The Most Difficult Week I've Had In Years

This has been a very trying week for me.

On Tuesday morning, I woke up to find out that my grandfather had a stroke whilst visiting my aunt up in Rochester. We're five hours away from him right now, and the stroke was very severe and we're not sure how much he'll be able to recover, if at all. This could be the beginning of the end, so I've been bracing for losing him for the past several days.

As if that wasn't enough, another emotional blow slammed me two days later. The morning of the stroke, my cat Murphy, who saved me from my mental breakdown that resulted in my Asperger's diagnosis, had trouble going to the bathroom, but was able to relieve himself. He seemed fine for two more days, and then Thursday afternoon suddenly looked awful and would yowl when I picked him up. It got worse throughout the night, and he wasn't eating and drinking, so I correctly diagnosed the problem as a urethral blockage and Mom and I brought him to the emergency room at 1 in the morning. I lost a cat to repeated urethral blockages that led to kidney failure when I was in 8th grade (I mentioned that briefly here once), so I knew the warning signs and wasn't taking any chances.

Murphy got through surgery just fine and he'll be home late tonight or early tomorrow morning - he's doing fantastically. Unfortunately, emergency vet bills are very steep, and so I'm taking art commissions to help raise money to pay for his emergency treatment. The money, though, is the least of my worries right now - knowing he's healthy and is going to be home again has calmed me down considerably because the last thing I needed right now was to lose the cat that saved my life. Having him back means everything to me - he was my emotional rock at the most difficult time of my life, and I wouldn't be writing this blog if he hadn't shown up during my sophomore year of college and let me adopt him.

With Murphy's health back in order, I can return my focus to my grandfather, which is a relief because handling all of this emotional stress at once was pushing me to the edge. I'm still getting sick to my stomach and not sleeping well, but my grandfather is in his 80s and I can come to terms with losing him because I've known that he's been unwell for a while - this stroke was just the culmination of all the stress on his body. There is absolutely no way I would have handled Murphy's death well at all because he's been the best little supporter I could have ever asked for and I love him more than anything. He's honestly been one of my best friends for the past four years and I can genuinely say that when he came into my life it was the beginning of a long healing process for me. It wouldn't have started without him, and I'm eternally thankful to him.

April 2009. Murphy and I met when he was six weeks old.

Best friends forever! Here we are four years later in April 2013.

I'm genuinely concerned about losing my grandfather, though - I love him dearly and I don't want to see him go out in pain. He's been taking care of my grandmother, his wife of 59 years, and the strain was just too much on him and now he's in a horrible state. He goes through good moments and bad moments and all the information we've been getting from Rochester - even from my data-oriented dad, who got up there as soon as he could - has been mixed and I don't know what to expect anymore. I just know that no matter what happens he's not going to be the same or fully recover from this and it breaks my heart to see him reduced to a shadow of the man he was.

Grandpa with Louise (and Barnaby in the background following my dad, as usual).

Basically, this has been a really, really emotionally difficult week, and I hope for everything to come to a satisfactory conclusion but I'm afraid that's not going to be the case for my grandfather. I'm just heartbroken for him - he doesn't deserve to go out like this.

Nobody deserves to go out like this.

Becoming The Therapist

I've been seeing my therapist for years now - I first met him in the summer of 2009, and then we resumed sessions in the summer of 2011 and I've been going ever since. He's been a wonderfully positive influence on my life, and I've definitely taken what I've learned and worked on in his office to heart.

It's had a new impact on my life, though, one I didn't think was going to come about - I've started doing my best to bring those teachings to others.

I do my very best to be there for my friends, and I've been giving them the advice that my therapist has given me over the years. It's not the easiest thing to do for me because of my Asperger's - I do get emotionally exhausted pretty easily when I'm trying to be there for people - but no matter how tired I get, I feel better knowing that they're going to be able to hang in there.

Friends mean a lot to me - growing up, I didn't have very many, and so I'm now very protective of the ones I do have. I want them to be happy and healthy, and I do my very best to be a supportive friend and be there for them whenever possible. I also urge them to see a therapist if it would help them - because my therapist saved me, and I believe another good one can save them. I know I can't go it alone and that a therapist will help more than I ever can, but being supportive and letting my friends know that I'm there is important to me.

I'm not really certain where I'm going with this post - it's more stream-of-consciousness writing than anything else. But I did feel it was important to share that being a supportive friend really does go a long way.

