October 4, 2022 • 43 mins
It’s no fun being autistic all by yourself. If you feel comfortable, you have to tell folks and let them into your truth. So it’s disclosure time for Lauren. It’s time to tell her pals this wild new thing she’s learned about herself. But that’s not as easy as it sounds. Predictably, things get…kinda awkward. So Lauren calls in an expert — her pal Anna Sale, host of the podcast Death, Sex & Money — for advice.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. After getting a super official autism diagnosis and mainlining
a bunch of books and movies and social media about autism,
and then having a few meltdowns and getting really frustrated,
I decided it was time to do some revealing. And
when I started thinking about telling people, there was this
(00:38):
one thing I kept coming back to, a thing that
kind of gave me hope that it would all be okay.
A million years ago, back before the world melted down
in several different ways, I submitted a little audio story
to a contest. The prompt for the contest was the
five tastes Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and Ummmy basically food stories.
(01:04):
Because I don't like a great many foods and don't
really come from a foodie family, I didn't have many
ready made stories to tell. My food tails mostly consist
of me not liking something, me hating something, or me
gagging at the very sight of something. As my mom
Cathy explained in My little Piece roll tape, you were
(01:26):
very picky. You couldn't stand anything that was chunky. If
you would dig through any sauce to find a mushroom
and push it to the edge of your plate. Because
you didn't like the texture. You were really funny, not
a lot to work with, So in the spirit of
writing what you know, my contest entry was about how
much I can't stand potlucks. Potlocks are full of dishes
(01:48):
that feature ingredients I have no interest in putting in
my mouth because I simply cannot eat certain foods. Some
I can't even look at. I don't like peppers, eglans, zucchini,
summer squash, okra, the hard showers, keeper berries, peaches, slum, nectarines, mango, paya, guava,
(02:09):
and away cantelope, cilantro, still arugula, mescalin mix that looks
like weeds, almonds. My friends can't get over how much
I will not eat. For some my pickiness defies belief,
like how can you not eat cherries, blueberries, raspberries? What's
wrong with you? One pal was particularly tickled by the
(02:31):
list in my little pot luck slam piece because you
were like, oh, I have a few food phobias, and
I thought, like, you know, I've met a few people
in my life who have a few things they don't eat,
and then you whip out an entire like podcast about it,
and then the list is like longer I was like,
and then that, and then that, and then I can't
do that. And then I was like, wait, what this
is like an encyclopedia of shape can't eat? What is
(02:55):
going on? My friend Carter is known for throwing great
dinner parties, and I swear that every time I've been
invited to one, he's made me trot out the list
of foods I don't like. As a good Southern boy,
Carter grew up eating with his mom made him so
my epic list of do not eats was a curiosity
to him. He teased me about it endlessly, but in
(03:17):
a good nature, gay sibling kind of way. What neither
Carter nor I knew at the time was that my
food issues were an autistic trait, part of my suite
of sensory issues. I just thought my food issues could
be chalked up to my general weirdness and the choppy
way I moved through the world, So did Carter. Neither
(03:38):
of us had a clue they were part of a
larger condition. But then I figured it out, and I
told Carter the reason behind my finickiness. I mean, I
know enough about autism and the spectrum to have responded.
At the time, you told me about your food sensitivities.
Like in hindsight, I didn't even connect the dots of like, oh,
(04:02):
this could be narrative virgence in a way that I
need to like, not like I'm glad you experienced it
as like positive ribbing, but I apologize that I did
not receive it as like hey, pease, don't no. I
mean look like I didn't know. But also I feel
like I connect with people through teasing. That's like a
(04:23):
language that I understand, and it's an intimacy that I
can connect with. If you know me, you know I
love to tease and I love finding the levity and
hard things. After my diagnosis, when I started thinking about
telling my friends and family, I kept coming back to
my finickiness and this silly audio story and how Carter
(04:45):
always rased me about it. Even though he teased me,
it made me feel seen in a weird, sideways kind
of way, and it allowed him to see me as well.
I love vulnerability. I love it when people are willing
to say, like, what's really going on and you sharing like,
here's this quirky, strange thing about me was like another
(05:08):
thing a long list of vulnerabilities that I felt like
you compared to others, like we're willing to share, which
deepened the closeness I felt with you. Carter's reaction to
something I felt pretty self conscious about growing up gave
me hope that revealing my truth would go roughly the
same way I would tell the rest of my friends
(05:31):
about my diagnosis, and like Carter, we would laugh about
how particular and fastidious and strange I am. We would
joke about how spectrumy I was being if I was
unintentionally rude or extremely late to dinner, and naturally my
neurodivergence would just be accepted and maybe even embraced, and
(05:51):
everything would be chill. Now, I'm going to give you
one guess as to whether things turned out like that.
Go ahead, I'll wait. You're listening to the Loudest Girl
in the World. Who is not the chatty nurse drawing
your blood in the phlebotomy lab. It's me, Lauren Ober.
The Loudest Girl in the World is a show about
(06:13):
finding yourself broken in a pretty dark place and emerging
from that place some mostly glued back together person. One
thing I didn't anticipate when I was trundling down the diagnosis.
Path was the fact that if I was indeed autistic,
I would have to tell people I would have to
(06:35):
come out a second time. When I first came out,
way back before being gay was cool, it didn't exactly
go smoothly. I'm not going to recount how clumsily I
handled the whole process back then. That's boring, but I
will tell you that when I told one family member
I was gay, I followed it up with something like, Oh,
(06:57):
don't worry, I'm not going to be an activist or
like waving the rainbow flag or cutting my hair short. Lol.
She says, as a person who has sported a great
many short undercuts, it took me years to be comfortable
in my own skin as a non heterosexual person. But
that was in my twenties. Now I was in my
(07:19):
forties and facing down the prospect of having to do
it all over again. But about autism, the difference though,
is that everyone knows what it means when you say
you're gay. People might not like that you're gay, but
there's no question about what you're conveying. Autism is tougher
to put your finger on it. I mentioned in the
(07:39):
previous episode the definition of autism is kind of squirreling.
If you ask ten people what autism is, you'll likely
get ten different responses, which means that if you want
to invite people into your reality, if you want to
build that intimacy, you're going to have to do some educating.
But how could I educate people when I barely understood
(08:02):
any of this myself. I figured I needed to call
in the big guns. My friend Anna Sayle is a
podcast host, a crack interviewer, and a person who laughs
at all of my dumb jokes. But for our purposes,
she's the author of the book Let's Talk About Hard
Things Now. When I think about what I want to
(08:23):
do in my free time, talking about hard things isn't
high on the list. But Anna's the host of the
show Death, Sex, and Money, so all she does is
talk about hard stuff. I figured she'd be the perfect
person to help me come up with a strategy for
telling people about my diagnosis, particularly my immediate family, who
(08:44):
I was nervous as hell to tell. First, I had
to tell Anna, so I called her up on Zoom,
and after rambling for a good ten minutes, I got
into it. I value your time, Anna, and I don't
mean to fill your brain with nonsense right now, because
we have business to attend. Yeah, I'm kind of curious, Lauren,
what I'm doing with you. You see this. I held
(09:06):
up a copy of Anna's book Let's Talk About Hard
Things to the camera to this book, I do. I
read this book. Oh, you read it and it made
me scared. Oh, do both have this conversation with you?
And also to have the conversation that I need to have.
