type."  At this crucial moment in psycho-sexual development, we are at our most vulnerable...and at the mercy of our "peers."  If you are already struggling with mental illness or neurological disorders, these moments not only mold how we view ourselves, but they become a trigger for sudden depressive episodes, overstimulation, and anxiety.  To make matters worse, it doesn't stop in adolescence.  Adults are just as bad as children and teens, if not worse.

I hear women talk about body image issues far more than men.  I think its because if men do it, society looks at them as whiny or effeminate. Men aren't supposed to express emotion you know, and if we do its a bad thing.  "You're acting like a girl" they say...as though being a girl is bad.  It's not an ok message.  Men shouldn't be forced into feeling like "less of a person" because they express emotion. Aspergers work tirelessly to learn how to properly express it, and then we're told, "but you're a man, so don't bother." It's not OK to equate femininity with negative emotion responses.  While we're trying to figure out the difference between happy and content, you're telling us we have to sort out which are "man emotions" and which are "woman emotions."  Aren't they all human emotions?  I mean, if they were gender specific don't you think that at some point the grand design would have weeded that out by now?  Whether you ascribe to evolution (which selects against negative traits) or a Creator (who should know better), the reality is, by this point in human existence, if there was going to be a "man set" and "woman set," it would have happened.  And ya know what...to some degree there is.  Women tend to be more nurturing, while men tend to be more aggressive, but those same traits can be found in both genders.  No emotion is exclusive to gender. We all feel joy, anger, sorrow, grief, laughter, shame, guilt, and regret...unless maybe you're a psychopath.

Women say, "Men objectify our bodies."  Don't be deceived ladies...men do it to each other...both gay and straight.  Men judge each other all the time. Locker rooms and poker tables are riddled with "small dick" jokes, and I've known plenty of women who remark about a man's genitals and body type.  That's no different that someone complaining about small breasts or "muffin-tops".  We make statements like "he has no balls," as though having testicles has anything to do with bravery.  My Mother is one of the bravest and strongest people I know, and I assure you, she doesn't have testicles.  Gay men are notorious for shitting on overweight gay men, which is mind-blowing to me, given there is an entire demographic of people who are sexually attracted to overweight people.  That's not the message we see on TV.  It's not the message we see in body shaming articles.  It's not the message our leaders reveal in speeches.  It's not the message we send on the playground.  Despite all of the body types in this world, society sexualizes and standardizes young and thin. Women are at the forefront of the "body shaming" dialogue, and somehow....people like me...a man struggling to love his body...get's shoved to the side.  And what's more...most of us men who are dealing with body shame, have more than just "being fat" as a problem.  Our struggle is real and it deserves to be acknowledged.

I've been writing for a long time.  I've been published several times over. I used to write under a pseudonym with a fake picture, because..who wants to read an article with a fat guy on the cover. But...recently, I had someone say, "How can I be expected to bare my soul, if I can't be proud of the body that holds it?"  There's a lot of truth in that.  The core parts of who we are...the soul of being human, is covered up by shame, depression, anxiety, and guilt, and more often than not...it's not of our creation. My dear friend Sayward Shores said to me, "We are not our bodies."  How wise! My body is only a vessel, one overflowing with talent, intelligence, and experience. My body is simply the container for "Jase." I am a gift that many people will never bother to open because they don't like the wrapping paper.  It doesn't matter.  The package isn't theirs to open.  It's mine. I open the package and reveal to myself all the wonders and possibilities that comes with being me.  That's how I fight back.  I take my Asperger superpowers of focus and obsession, and I focus on the best parts of me and obsess over the beauty, strength, and wisdom I have to offer.  If someone else wants to open the box, I'm happy to share.

I'm sharing a photo that I've never shared before, as a further step in being proud of who I am.  There will be some negativity...but I don't care. If they don't like the wrapping paper, they don't deserve the gift...fuck them. I don't give gifts to assholes anyway.

Adventures in Babysitting

I know I said I wouldn't be writing a blog every day, but for now, I'm in the mood.  I've been thinking quite a bit about my childhood lately, for reasons I'll keep to myself for now.  It's been a considerable trip down memory lane.  As I look back, I find that I struggle for "happier" memories.  The sour far too often outweighs the sweet.  I don't think its because I'm a negative person.  I think its just human nature to linger on the "not-so-good" things.  They tend to stick with us more.  I'd like to tell you that I'm turning over a new leaf and focusing on only positive things, but that's not true.  I've tried it.  It doesn't work.  Stepford-Jase is creepy.  What I will try to do is share an equal amount of the good, the bad, and the ugly.  A nice balance tends to make for better storytelling anyway.  Here's one of those that contains a bit of all 3...

