101 Uses for Body Lotion
Monthly column by
Kate Goldfield

"Take a Walk with AS"

This is an example of how even small everyday incidents in a person with AS's life can be traumatic.

My college library closes at 12 a.m. every weeknight, and my usual routine is to wait for the beginning of After Midnight on the radio and then leave. Tonight, I saw a good friend of mine was in the library and
would be there until 12, so I made specific plans with her to walk back from the library together at 12.

She came out at 12 with another friend of hers that she had been with, who she was not with when I approached her about walking back together twenty minutes earlier. Then, another friend of mine approached me and wanted to walk back together. I couldn't cope with walking back with three people at once. I couldn't start to follow the conversations everyone was having. Jennifer would say something, her friend would say something, Michelle would say something, I couldn't follow it quickly enough to jump in anywhere. Jennifer and friend fell back leaving Michelle and me. I had been wanting so much to talk to Jennifer, because I talked to Michelle more regularly and hardly ever got to talk to Jennifer. How could I talk to her? I wanted to figure out how to be a part of a dynamic, ever changing conversation with four people casually talking and walking back from the library. And I couldn't. Michelle figured it out; she asked the friend of Jennifer what she had been talking about, engaged in a conversation with her. Until Michelle did this it didn't occur to me that it was within my conversational rights to break into the conversation Friend and Jennifer were having and join it. I thought interrupting might be rude, and didn't have any idea what I would say either. So Michelle, Jennifer and Friend were talking and I just could not keep up. And I really wanted to be listening to After Midnight. If I couldn't be talking to people and engaged in their world then I wanted to be as far from it as possible, in my world. I'd had enough of being just on the outside, looking in, in my life. One or the other world but straddling the two in between was intolerable.

But what really got me is that I go out of my way to try to make something happen, and then it happens with her and someone else in seconds, just like magic, and they are so engaged and the conversation is so flowing and I am so incredibly jealous. And so I break it off when we get to Pearlstone, figuring that I can at least listen to After Midnight for the second half of the walk, but it's no good, it's useless now. I can't enjoy it. So I walk to Thormann to talk to Jennifer, even though I had planned to do laundry and make hard boiled eggs for breakfast the next morning. I actually get up the courage to ask her if I can talk to her outside, which is something I can seldom do. And then I actually get together the presence of mind and courage to tell her how I was feeling as we were walking back, which I can seldom do also. She doesn't recall what they were talking about when they walked back; it all seemed so commonplace, so easy and natural to her. I ask her with tears in my eyes, “What do people do in situations like that? When they're walking with groups? What do they talk about?”

She can't tell me. She tries, but she can't, because it is so second nature to her. I envy that second natureness so much and wish that I could convey to her what it feels like to be on the other side of the glass. “Sorry,” she says quite genuinely, “I didn't mean to hurt you.” She says it with such honesty, such caring and regret in her eyes that I feel the better for the moment and know that she didn't mean to hurt me, know that she was just doing the best she could. But I resent my lack of ability in this area. I resent it so much. I know that I have to come to terms with it, know that I have to accept that there are certain things I can't do as well as others and that we all have our strengths and weaknesses. I know this intellectually, I know this is a journey that I must somehow go on. But for now, I am a traveler without a road map. I am lost, and it hurts.

I must figure out a way to be patient with myself as I come to terms with my differing abilities and find ways to compensate.

~Kate Goldfield