I was like, I don't think I'm emotionally able to
do any of this stuff. But in the spirit of
(09:31):
your book, and to prove to you that I both
read it and took lessons from it, I want to
preface our conversation by telling you that this is a
conversation both about a hard thing and how to talk
about a hard thing. In her book, Anna suggests that
(09:53):
you have to lay the foundation for a hard conversation
by telling people what to expect. You can't just sand
bag them. I'm going to tell you a thing. And
the second is I need your help, Okay, to do
a good job. There. You did a great job. Thank you.
I actually think you did Rule number one of starting
a hard conversation helping the other person feel oriented so
(10:15):
they don't feel ambushed. So now I feel more comfortable
to have this conversation with you because you've let me
in a little bit. Okay, so I should probably tell
you the hard thing. Okay, okay, And I already prefaced
it and already told you that I was going to
tell you the hard thing. So here's the situation in
twenty already screwed up. In November twenty twenty, I was
(10:42):
diagnosed with autism, which was something that I had been
thinking about for a long time, and then in the pandemic,
everything basically fell to pieces, like all my support structures,
like everything that I would do to sort of keep
my life like reasonably buoyant and all that kind of
(11:02):
went to shit. But the point that I'm trying to
tell you is that apparently I'm autistic according to science,
and I have a hard time conveying that to people. Now, Okay,
that's where you start talking, because I'm I'm I'm not
going to continue even though I just started continue talking.
I know this trick. Well, I'm taking in this information,
(11:26):
I mean, and it's interesting because you just told me
the hard thing, so I couldn't, like I can tell
you what my experience that was of how you just
told me and where I have questions if that would
be helpful. Oh yeah, please, Well, what I noticed when
you first started, you blurted out the hard thing, which
(11:48):
is fine because you're like, I'm going to tell you
a hard thing. Here it is I was diagnosed with autism.
And then you went back and you said, in November
twenty twenty, my whole support system fell away, and I
realized I needed to get a diagnosed or talk to
some people like I didn't. Nope, if that was going
(12:11):
on to be the hard thing, do you know what
I mean? So Narratively, what you're telling me is that
I have a narrative issue. Well, I'm telling you I
have a timing I have a narrative sequencing issue. Well okay,
so right off the bat, I'm crushing it. Well done me.
I kept going telling Anna about my inability to background
(12:32):
certain sensory experiences and how much effort it takes to
appear like a regular old person, as someone who cares
about you. And I'm not your family, but I delight
in you and have long considered you a friend. It's
interesting that what you're describing is both these things I
know about you from knowing you well. You know, like
(12:53):
that you are a boundary crosser and conversation. I love
that shit. That's why I like, that's why we became friends,
I think. But what's new to me, like what you're
expressing about the amount of energy and stress that you
feel from something that catches your attention that you wish
you could background and can't, or the amount of energy
(13:16):
you have to put into seeming comfortable when you're not.
That makes me think, oh, this is like a new
way that I'm understanding Lauren, which is that like maybe
she was having a harder time than I knew when
we were together. And I think the thing that I
think about with disclosing anything hard to people who love you,
(13:41):
there's this thing that happens where you're saying, I have
this name for something that is part of me that
we haven't previously had, and it might be a name
that you don't totally understand what it means. But also
I'm going to tell you, you know things some ways
I was experiencing things that maybe you weren't aware that
I was having a hard time or suffering and you
(14:02):
didn't know. But Anna said, having a name for something
can compound the challenge of telling people like the big
hard news is I have this name for something about
myself that we didn't previously have, and and it's a
name that brings up a lot of associations that like
will raise questions for you. And then the conversation is
(14:25):
like going to get confused because there's like these two paths.
There's this like, let me explain what being autistic means.
Let me explain what it means to be an autistic woman.
And then there's this other thing, which is like I
also want to tell you about how I now understand
myself and how I've moved through the world slightly differently,
Like which is not a Wikipedia page, This is you
(14:46):
personally disclosing, right right. I do feel as a reporter
or as a person who is a conduit for information,
I feel like it's very easy to fall back into
that and be like in reporter mode, like this is
what it is, the pappapa, like the who, what, when,
where why kind of situation, and then sort of skip
(15:07):
over the heart where it's like, yeah, I've actually been
having a hard time for like forty three years, so
you know, and you're just like, Okay, I told you, Like,
job's done. Like yeah, there has got to be an
(15:29):
easy way to just like bing bang boom this. There's
this book that I love and I just want to
hand it out to everybody. And it's like forty some
pages and it's this really lovely graphic novel that's just
about women and autism and it's perfect. I'm like, read this.
If you have any questions, email me. But you can't
(15:52):
do that, can you. You can just give somebody a
pamphlet and say, like figure it out yourself, you know,
well you can give them the book, but it's it's
not one and done. Like that's the thing about I
think the thing that is can be really comforting when
you're thinking about I have to start a her conversation
or disclose a hard thing. It's like you're not going
(16:13):
to get it all done in one conversation, Like, oh
you can't what this is terrible? Oh so many things
to think about. Vulnerability is not fun. But I told
(16:34):
Anna about my diagnosis and it went well. I mean,
if there was ever a good person to role play
hard stuff with, it's her. Plus she gave me some
good advice. Our chat primed the pump. What really did
it for me, though, was this one line from Anna's book,
If I may quote a young American writer and a
(16:55):
sale part of what is so hard about identity conversations
is they are at once deeply personal and sweeping in
their scope. And that's the hard thing, isn't it. It's
like I can do the sweeping, it's the personal part
of it that actually feels like really hard. But that
(17:18):
wasn't something Anna could help me with. Also, when I
asked her if she could just call out my people
and tell them for me, she said, no, excuse me,
that is extremely uncharitable of her. So I was on
my own after the break disclosure time, well kind of.
(17:47):
It was time to start letting folks into my reality.
The steaks seemed too high to tell my family just yet,
so I figured I'd start with a low hanging fruit
friends who had known me for a long time or
were equally weird. That seems safe enough, and like if
I screwed up, who cares? So not long after my diagnosis,
I called up my friend Molly and to her if
(18:09):
we could go for a walk in her neighborhood. I
don't know if I told you this, but I was
getting an autism evaluation or I have been Okay, did
I tell you that? No, You're like, no, I think
i'd remember that, right, Okay, pretty sure, I'm killing it.
So I've been talking about it with my therapist for
a long time and then but I could never like
(18:32):
pull the trigger. And so it's the point because when
I asked my therapist if like, hey, I might be autistic,
You're like, yeah, you might be, Like you might be
somewhere on the spectrum. I'm like that that would make sense.
Molly and I have always said we share a brain.
So if I was diagnosed, Molly wondered what that meant
(18:54):
for her, which I think the answer is nothing much.
What is finding out? What did that do for you?
That's a really good question. Here's how I would describe it.
Let's say that you have a series of symptoms, physical symptoms. Yeah,
you get headaches, solid time, you're tired, Ye, your back hurts. Yeah.