I had the good fortune of having a "stay at home" mom for my early childhood years. (And before someone gets the idea that I have something against working moms, please let me assure you that I do not.)  We weren't rich...hell, we weren't even middle class.  We had to gather eggs and milk the cow every day just to eat breakfast.  In the winter, meals were often left overs that had accumulated over the previous year, frozen in baggies and old buckets.  In the morning, mother would throw some homemade canned tomato juice in a cast iron pot, dump in an ice block of frozen whatever-was-in-it, and set it on the old wood stove.  When it boiled, it was done.  Sometimes it took all day.  I was a poor farm kid from the sticks.  Cereal was a luxury.  I spent May to September 90% barefoot and shirtless, because we couldn't afford new shoes and clothes.  They had to last.  Truth be told, we didn't always get "new" anything.  A good bit of the time, we got hand-me-downs from cousins and neighbors.  It was a circumstance of country life...but I digress. My dad made 3.15 an hour in those days, and the farm didn't bring in a great deal of money.  Mother decided she would start babysitting to bring in some extra cash.  To show you how much of a difference there is between then and now...she got 20.00 a week to take on 2 other kids 8 to 10 hours a day.  Can you imagine?

The first couple of children she kept were the children of family friends.  Their dad drove the local milk truck and their mom was a secretary for a small business.  They were nice people.  Trey and Ashley became like family for my sister, Tiffany, and I.  We were all separated by 1 year...meaning I was 6, Trey was 5, Tiff was 3, and Ashley was 2.  Ash was potty training and still in diapers. She was...portly?  She always reminded me of the Gerber baby but with more chubby.  Trey was so thin, you couldn't have hit him with a handful of corn.  I assumed he was thin because Ash was eating his share as well.  Tiff and Ash spent most of their time playing dolls and annoying Trey and I.  For some reason they couldn't understand why it was inappropriate for girls to enter our Fort, which was basically 2 hay bales, a dirt mound, and a bed sheet I pilfered from the clothesline.  They could usually be deterred from bothering us with the waterhose, though in most cases that resulted in the wooden spoon making an appearance.  We had 1 television..cabinet style.  There were 2 dials on it and rabbit ears for the first 6 years of my life.  Didn't matter though...there were only 3 channels anyway.  If you were lucky, and the birds stayed away, and the weather was good...you might get 2 of the 3 to come in plainly.  The other was a lost cause unless you held your mouth just right.

One evening, after Trey and Ash had gone home, my dad came in and began discussing this "new" technology with my mother.  I was intrigued.  A device that would allow us to watch movies sounded AMAZING!  I listened for a long time, and I remember thinking how awesome it would be to have something like that.  The downside was that it was going to cost my dad two weeks pay to get one.  That wasn't something we could afford.  I was disappointed.  A few weeks went by and I had all but forgotten about the new movie thing.  Pretending was better anyway, and we had started getting a new channel (a 4th one!!)...KBSI 23, a FOX station.  That meant more cartoon choices, when we were allowed to watch that is (which wasn't a great deal. 30 minutes a day, and Saturday mornings.) Life was good.

Right at the end of summer, a few weeks before it was time to pick corn, my paternal grandmother, Mamaw, called to tell my dad that she had found a VCR machine for sale in the newspaper. (That's right bitches, we had a phone. It was an avocado green rotary phone, but we had one.)  Mother had saved a good bit of her sitting money, and she and Dad decided to move into the "modern" era.  The VCR was listed in the items for a yard sale in an area of my hometown called "Pleasant Valley."  Pleasant Valley was a subdivision built to provide housing options for the workers of the Goodyear factory that had opened in town...the largest in the U.S.  You had to be pretty well off to afford a house in that subdivision.  It was home to doctors, lawyers,...well, everyone except poor farm kids.  It was actually kind of exciting to think we were going to go there and buy something.  (Sadly, once I got to know some of those families later in life, I realized what an idiot I was.  Most of them were assholes.)  Since my dad had to work, it mean that Mother was going to have to go...with all 4 kids! Knowing how difficult it would be for Mother to handle that, Dad took it upon himself to invite Mamaw.  Now, there's some history there.  Mother and Mamaw got along about like two Tomcats in a burlap sack (and I'll save that for another time.)

