Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers To the Right

As a kid in school, one thing I got in trouble for a lot was failing to pay attention. Part of it was that I couldn't control what I paid attention to. It was like trying to drive a car without a steering wheel. If something caught my attention and resonated with me, I'd be riveted. But if it was something I found boring and useless... like memorizing multiplication facts... I couldn't stop my mind from wandering. 

But often I had a different problem. If it involved reading, art, or something else I liked, my mind was full speed ahead. So you remember in school when the teacher would have kids take turns reading? If it wasn't your turn to read aloud, you were supposed to read a long silently. 

It was excruciating to me. I was hyperlexic and I would compulsively read everything around me. By the time some other kid had plodded his way, sound by sound, through page 12, I'd be on page 82. Then the teacher would call on me to read aloud, but I'd have no idea where the rest of the class had paused. 

I never felt like I was smarter than the other kids. But I definitely felt like I was faster than them. If something held my interest, I was always ten steps ahead. 

I get that feeling a lot lately, as an autistic adult who uses a lot of services. I have lots of  people whose jobs are to help me. And the process is often excruciatingly slow. 

For example, there's the job coach who told me to show up at 2:30 today at the place where I've signed up to volunteer. He said I needed to complete the volunteer orientation. The problem was that I was sure I'd ask really don't the orientation back in July. Then my job coach went on bereavement leave for several weeks, and when he got back he had forgotten that if don't it.

So I showed up at this place today. The job coach got there before me, but he was talking on the phone in the parking lot. So I went ahead in... And was told that, sure enough, I had already finished the orientation and was ready to start volunteering. 

In fact, the staff had no record of me having an appointment, even though the job coach had told me he'd made one for me. When the job coach came in, the staff had to explain this to him several times. They also said he'd called several times to ask about things, and they had told him they couldn't give him answers because I hadn't signed an ROI yet. He couldn't have made an appointment for me. Yet, here we were. 

There are always more. The endless intake workers who all me personal questions things in a monotone voice and then make me wait while they type their shortened (and often incorrect) version into their computer. And the case manager who asked me if I took a shower or ate breakfast, and also why female cats needed to be spayed, asked me if I was enjoying young equine therapy, and then informed me that she was going to have me start seeing some guy named Juan in an office instead. The peer support workers who tell me how important it is to be on time to my meetings with them, but then when I get there on time I  have to wait 20 minutes for them to be ready. The doctor who explain my upcoming surgery to me who, when I asked the question, "Do you stay overnight in the hospital for this or do you go home?" responded by explaining to me that the hospital has beds for doctors to sleep in if they need to. Not to mention the "caregivers" who sit on my couch and watch me with blank looks on their faces, unlike in the agency's commercial where smiling caregivers help people make meals and do art projects. 

The hard part is that I've always ways been interested in helping people, and a lot of these people have jobs that I've also thought about pursuing. I might even be good at some of these jobs too, except that my brain just won't let me. I wouldn't be able to handle the long hours, excessive case loads, and the demand for perfection in record keeping and organization. So instead, they are the professionals, and I am always on the receiving end of the services. It's gotten even weirder lately, now that Manny of the people helping me are a decade younger than me.

I'm not trying to sound ungrateful. I am grateful that these services exist, that they are mostly free, and that I can use them. But sometimes I'm just not sure if they're really helping me or if I'm just spinning my proverbial wheels. 

All of these services are voluntary, by the way. I could cancel all of them, and probably have a much less stressful life. But I keep trying, everything I can find, hoping I'll find the answers that will make me feel better, make my mind work right, and set me free.