(19:18):
You're trying to figure out if all these this collection
of things is related, right, and if so, what's the
name for it? Actually, I might be doing an okay
job here, I guess so that I think of it
as like Okay, like dyslexia, right, Like you have all
these problems in class or something, and then you know,
finally it's like, oh, well I have dyslexia. But then
(19:41):
there are there are treatments and there's ways to deal
with that and work around it is the same and
I don't know, it's the same thing true of you know,
somewhere on the spectrum autism. I think that it's like
a framework for understanding kind of like your whole fucking
life and all of your challenges and just like it
(20:05):
seems to me that a collection of challenge is that
involve social issues, sensory issues, relational issues, especially when you're
a woman, is very isolating. Yeah, and so is there
a way to feel less isolated? Am I so good
(20:28):
at this? I think I might be so anyway? Yeah,
so I'm autistic apparently, Okay, Well it doesn't phase the
way I view you, Oh fash, I kind of knew
you were could of a crack pie, because it's like
looking in the mirror. So Molly was kind and lovely
(20:50):
and had lots of good questions. But it felt good
to unburden myself and have the feeling like, yeah, I
got this I'd rate my performance and eight out of ten,
give myself a little headroom to improve. Next up, I
zoomed with my pals Laura and Megan, but I forgot
to press record, so I didn't capture the actual moment
(21:12):
of revelation. Megan kindly offered a redo. If you want
to start it over, we can go ooh at every
single stage. I don't think that's quite necessary. Yeah, the
ooz and oz though they were quite good. They were good.
(21:33):
Then we just started talking about cucumbers, as you do
after any intense conversation. This particular cumber is not as
good as the other ones. Is there anything on it?
A little huss Himalayan sea salt. Oh, look at you,
classy bitch. But we weren't just goofing. We got into it.
(21:55):
I told them all about masking and how hard it
is to constantly camouflage your anxiety or weirdness or stimming
or whatever. Do you feel like having a diagnosis will
allow you to give yourself permission to not have to
mask and to just like do things that are comforting,
or just to like lean in and like let go
(22:16):
of some of like because it sounds like the mostly
exhausting part is like the masking part, right, Yeah, yeah,
that's a really good question. And I don't know. There
are ways you can take control over the anxiety by
acting a particular way or being in a particular way,
And there are ways that you can show up that
feel true to you that might not be your entire personality,
(22:37):
but that also can make other people feel okay, and
that's okay for me. Like I like that. I like that.
I've kind of figured that out. And when I need
to leave and go to my room or go to
the bathroom nine hundred times, I will do that. Oh man,
(22:58):
I am cruising at this point. Everyone gets it, Everyone
is kind, everyone is saying the right thing. This reveal
gets a nine out of ten. It would have gotten
ten across the board, but I was making weird chewing
sounds while I was talking, so demerit for me. Next,
I drove to Northern Virginia to take a walk with
(23:19):
my friend Emily. I've known her since I was a
little shit twenty three year old, so I knew she
would be cool. In our twenty years of friendship, Emily
supported me through big life stuff, coming out, losing jobs,
ending relationships, euthanizing dogs and deciding what eyeglasses to buy.
We're in the suburb, so we're basically walking on a highway,
(23:39):
which seems like the perfect place to talk about how
I manage my anxiety. So I don't have many meltdowns.
Now I have like these weird coping mechanisms for like,
you know, like do I have my lip bomb? Do
I have my eyeglasses cleaner? Like do I always have
water when I go on an airplane? Like? Do I
have all these things? If I don't have them? And
(24:00):
now it's like when I travel, do I have clonupin
in my bag just in case I'll never use it?
But it's like all of these things, and so it's
like you build hold up these little almost like ticks. Yeah,
I need to have it. I need to have it
right and obsive compulsively in a way because there's there, Yeah,
there's two crossovers to go to seven eleven so I
(24:20):
can get marshmallows grow. Nos, Are you kidding me? Who
even knew there was a seven eleven round? You? Do
you think that? Wait? Really, this wasteland, this is my
ideal disclosure scenario. We talk a little about autism and
then we go to the seven to eleven to get marshmallows.
It's really hitting all of my buttons, easy, ten out
(24:41):
of ten. At that point, a few months out from
my diagnosis, I felt like I was starting to get
my sea legs under me in terms of talking to friends.
But while I'd been doing a pretty okay job articulating
my reality and fielding questions, I was far from understanding everything.
By telling friends who already knew a lot of my ship,
(25:03):
I had the illusion of control. I could guess which
questions they would ask and what their reactions would be
to my answers, and even if they didn't quite get it,
I could count on them working hard to understand. So
enter stage left a false sense of security and its
best friend cockiness. I was starting to feel pleased with
(25:38):
myself and wanted to tell more folks beyond the inner sanctum.
I started to feel like I was keeping a secret,
and I just wanted to live my truth. And my
truth is that I'm an autistic woman who loves to
watch fail videos and YouTube makeup tutorials. While I was
committed to broadening the circle of people I told, I
was anxious. I wouldn't get the response I wanted. Even
(26:01):
before I got tested, I told a few people that
I was thinking about it, and they basically laughed in
my face, like, girl, there's no way you're autistic. So
I didn't want to repeat of being vulnerable and then
having that plot back in my lap when it was
safe to do indoor hangs. Because we were all vaxed
to the max, some friends had a Shabbat dinner. After dinner,
(26:22):
everyone went around the table and one at a time
talked about how their pandemic had been. Folks explained that
they got more into their djaying, or bought a house,
or did some serious soul searching. When it was my turn,
and I decided on the fly that I would reveal
my diagnosis. I hit record on my phone's voice memo
app and quickly thought about and a sales approach. Tell
(26:45):
them I had been struggling for a while, describe what
the struggle was about, and then tell them about the diagnosis,
and then, once all that was out of the way,
explain what autism is, and then pat myself on the
back for a job well done. Except here's how it
actually went. Yeah, where I'm at okay In November twenty
(27:07):
twenty eight, I was diagnosed with autism. And I don't
really talk about it, but I'm doing a podcast about it,
and so that is a thing that I've been dealing
with since November twenty twenty. My voice was shaking. I
(27:27):
couldn't make eye contact. I was so nervous, not least
because the dinner was composed mostly of gorgeous gay men.
And do you even know what it's like to have
a dozen painfully attractive gentleman staring at you while you're
saying a hard thing. I promise it will make you sweat. Also,
(27:47):
I had to put my dog down, and also I
lost my job, but then I got a new job,
and then I got another new job, and now I
have too many jobs. But also but so and a
new dog, and Hanna moved to the neighborhood and that
is amazing because we walked back and forth through each
other's houses two blocks, fifteen times a day. Um. And
(28:12):
we have a feral cat that follows us between the houses.
So that's pretty cute. Um. It actually already came with
three names, Socks, Hugo, and Cairo, so we couldn't name it.
It depends on where on the block you are. Okay,
it's gotten different names every place. Listening to this now,
I'm embarrassed for myself. I didn't follow any of Anna's guidance,
(28:35):
and I was just dancing around my truth. You know
so so yeah, so, um, keep your ears open. Oh
my god. Truly the most mortifying. I basically ended my
declaration with a plug for my podcast, like, do I
even know how to be vulnerable without being maximally awkward?
(28:58):
Now you can imagine I'm sweating my teas off desperately
trying to reel this lead balloon back in. I mean,
it's like regret, regret, regret. I couldn't meet any of
their eyes. I was like a comedian who totally bombed. Finally,
after what felt like the longest silence in the world,
one of the boys made a joke about vulnerability that
broke the tension. Not vulner think we should go again?