The next day. Mother, Mamaw, and we 4 kids, piled into our Mercury station wagon and headed to town.  It was about a 15 minute trip, which was about the width of our county.  We pulled into the driveway of the yard sale, and Mother said to Mamaw, "Keep an eye on them.  I'm going to be just a minute."  Mother got out and hell broke loose.  Mamaw's idea of "keeping an eye on us" was browsing the yard sale.  She left 4 young children in the car....windows down mind you.  In those days, in our small town, you could do that without much risk of criminal activity.  The real risk was leaving 4 children to their devices.  You should also keep in mind that I have Asperger's syndrome and death anxiety, which were both undiagnosed at the time.  Trey, we later found out, had severe ADHD.  This is a volatile combination in and of itself.  Throw in 2 siblings we couldn't stand and 33 seconds of boredom, and it was a mess.  We decided to play "campout."  If you don't know anything about Mercury station wagons, here's a brief description. Bench seats in the front, bench seats in the middle, and collapsible "kiddy" seats in the cargo hold.  I sat in the front with adults, because I was oldest.  The others were in the center.  The kiddy seats were folded down to allow full use of the cargo area.  Trey climbed over the seat to join me in the front.  We moved the bench seat all the way back and used windbreakers to build a tent.  We then decided we needed a fire.  Gathering brush from the floorboard and using Mamaw's cigarette lighter, we built a small fire in the ashtray...which quickly filled the car with smoke, even with the windows down.  This was enough to get Mamaw's attention.  She put out the fire, and subsequently prevented my mother from starting one on her head.

This next part will need a bit more explanation.  You see, Dad believes that if you get off the interstate, you have to live there.  So, he doesn't stop on long car rides unless he needs gas or has to pee.  That doesn't work well with a 6 and 3 year old. As a result of his insanity, Mother put a potty chair in the cargo area so we could use it without having to pull over.  Now, all of us knew it was there.  Tiffany decided that she needed to pee.  She climbed over the eats, into the cargo area, and proceeded to do her business.  Once finished, she stood up and attempted to pull up her panties.  Unfortunately, they had gotten hung on the kiddy seat latch.  She kept bending over and jerking them, but it wasn't happening. This also caused her to moon and flash everyone at the yard sale, which was half of Pleasant Valley. A crowd of people, including other children, gathered outside of the window.  Tiff began crying and screaming, because she's a drama queen.  My brain started to melt and I dove under the dashboard.  Luckily, my grandmother had the good sense to help her before it got worse.  Meanwhile, Trey had engaged in a spitting contest with another boy from the crowd. (Oddly enough, we later, as teenagers, became best friends...with benefits!)  The volley of saliva carried on for a while.  Tiffany decided that she too would join in.  With both Trey and Tiff spitting, things were getting gross fast.  Mamaw apparently thought to look in our general direction and yelled for them to stop.  The boy turned to walk away.  Tiff thrust her head through the window to get in one final spit as Trey cranked it shut, trapping her sideways head between the window glass and the door frame.  Of course, the drama queen began to wail.

Mamaw wasn't able to stop the cries from activating Mother's seek and destroy protocol, as she began shoving her way past the shoppers.  When she arrived at the car, she jerked the door open, not realizing Tiff's head was solidly trapped...and there she dangled by her neck.  Trey smacked the window roller (as they were hand cranked not electric), releasing her face, and causing her to drop to the ground with a resounding thud.  It sounded something like a brick smashing through a pumpkin.  Mother grabbed her up off the ground, comforted her, and checked for injuries.  Seeing there were none, she then inspected the car, that was devoid of adult supervision.  Seeing the burnt grass in the ashtray and the piss-filled potty in the cargo area caused her to lose her mind.  That was the first time I ever heard my mother say, "Fuck."  Now, this entire time, Ashley had been sitting in her carseat...quietly...shitting.  Not just a normal amount, but like enough for 6 kids.  I distinctly remember Mother picking her up and watching the poop spill out of the carseat.  It was disgusting.

4 hours, 4 spankings, 2 adults fighting, a moon-fest, a spitting contest, a campfire gone wrong, and a shit-filled carseat later...we had a used VCR.  It cost mother a month's worth of babysitting and all that drama, but we had one.  When dad arrived home that night, he saw the VCR and said, "See. You said it was going to be too hard with the kids.  I told you Momma would help."  Mother, smiling politely, said..."Your mother is as useless as tits on a boar. Never again..."  And she made good on her word.  That was the last time Mother and Mamaw were ever in the same car. She quit sitting.  A month later I started to school and Mother went to work...at a Video Rental place, no less.

Oh...and this hat is very similar to the one June Thompson wore when I was a child.  She owned the VCR that we bought.  Two years later, Mother went to work for her husband as a collections agent.