Asperger's Illustrated Celebrates 1000 Ausome Things

I've had a fairly normal life, when I think about the things that have happened to me and I've made happen so far. I graduated high school in 2007, then went to Gettysburg and majored in history and minored in Civil War Era Studies. I graduated college in 2011. After taking a year and a half off, I entered graduate school at Pratt Institute in the hopes of getting a Master's of Library Science to become an archivist. It's a fairly normal place for a 24-year-old girl to be these days - in graduate school, holding down a part-time job, and generally working a lot on a lot of things at once.

But there's something different.

My name is Steph Diorio. I'm a 24-year-old graduate student, and I have Asperger's syndrome.

I wasn't quite sure what to write today in particular at first since I typically spend a lot of time on this blog reminding everyone that an autism diagnosis is not a death knell and that you or your child can be incredibly successful in the right environment. I often write to try to remove the stigma placed on autism - and mental illness, as I also have OCD and social anxiety - and to promote acceptance of all differences across the board.

Today, though, is a day to celebrate success in particular, so I decided to talk briefly about how things can be for autistic adults. I turned 24 five days ago, so I'm technically in my mid-twenties now. I'm finishing up my first semester of graduate school tomorrow. I didn't think when I initially got my diagnosis that I'd be as successful in life as I am right now. I genuinely believed back in July of 2009, when I was diagnosed, that although I could be academically successful I would suffer socially for my entire existence. I became very quiet in class for a while and it took over a year for my confidence to come back socially.

I graduated in May of 2011 and took some time off to get my mental health back. Over that period of time, my therapist and I worked together and we eventually bolstered my confidence even higher to the place it's at now. I enrolled in graduate school, something I'd always planned to do, and actually went on a trip to D.C. with people I didn't know very well to visit the National Archives and Library of Congress. I felt awkward at first, but by the end of the second day I was getting along with people and making friends, something I never would've been able to do years ago.

The things that make the difference are confidence and practice. The more you practice your social skills, the more natural things will feel, and the more natural things feel the more confident you'll become. In 2012, more people hit on me than any time before that in my life. I realized that confidence is attractive - and for me, this had particular significance since boys told me I was ugly and undateable growing up. Knowing that the bullies were lying about me and having verifiable truth was a major turning point for me. Suddenly, I'd overcome that last big hurdle and stopped being afraid of boys my age automatically rejecting my presence.

This is more or less a hodgepodge of things at this point, but my point is this - don't ever, ever let yourself (or, if you're not autistic, the autistic people in your life) give up. There's something you're good at and you will succeed at it. (In my case, it's being a historian and archivist.) And people will accept you for you once they see that you're a beautiful, kind person.

There are many beautiful things about autism. Each one of us is one - or more - of those beautiful things. Keep fighting the good fight - if I can make it in this world, you can, too!

On Being A Tour Guide With Asperger's

Sometimes my job as a tour guide is really, really tiring.

I work here, giving tours to people interested in history and modern art. I like my job, don't get me wrong - I know I'm lucky to have it since a large number of people with Asperger's struggle to hold down jobs. I just get very, very tired.

I'm in graduate school right now studying to become an archivist. By December of 2014 I should have a Master's of library science - and hopefully, a job as an archivist somewhere. Until then, though, I need to make money any way that I can to support myself, and for the time being, those ways are selling my artwork (which you can now buy online here!) and giving tours to people.

Tours aren't easy. Well, in some ways, tours are very easy - all you have to do is memorize a lot of information and then recite it to people and answer their questions afterwards. The hard part is that they're so intrinsically social that even a few hours on the job leaves me mentally exhausted. I have to keep an eye on everyone I'm talking to, looking for signs that they might be bored or have to leave to go somewhere else. I have to make eye contact with them a lot more than I'm comfortable with. And I can't act like a robot even though I'm giving the same information for what feels like the 100th time. I have to be fun and smile a lot.

Now if you've got me talking about baseball or comedy history or something else I adore, like Top Gear, I'm extremely personable and smile a ton. I also do that when I'm talking with people I know and trust. It gets hard when you have to act all open with people you don't know and you have both Asperger's and social anxiety. 

I know I've overcome a lot of challenges to even have this job, and I'm very proud of myself for making it. I honestly had my doubts that I could do this and somehow I've been doing this for almost a year. Every so often, it just gets a little hard to keep up.

1 In 50: Why Using Numbers Hurts Autism Awareness

I've been meaning to write something like this for a long time. It's just been rankling me for years, so I'm just going to come right out and say it:

Stating autism rates doesn't help awareness or acceptance. It just scares people.