(29:27):
Then another ask what my podcast was called. Then I
wrapped it all up with a comment about your wire
tapping law. Anyway, Oh I recorded this is that? Okay,
that's true, that's true. I didn't need to tell you,
but I did so anyway, thank you. I'm not I'm
not like, are so bad, so awkward, so sweaty, But
(29:51):
for real, I was super embarrassed. I wished that it
had gone better, and I wished that I had been
able to invite more discussion or even a question or
two about autism. When I got home, I recorded a
little audio diary of how I was feeling. Okay, so
it's one forty seven am. I just got back from
(30:15):
Queer Shabbat with just like me and Hannah and like
all boys and lots of boys, and we're the only
girls there. And I was so exhausted when I got home,
but reliving what just happened got me all jacked up.
(30:37):
I don't know what kind of reaction to expect. I
honestly don't. I kind of think that this is why
I feel like I've imposter syndrome, where people are like
in their minds, they're like, yeah, right, you know, like
you don't seem like an autistic person to me, you know,
(30:59):
but it's like, Okay, well, yeah, I'm not rain Man
or I'm not like the guy from Big Bang Theory
or whatever. Okay, yes, I'm doing a lot of projecting,
but this shit is hard. I know it's going to
feel bad at times because we have so few collective
touchstones for what autism actually is, and whatever cultural references
(31:21):
we do have of autism, I don't fit them. So
I can't really blame people if they don't get it.
But there was one person in my life who I
knew would get it. I mean, like really get it,
not just being nice. Get it. My girlfriend's nineteen year
old son, Jacob, was diagnosed with autism about a decade ago.
(31:42):
If you remember a couple episodes back, Jacob's first words
were now available on DVD, so he knows a little
something about being misunderstood. I figured that by telling Jacob
there would be at least one person in my life
who knew what I meant. I didn't have to explain
to him what autism was or the way is my
brain function differently. Now. Jacob isn't a big talker, and
(32:05):
he isn't much into heart to hearts. He's mostly into
playing game on his phone and chatting on discord. So
the timing of our talk had to be just right.
He had to be open and engaged and ready to listen,
and really, for any teenager, that's a tall order. But
one day, some months after my diagnosis. The timing was perfect,
(32:27):
even if the venue a busted as Subaru outback wasn't.
And so it was that on a highway driving back
from Richmond, Virginia, I poured my heart out to the
only other autistic person I knew, a teen BOYA. Do
you know when when you said there are no autistic women,
and you were like, huh l, I'm joking. Yeah, But
(32:51):
did I sound like I was a gemman? No? No, no, no, no,
you sounded like you were joking. But I then my
recorder cut out right when I told him I was autistic.
Super professh So, allow me to do a little reenactment
(33:12):
for you, Lauren says, nervous and a bit tongue tied,
I'm autistic. Jacob answers, yeah, I figured. Lauren, taken aback
by Jacob's bluntness, responds, wait, why did you figure I
was autistic? Jacob explained that an autism diagnosis made sense
for me because I am very loud. Now I couldn't
(33:34):
argue with that, but I was still surprised. Hannah pulled
up the rear with some questions. After I loaded up
the recorder with fresh batteries. Why is loudness. Why it's
not necessarily loudness so much as some sort of being
tone deaf to the situation, which is one of the
things I have felt the most when I was from
(33:57):
like every from since I got my diagnosis, like what
what do you mean by that? Or elaborate alone, you know,
you know how I had the problem of playing rhythmium
in public spaces like in face where I wasn't supposed
to well, and then slow down with that things like that.
So so my loudness in public spaces is like like
(34:19):
not like reading the room to a degree. Yeah, okay,
that's not Obviously I'm not like a clinician. I can't
like use that I think for sure thing. But right, no,
I think that's accurate. So I think one reason why
like trying to get a diagnosis was hard or where
(34:40):
I was reluctant to do it is because I kind
of flow a test balloon to people, you know, like, oh,
I'm thinking about this, and they're like you autistic? What No,
Because one people don't know what it is, and two
they have this notion of like people who are like
extremely socially awkward, who don't communicate well, and obviously I
(35:03):
communicate professionally, you know, because obviously thinks about them. First
thing you said that, Lauren, Like, you know, way, why
do you think people I don't know? I would have
thought they would have caught on pretty quickly. Oh my good.
(35:23):
I mean obviously, no, I love it because I have
spent a lot of time with autistic people. It's true,
and like know the experience that I would be better
at spotting it right. But I don't know. Maybe other
people just don't know enough. I would say, it's true,
people don't know enough, which is why it was so
refreshing to talk to Jacob and maybe why it might
(35:45):
have been refreshing for him to talk to me too.
Jacob has two non autistic siblings and neither of his
parents are autistic. It's hard for him to connect with folks,
and he mostly keeps himself to himself. So if nothing else,
I'm an adjacent adult in his life who gets it
because I've lived it, or at least my version of it.
(36:06):
During our chat, Jacob described how trouble old he was
that he didn't seem to have any emotions about his
older sister going away to college. I had like no
feeling over I was not emotional real and like I
don't know what I was supposed to do there, like
because so my entire life, I've been thinking like what
(36:28):
if I don't What if I am like a sociopath?
And I know I'm not, but like just too many
instances of it, like like people like having the idea
that I'm some sort of robot like it's hot. It's
really not easy to think about ever, and like every
like the thing I'm gonna have to work on the
(36:50):
most is see seeing whether I either can just fake
it or or what it actually means. That's sorry, Sorry
if I didn't make any sense. No, it's oh my god,
that's so. And I think I understand. What you're saying
is like you were led to believe by everyone around
you that there's something wrong with you because everybody's sad
that Noah's leaving and you're not sad, or you don't
(37:12):
feel what you think you should be feeling, and that
makes you feel like there's something wrong with you. So um, honestly, Jacob,
like I can a thousand percent relate to. So when
people say that, they're like, don't you miss me? Like
if they go away, did you miss me? In my mind,
(37:33):
I'm like, I don't, I don't. I don't miss you.
And it's not because I don't love you. It's not
because I don't care about you. It's because I don't
miss you. Then Hannah asked Jacob if when he went
off to college himself, he would miss his little brother. Yes,
but like I can't. I don't even know if like
(37:54):
after I go to college US, I'll still be able
to keep texting him, I'll just like not do it.
I'll probably forget or something. I need to remind myself
constantly of that. It's like that I'm not supposed to
mean that, Like, no, there's not any supposed to What
do you mean? What makes you cry? Why does that
make you sad? Honestly because you feel like there's something
(38:16):
wrong with you? Yes, don't immediately think to text him
always you think your feeling is like, what's wrong with me? That?
I like, does this mean I'm a bad person? Yeah? So,
first of all, Jacob, like I feel very emotional listening
to you right now, because like the idea that like
you feel like there's something wrong with you or that
(38:38):
you're bad is like, like that actually breaks my heart
because one I've experienced that myself, and that was, like,
I'm forty two years old, and like, that was the
message that I got, and it takes a really long
time to unwind that. And so like, I don't want
you to think that, like you're bad or wrong because
of small things like that, Because one thing I know
for certain is that your brother knows that you love him,
(38:59):
and your parents know that you love them, and your
sister knows that you love her in the ways that
you show it. And just because you don't show it
in a typical way, or you don't do things in
a typical way, does not mean for one second that
you're bad or wrong. And I want you to know
that about yourself, and whatever messaging you've gotten that your
way of doing things is the bad way is incorrect.
(39:26):
As we drove, I found myself feeling so protective of Jacob.
How dare anyone suggests that his way of moving through
the world was wrong. Here's a smart, caring young person
who bakes kill or bread and cracks the best jokes.
So what if he finds eye contact challenging or is
constantly misplacing or breaking his glasses? Who cares if he's
(39:48):
terminally literal, or annoys the living hell out of us
with his video games. Here is a good kid with
a moral heart who's been getting the message for years
that there's something wrong with him. We need to do better.
Thank you, guys, no, thank you, thank you for the tissue.
(40:11):
Do you want to use a face mask? That was gross?
I actually do have a handkerchief, Let me get it.
(40:33):
And that was it. The curtain fell. We all wiped
our eyes and noses and moved on. Jacob played games
on his phone, and Hannah and I sat in silence,
and in that brief moment, everyone had what they needed.
The car conversation made me realize that I want so
(40:53):
much for Jacob to inhabit a world where he never believes,
not for one second, that he's deficient, Where no one
thinks he's a robot or that he doesn't have emotions,
where he is accepted and understood for exactly who he is.
The world I want for Jacob is also a world
where even if he, say, occasionally wears his pants inside out,
(41:16):
or forgets to trim his neck hair, or skips down
the street for no reason, he is still embraced, not
in spite of his quirks, but because of them, a
world that is good for Jacob is also a world
that's good for me, and it's good for so many
others who veer from the norm. In my fantasy land,
(41:37):
Jacob gets to be whoever he needs to be, and
so do I and so do you. So in the
next episode, I build that world for myself, a cilantro
free land where I never feel awkward, I always feel loved,
and I can be as loud as I want. You've
(42:05):
been listening to the Loudest Girl in the World. It's
hosted written end exact I could have produced by me.
Lauren Ober. Our senior producer is writer. Also our associate
producer is David Jah. Sophie Crane is our show runner
and senior editor. Jake Gorski is our mix engineer. Music
imposed by my autistic kiwie pal, the Inimitable Lady Hawk.
(42:27):
Our artwork was created by the autistic illustrator Loretta Ipsum.
The show was fact checked by Andrea Lopez Cruzado, and
our autism consultant is Sarah Cappett. Our executive producers are
Mia Lobell and Lee tom Mullat. Thanks to my lovely
(42:50):
pal Carter hug Lee for taking a trip down memory
lane with me. Also thanks to Molly Harris, Meghan Reid,
Laura Starchski and Emily Vesselin for being such good listeners.
Shout out to the painfully handsome crew at Queer Shabat.
Also big love to my and a sale for all
the good advice you can get her book, Let's Talk
(43:13):
About Hard Things Anywhere fine books are sold. To Jacob,
thank you for saying yes, and thanks to you friend
for listening.
Pushkin. After getting a super official autism diagnosis and mainlining
a bunch of books and movies and social media about autism,
and then having a few meltdowns and getting really frustrated,
I decided it was time to do some revealing. And
when I started thinking about telling people, there was this
(00:38):
one thing I kept coming back to, a thing that
kind of gave me hope that it would all be okay.
A million years ago, back before the world melted down
in several different ways, I submitted a little audio story
to a contest. The prompt for the contest was the
five tastes Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and Ummmy basically food stories.
(01:04):
Because I don't like a great many foods and don't
really come from a foodie family, I didn't have many
ready made stories to tell. My food tails mostly consist
of me not liking something, me hating something, or me
gagging at the very sight of something. As my mom
Cathy explained in My little Piece roll tape, you were
(01:26):
very picky. You couldn't stand anything that was chunky. If
you would dig through any sauce to find a mushroom
and push it to the edge of your plate. Because
you didn't like the texture. You were really funny, not
a lot to work with, So in the spirit of
writing what you know, my contest entry was about how
much I can't stand potlucks. Potlocks are full of dishes
(01:48):
that feature ingredients I have no interest in putting in
my mouth because I simply cannot eat certain foods. Some
I can't even look at. I don't like peppers, eglans, zucchini,
summer squash, okra, the hard showers, keeper berries, peaches, slum, nectarines, mango, paya, guava,
(02:09):
and away cantelope, cilantro, still arugula, mescalin mix that looks
like weeds, almonds. My friends can't get over how much
I will not eat. For some my pickiness defies belief,
like how can you not eat cherries, blueberries, raspberries? What's
wrong with you? One pal was particularly tickled by the
(02:31):
list in my little pot luck slam piece because you
were like, oh, I have a few food phobias, and
I thought, like, you know, I've met a few people
in my life who have a few things they don't eat,
and then you whip out an entire like podcast about it,
and then the list is like longer I was like,
and then that, and then that, and then I can't
do that. And then I was like, wait, what this
is like an encyclopedia of shape can't eat? What is
(02:55):
going on? My friend Carter is known for throwing great
dinner parties, and I swear that every time I've been
invited to one, he's made me trot out the list
of foods I don't like. As a good Southern boy,
Carter grew up eating with his mom made him so
my epic list of do not eats was a curiosity
to him. He teased me about it endlessly, but in
(03:17):
a good nature, gay sibling kind of way. What neither
Carter nor I knew at the time was that my
food issues were an autistic trait, part of my suite
of sensory issues. I just thought my food issues could
be chalked up to my general weirdness and the choppy
way I moved through the world, So did Carter. Neither
(03:38):
of us had a clue they were part of a
larger condition. But then I figured it out, and I
told Carter the reason behind my finickiness. I mean, I
know enough about autism and the spectrum to have responded.
At the time, you told me about your food sensitivities.
Like in hindsight, I didn't even connect the dots of like, oh,
(04:02):
this could be narrative virgence in a way that I
need to like, not like I'm glad you experienced it
as like positive ribbing, but I apologize that I did
not receive it as like hey, pease, don't no. I
mean look like I didn't know. But also I feel
like I connect with people through teasing. That's like a
(04:23):
language that I understand, and it's an intimacy that I
can connect with. If you know me, you know I
love to tease and I love finding the levity and
hard things. After my diagnosis, when I started thinking about
telling my friends and family, I kept coming back to
my finickiness and this silly audio story and how Carter
(04:45):
always rased me about it. Even though he teased me,
it made me feel seen in a weird, sideways kind
of way, and it allowed him to see me as well.
I love vulnerability. I love it when people are willing
to say, like, what's really going on and you sharing like,
here's this quirky, strange thing about me was like another
(05:08):
thing a long list of vulnerabilities that I felt like
you compared to others, like we're willing to share, which
deepened the closeness I felt with you. Carter's reaction to
something I felt pretty self conscious about growing up gave
me hope that revealing my truth would go roughly the
same way I would tell the rest of my friends
(05:31):
about my diagnosis, and like Carter, we would laugh about
how particular and fastidious and strange I am. We would
joke about how spectrumy I was being if I was
unintentionally rude or extremely late to dinner, and naturally my
neurodivergence would just be accepted and maybe even embraced, and
(05:51):
everything would be chill. Now, I'm going to give you
one guess as to whether things turned out like that.
Go ahead, I'll wait. You're listening to the Loudest Girl
in the World. Who is not the chatty nurse drawing
your blood in the phlebotomy lab. It's me, Lauren Ober.
The Loudest Girl in the World is a show about
(06:13):
finding yourself broken in a pretty dark place and emerging
from that place some mostly glued back together person. One
thing I didn't anticipate when I was trundling down the diagnosis.