That's all there is to it. Shouting out numbers isn't going to help people understand your child with autism or Asperger's. All it's going to do is intimidate and frighten people. I can throw out numbers all day about the prevalence of autism, but it's not going to do anything except make people afraid to have children in case those children end up having an autism spectrum disorder.

We don't want that to happen. It'd be rather nice to have a next generation.

There's better ways to get people to notice and care about people with ASDs. I personally explain my Asperger's to people when it comes up in life, helping them to understand how autism spectrum disorders work a little better through their contact with an actual person with one. I also make sure they know that I'm one person with Asperger's and not representative of the autism spectrum as a whole, but now a lot of people who know me come to me when they have questions about autism spectrum disorders. This is because I put a human face on those numbers.

We can't just shout out numbers at people if we want them to accept us as a group of human beings. We need to make sure people realize that autism has a human face, and that it's us, our children, our friends, our siblings - people. Groups like Autism Speaks use the numbers to raise money, playing on fear to get people to donate money to their research. This is a problem because if we all use fear, nobody's going to understand because we fear above all else what we do not know or understand.

Do you want people to understand the autistic people in your life? Don't scare them with numbers. Just explain to them what autism really is. Show them that it's something that affects the lives of people, not just a statistic. In my life, I use statistics for baseball, not my self-advocacy. I use myself for my self-advocacy, and I find it works a lot better. The people I interact with understand autism and Asperger's better after they've met me because I am nothing to fear. I'm just a person, like they are.

Stop using the numbers to try to raise awareness. Use actual autistic people and show the world that they should be accepted just like other humans.

I managed to lose my wallet...

...and it led to a minor breakdown wherein I sobbed on my couch for a good several minutes.

I haven't made a misplay in my adult life in some time, so this discouraged me pretty severely. I felt like I was doing really well there for a while.

We've already canceled the credit and debit cards to get new ones, but I'm not looking forward to that trip to the DMV to get a new driver's license. I'm really not thrilled about losing work time. I guess I can do grad school readings whilst I wait. I also need to get a new school ID, which is going to cost me a hefty sum of some variety, so that's really discouraging, too.

I think I felt like I let my parents down since my credit card is currently attached to their credit card account. They took it a lot better than I did and helped me out, and that calmed me down considerably. I just need to pick my head up and not feel like such an idiot over an accident that was beyond my control. Then I remembered that they're old pros at things like this. I'm still relatively new to adulthood. They've dealt with problems like this before, but I don't have experience in this area yet. I suppose that experience will come (starting now).

I just wish adulthood wasn't so discouraging sometimes. Can I go back to being ten again?

UPDATE: A Good Samaritan found my wallet and brought it home! What a relief! I'm going to buy him a nice gift card as thanks.

I Actually Tried Flirting!

On Wednesday, I was riding the PATH train from school to Hoboken so I could go home. When I got on the train, a cute guy around my age sat down next to me. He had other seating options - there were plenty of seats on the train - but he chose to sit next to me.

I smiled at him.

This genuinely surprised me because I generally panic when attractive men around my age are near me. I don't know what to do and I'm afraid they'll reject me just like the boys in my middle school who told me how hideously ugly and horrible I was. For whatever reason, though, on Wednesday I had the courage to look at him and give him a smile.

I shot him a few sideways glances as the train shot underneath lower Manhattan and the Hudson River, too shy still to look at him outright except for our reflections in the window on the other side of the car. I could see that he seemed to have a headache, as he kept massaging his forehead, looking rather tired. I felt a sudden pang of regret that I didn't have any Advil in my saddle bag to offer to him. At the same time, I noticed my heart was pounding in my chest in a way that I hadn't felt it do since I was a freshman in college. I was feeling physical attraction towards somebody in real life.

As we neared Hoboken, I decided that I might as well try to give him one last smile before we went our separate ways. I decided to use the pratfalling abilities I'd picked up back in my theatre days (which were in middle school and didn't last all too long). I stood up as the train closed in on the station, holding onto the pole near me. When the train stopped and he too stood up, I let go of the pole and shifted my weight slightly to allow myself to stagger in front of him. I said, "Sorry!" and gave him one last big smile before we separated and went off to our own lives.

I giddily hopped into my dad's car and spent a good portion of the ride home feeling proud of myself. I had made an attempt to flirt that didn't scare a guy away - I wasn't told I was gross or ugly or creepy. The guy even sat next to me - so close that we were bumping elbows the entire train ride - when he could've sat next to someone else or even not next to anybody. That night, I cried myself to sleep with relief knowing that maybe, I might not be undateable after all.