Path was the fact that if I was indeed autistic,
I would have to tell people I would have to
(06:35):
come out a second time. When I first came out,
way back before being gay was cool, it didn't exactly
go smoothly. I'm not going to recount how clumsily I
handled the whole process back then. That's boring, but I
will tell you that when I told one family member
I was gay, I followed it up with something like, Oh,
(06:57):
don't worry, I'm not going to be an activist or
like waving the rainbow flag or cutting my hair short. Lol.
She says, as a person who has sported a great
many short undercuts, it took me years to be comfortable
in my own skin as a non heterosexual person. But
that was in my twenties. Now I was in my
(07:19):
forties and facing down the prospect of having to do
it all over again. But about autism, the difference though,
is that everyone knows what it means when you say
you're gay. People might not like that you're gay, but
there's no question about what you're conveying. Autism is tougher
to put your finger on it. I mentioned in the
(07:39):
previous episode the definition of autism is kind of squirreling.
If you ask ten people what autism is, you'll likely
get ten different responses, which means that if you want
to invite people into your reality, if you want to
build that intimacy, you're going to have to do some educating.
But how could I educate people when I barely understood
(08:02):
any of this myself. I figured I needed to call
in the big guns. My friend Anna Sayle is a
podcast host, a crack interviewer, and a person who laughs
at all of my dumb jokes. But for our purposes,
she's the author of the book Let's Talk About Hard
Things Now. When I think about what I want to
(08:23):
do in my free time, talking about hard things isn't
high on the list. But Anna's the host of the
show Death, Sex, and Money, so all she does is
talk about hard stuff. I figured she'd be the perfect
person to help me come up with a strategy for
telling people about my diagnosis, particularly my immediate family, who
(08:44):
I was nervous as hell to tell. First, I had
to tell Anna, so I called her up on Zoom,
and after rambling for a good ten minutes, I got
into it. I value your time, Anna, and I don't
mean to fill your brain with nonsense right now, because
we have business to attend. Yeah, I'm kind of curious, Lauren,
what I'm doing with you. You see this. I held
(09:06):
up a copy of Anna's book Let's Talk About Hard
Things to the camera to this book, I do. I
read this book. Oh, you read it and it made
me scared. Oh, do both have this conversation with you?
And also to have the conversation that I need to have.
I was like, I don't think I'm emotionally able to
do any of this stuff. But in the spirit of
(09:31):
your book, and to prove to you that I both
read it and took lessons from it, I want to
preface our conversation by telling you that this is a
conversation both about a hard thing and how to talk
about a hard thing. In her book, Anna suggests that
(09:53):
you have to lay the foundation for a hard conversation
by telling people what to expect. You can't just sand
bag them. I'm going to tell you a thing. And
the second is I need your help, Okay, to do
a good job. There. You did a great job. Thank you.
I actually think you did Rule number one of starting
a hard conversation helping the other person feel oriented so
(10:15):
they don't feel ambushed. So now I feel more comfortable
to have this conversation with you because you've let me
in a little bit. Okay, so I should probably tell
you the hard thing. Okay, okay, And I already prefaced
it and already told you that I was going to
tell you the hard thing. So here's the situation in
twenty already screwed up. In November twenty twenty, I was
(10:42):
diagnosed with autism, which was something that I had been
thinking about for a long time, and then in the pandemic,
everything basically fell to pieces, like all my support structures,
like everything that I would do to sort of keep
my life like reasonably buoyant and all that kind of
(11:02):
went to shit. But the point that I'm trying to
tell you is that apparently I'm autistic according to science,
and I have a hard time conveying that to people. Now, Okay,
that's where you start talking, because I'm I'm I'm not
going to continue even though I just started continue talking.
I know this trick. Well, I'm taking in this information,
(11:26):
I mean, and it's interesting because you just told me
the hard thing, so I couldn't, like I can tell
you what my experience that was of how you just
told me and where I have questions if that would
be helpful. Oh yeah, please, Well, what I noticed when
you first started, you blurted out the hard thing, which
(11:48):
is fine because you're like, I'm going to tell you
a hard thing. Here it is I was diagnosed with autism.
And then you went back and you said, in November
twenty twenty, my whole support system fell away, and I
realized I needed to get a diagnosed or talk to
some people like I didn't. Nope, if that was going
(12:11):
on to be the hard thing, do you know what
I mean? So Narratively, what you're telling me is that
I have a narrative issue. Well, I'm telling you I
have a timing I have a narrative sequencing issue. Well okay,
so right off the bat, I'm crushing it. Well done me.
I kept going telling Anna about my inability to background
(12:32):
certain sensory experiences and how much effort it takes to
appear like a regular old person, as someone who cares
about you. And I'm not your family, but I delight
in you and have long considered you a friend. It's
interesting that what you're describing is both these things I
know about you from knowing you well. You know, like
(12:53):
that you are a boundary crosser and conversation. I love
that shit. That's why I like, that's why we became friends,
I think. But what's new to me, like what you're
expressing about the amount of energy and stress that you
feel from something that catches your attention that you wish
you could background and can't, or the amount of energy
(13:16):
you have to put into seeming comfortable when you're not.
That makes me think, oh, this is like a new
way that I'm understanding Lauren, which is that like maybe
she was having a harder time than I knew when
we were together. And I think the thing that I
think about with disclosing anything hard to people who love you,
(13:41):
there's this thing that happens where you're saying, I have
this name for something that is part of me that
we haven't previously had, and it might be a name
that you don't totally understand what it means. But also
I'm going to tell you, you know things some ways
I was experiencing things that maybe you weren't aware that
I was having a hard time or suffering and you
(14:02):
didn't know. But Anna said, having a name for something
can compound the challenge of telling people like the big
hard news is I have this name for something about
myself that we didn't previously have, and and it's a
name that brings up a lot of associations that like
will raise questions for you. And then the conversation is
(14:25):
like going to get confused because there's like these two paths.
There's this like, let me explain what being autistic means.
Let me explain what it means to be an autistic woman.
And then there's this other thing, which is like I
also want to tell you about how I now understand
myself and how I've moved through the world slightly differently,
Like which is not a Wikipedia page, This is you
(14:46):
personally disclosing, right right. I do feel as a reporter
or as a person who is a conduit for information,
I feel like it's very easy to fall back into
that and be like in reporter mode, like this is
what it is, the pappapa, like the who, what, when,
where why kind of situation, and then sort of skip
(15:07):
over the heart where it's like, yeah, I've actually been
having a hard time for like forty three years, so
you know, and you're just like, Okay, I told you, Like,
job's done. Like yeah, there has got to be an
(15:29):
easy way to just like bing bang boom this. There's
this book that I love and I just want to
hand it out to everybody. And it's like forty some
pages and it's this really lovely graphic novel that's just
about women and autism and it's perfect. I'm like, read this.
If you have any questions, email me. But you can't
(15:52):
do that, can you. You can just give somebody a
pamphlet and say, like figure it out yourself, you know,
well you can give them the book, but it's it's
not one and done. Like that's the thing about I
think the thing that is can be really comforting when
you're thinking about I have to start a her conversation
or disclose a hard thing. It's like you're not going
(16:13):
to get it all done in one conversation, Like, oh
you can't what this is terrible? Oh so many things
to think about. Vulnerability is not fun. But I told
(16:34):
Anna about my diagnosis and it went well. I mean,
if there was ever a good person to role play
hard stuff with, it's her. Plus she gave me some
good advice. Our chat primed the pump. What really did
it for me, though, was this one line from Anna's book,
If I may quote a young American writer and a
(16:55):
sale part of what is so hard about identity conversations
is they are at once deeply personal and sweeping in
their scope. And that's the hard thing, isn't it. It's
like I can do the sweeping, it's the personal part
of it that actually feels like really hard. But that
(17:18):
wasn't something Anna could help me with. Also, when I
asked her if she could just call out my people
and tell them for me, she said, no, excuse me,
that is extremely uncharitable of her. So I was on
my own after the break disclosure time, well kind of.
(17:47):
It was time to start letting folks into my reality.
The steaks seemed too high to tell my family just yet,
so I figured I'd start with a low hanging fruit
friends who had known me for a long time or
were equally weird. That seems safe enough, and like if
I screwed up, who cares? So not long after my diagnosis,
I called up my friend Molly and to her if
(18:09):
we could go for a walk in her neighborhood. I
don't know if I told you this, but I was
getting an autism evaluation or I have been Okay, did
I tell you that? No, You're like, no, I think
i'd remember that, right, Okay, pretty sure, I'm killing it.
So I've been talking about it with my therapist for
a long time and then but I could never like
(18:32):
pull the trigger. And so it's the point because when
I asked my therapist if like, hey, I might be autistic,
You're like, yeah, you might be, Like you might be
somewhere on the spectrum. I'm like that that would make sense.
Molly and I have always said we share a brain.
So if I was diagnosed, Molly wondered what that meant
(18:54):
for her, which I think the answer is nothing much.
What is finding out? What did that do for you?
That's a really good question. Here's how I would describe it.
Let's say that you have a series of symptoms, physical symptoms. Yeah,
you get headaches, solid time, you're tired, Ye, your back hurts. Yeah.
(19:18):
You're trying to figure out if all these this collection
of things is related, right, and if so, what's the
name for it? Actually, I might be doing an okay
job here, I guess so that I think of it
as like Okay, like dyslexia, right, Like you have all
these problems in class or something, and then you know,
finally it's like, oh, well I have dyslexia. But then
(19:41):
there are there are treatments and there's ways to deal
with that and work around it is the same and
I don't know, it's the same thing true of you know,
somewhere on the spectrum autism. I think that it's like
a framework for understanding kind of like your whole fucking
life and all of your challenges and just like it
(20:05):
seems to me that a collection of challenge is that
involve social issues, sensory issues, relational issues, especially when you're
a woman, is very isolating. Yeah, and so is there
a way to feel less isolated? Am I so good
(20:28):
at this? I think I might be so anyway? Yeah,
so I'm autistic apparently, Okay, Well it doesn't phase the
way I view you, Oh fash, I kind of knew
you were could of a crack pie, because it's like
looking in the mirror. So Molly was kind and lovely
(20:50):
and had lots of good questions. But it felt good
to unburden myself and have the feeling like, yeah, I
got this I'd rate my performance and eight out of ten,
give myself a little headroom to improve. Next up, I
zoomed with my pals Laura and Megan, but I forgot
to press record, so I didn't capture the actual moment
(21:12):
of revelation. Megan kindly offered a redo. If you want
to start it over, we can go ooh at every
single stage. I don't think that's quite necessary. Yeah, the
ooz and oz though they were quite good. They were good.
(21:33):
Then we just started talking about cucumbers, as you do
after any intense conversation. This particular cumber is not as
good as the other ones. Is there anything on it?
A little huss Himalayan sea salt. Oh, look at you,
classy bitch. But we weren't just goofing. We got into it.
(21:55):
I told them all about masking and how hard it
is to constantly camouflage your anxiety or weirdness or stimming
or whatever. Do you feel like having a diagnosis will
allow you to give yourself permission to not have to
mask and to just like do things that are comforting,
or just to like lean in and like let go
(22:16):
of some of like because it sounds like the mostly
exhausting part is like the masking part, right, Yeah, yeah,
that's a really good question. And I don't know. There
are ways you can take control over the anxiety by
acting a particular way or being in a particular way,
And there are ways that you can show up that
feel true to you that might not be your entire personality,
(22:37):
but that also can make other people feel okay, and
that's okay for me. Like I like that. I like that.
I've kind of figured that out. And when I need
to leave and go to my room or go to
the bathroom nine hundred times, I will do that. Oh man,
(22:58):
I am cruising at this point. Everyone gets it, Everyone
is kind, everyone is saying the right thing. This reveal
gets a nine out of ten. It would have gotten
ten across the board, but I was making weird chewing
sounds while I was talking, so demerit for me. Next,
I drove to Northern Virginia to take a walk with
(23:19):
my friend Emily. I've known her since I was a
little shit twenty three year old, so I knew she
would be cool. In our twenty years of friendship, Emily
supported me through big life stuff, coming out, losing jobs,
ending relationships, euthanizing dogs and deciding what eyeglasses to buy.
We're in the suburb, so we're basically walking on a highway,
(23:39):
which seems like the perfect place to talk about how
I manage my anxiety. So I don't have many meltdowns.
Now I have like these weird coping mechanisms for like,
you know, like do I have my lip bomb? Do
I have my eyeglasses cleaner? Like do I always have
water when I go on an airplane? Like? Do I
have all these things? If I don't have them? And
(24:00):
now it's like when I travel, do I have clonupin
in my bag just in case I'll never use it?
But it's like all of these things, and so it's
like you build hold up these little almost like ticks. Yeah,
I need to have it. I need to have it
right and obsive compulsively in a way because there's there, Yeah,
there's two crossovers to go to seven eleven so I
(24:20):
can get marshmallows grow. Nos, Are you kidding me? Who
even knew there was a seven eleven round? You? Do
you think that? Wait? Really, this wasteland, this is my
ideal disclosure scenario. We talk a little about autism and
then we go to the seven to eleven to get marshmallows.
It's really hitting all of my buttons, easy, ten out
(24:41):
of ten. At that point, a few months out from
my diagnosis, I felt like I was starting to get
my sea legs under me in terms of talking to friends.
But while I'd been doing a pretty okay job articulating
my reality and fielding questions, I was far from understanding everything.
By telling friends who already knew a lot of my ship,
(25:03):
I had the illusion of control. I could guess which
questions they would ask and what their reactions would be
to my answers, and even if they didn't quite get it,
I could count on them working hard to understand. So
enter stage left a false sense of security and its
best friend cockiness. I was starting to feel pleased with
(25:38):
myself and wanted to tell more folks beyond the inner sanctum.
I started to feel like I was keeping a secret,
and I just wanted to live my truth. And my
truth is that I'm an autistic woman who loves to
watch fail videos and YouTube makeup tutorials. While I was
committed to broadening the circle of people I told, I
was anxious. I wouldn't get the response I wanted. Even
(26:01):
before I got tested, I told a few people that
I was thinking about it, and they basically laughed in
my face, like, girl, there's no way you're autistic. So
I didn't want to repeat of being vulnerable and then
having that plot back in my lap when it was
safe to do indoor hangs. Because we were all vaxed
to the max, some friends had a Shabbat dinner. After dinner,
(26:22):
everyone went around the table and one at a time
talked about how their pandemic had been. Folks explained that
they got more into their djaying, or bought a house,
or did some serious soul searching. When it was my turn,
and I decided on the fly that I would reveal
my diagnosis. I hit record on my phone's voice memo
app and quickly thought about and a sales approach. Tell
(26:45):
them I had been struggling for a while, describe what
the struggle was about, and then tell them about the diagnosis,
and then, once all that was out of the way,
explain what autism is, and then pat myself on the
back for a job well done. Except here's how it
actually went. Yeah, where I'm at okay In November twenty
(27:07):
twenty eight, I was diagnosed with autism. And I don't
really talk about it, but I'm doing a podcast about it,
and so that is a thing that I've been dealing
with since November twenty twenty. My voice was shaking. I
(27:27):
couldn't make eye contact. I was so nervous, not least
because the dinner was composed mostly of gorgeous gay men.
And do you even know what it's like to have
a dozen painfully attractive gentleman staring at you while you're
saying a hard thing. I promise it will make you sweat. Also,
(27:47):
I had to put my dog down, and also I
lost my job, but then I got a new job,
and then I got another new job, and now I
have too many jobs. But also but so and a
new dog, and Hanna moved to the neighborhood and that
is amazing because we walked back and forth through each
other's houses two blocks, fifteen times a day. Um. And
(28:12):
we have a feral cat that follows us between the houses.
So that's pretty cute. Um. It actually already came with
three names, Socks, Hugo, and Cairo, so we couldn't name it.
It depends on where on the block you are. Okay,
it's gotten different names every place. Listening to this now,
I'm embarrassed for myself. I didn't follow any of Anna's guidance,
(28:35):
and I was just dancing around my truth. You know
so so yeah, so, um, keep your ears open. Oh
my god. Truly the most mortifying. I basically ended my
declaration with a plug for my podcast, like, do I
even know how to be vulnerable without being maximally awkward?
(28:58):
Now you can imagine I'm sweating my teas off desperately
trying to reel this lead balloon back in. I mean,
it's like regret, regret, regret. I couldn't meet any of
their eyes. I was like a comedian who totally bombed. Finally,
after what felt like the longest silence in the world,
one of the boys made a joke about vulnerability that
broke the tension. Not vulner think we should go again?
(29:27):
Then another ask what my podcast was called. Then I
wrapped it all up with a comment about your wire
tapping law. Anyway, Oh I recorded this is that? Okay,
that's true, that's true. I didn't need to tell you,
but I did so anyway, thank you. I'm not I'm
not like, are so bad, so awkward, so sweaty, But
(29:51):
for real, I was super embarrassed. I wished that it
had gone better, and I wished that I had been
able to invite more discussion or even a question or
two about autism. When I got home, I recorded a
little audio diary of how I was feeling. Okay, so
it's one forty seven am. I just got back from
(30:15):
Queer Shabbat with just like me and Hannah and like
all boys and lots of boys, and we're the only
girls there. And I was so exhausted when I got home,
but reliving what just happened got me all jacked up.
(30:37):
I don't know what kind of reaction to expect. I
honestly don't. I kind of think that this is why
I feel like I've imposter syndrome, where people are like
in their minds, they're like, yeah, right, you know, like
you don't seem like an autistic person to me, you know,
(30:59):
but it's like, Okay, well, yeah, I'm not rain Man
or I'm not like the guy from Big Bang Theory
or whatever. Okay, yes, I'm doing a lot of projecting,
but this shit is hard. I know it's going to
feel bad at times because we have so few collective
touchstones for what autism actually is, and whatever cultural references
(31:21):
we do have of autism, I don't fit them. So
I can't really blame people if they don't get it.
But there was one person in my life who I
knew would get it. I mean, like really get it,
not just being nice. Get it. My girlfriend's nineteen year
old son, Jacob, was diagnosed with autism about a decade ago.
(31:42):
If you remember a couple episodes back, Jacob's first words
were now available on DVD, so he knows a little
something about being misunderstood. I figured that by telling Jacob
there would be at least one person in my life
who knew what I meant. I didn't have to explain
to him what autism was or the way is my
brain function differently. Now. Jacob isn't a big talker, and
(32:05):
he isn't much into heart to hearts. He's mostly into
playing game on his phone and chatting on discord. So
the timing of our talk had to be just right.
He had to be open and engaged and ready to listen,
and really, for any teenager, that's a tall order. But
one day, some months after my diagnosis. The timing was perfect,
(32:27):
even if the venue a busted as Subaru outback wasn't.
And so it was that on a highway driving back
from Richmond, Virginia, I poured my heart out to the
only other autistic person I knew, a teen BOYA. Do
you know when when you said there are no autistic women,
and you were like, huh l, I'm joking. Yeah, But
(32:51):
did I sound like I was a gemman? No? No, no, no, no,
you sounded like you were joking. But I then my
recorder cut out right when I told him I was autistic.
Super professh So, allow me to do a little reenactment
(33:12):
for you, Lauren says, nervous and a bit tongue tied,
I'm autistic. Jacob answers, yeah, I figured. Lauren, taken aback
by Jacob's bluntness, responds, wait, why did you figure I
was autistic? Jacob explained that an autism diagnosis made sense
for me because I am very loud. Now I couldn't
(33:34):
argue with that, but I was still surprised. Hannah pulled
up the rear with some questions. After I loaded up
the recorder with fresh batteries. Why is loudness. Why it's
not necessarily loudness so much as some sort of being
tone deaf to the situation, which is one of the
things I have felt the most when I was from
(33:57):
like every from since I got my diagnosis, like what
what do you mean by that? Or elaborate alone, you know,
you know how I had the problem of playing rhythmium
in public spaces like in face where I wasn't supposed
to well, and then slow down with that things like that.
So so my loudness in public spaces is like like
(34:19):
not like reading the room to a degree. Yeah, okay,
that's not Obviously I'm not like a clinician. I can't
like use that I think for sure thing. But right, no,
I think that's accurate. So I think one reason why
like trying to get a diagnosis was hard or where
(34:40):
I was reluctant to do it is because I kind
of flow a test balloon to people, you know, like, oh,
I'm thinking about this, and they're like you autistic? What No,
Because one people don't know what it is, and two
they have this notion of like people who are like
extremely socially awkward, who don't communicate well, and obviously I
(35:03):
communicate professionally, you know, because obviously thinks about them. First
thing you said that, Lauren, Like, you know, way, why
do you think people I don't know? I would have
thought they would have caught on pretty quickly. Oh my good.
(35:23):
I mean obviously, no, I love it because I have
spent a lot of time with autistic people. It's true,
and like know the experience that I would be better
at spotting it right. But I don't know. Maybe other
people just don't know enough. I would say, it's true,
people don't know enough, which is why it was so
refreshing to talk to Jacob and maybe why it might
(35:45):
have been refreshing for him to talk to me too.
Jacob has two non autistic siblings and neither of his
parents are autistic. It's hard for him to connect with folks,
and he mostly keeps himself to himself. So if nothing else,
I'm an adjacent adult in his life who gets it
because I've lived it, or at least my version of it.
(36:06):
During our chat, Jacob described how trouble old he was
that he didn't seem to have any emotions about his
older sister going away to college. I had like no
feeling over I was not emotional real and like I
don't know what I was supposed to do there, like
because so my entire life, I've been thinking like what
(36:28):
if I don't What if I am like a sociopath?
And I know I'm not, but like just too many
instances of it, like like people like having the idea
that I'm some sort of robot like it's hot. It's
really not easy to think about ever, and like every
like the thing I'm gonna have to work on the
(36:50):
most is see seeing whether I either can just fake
it or or what it actually means. That's sorry, Sorry
if I didn't make any sense. No, it's oh my god,
that's so. And I think I understand. What you're saying
is like you were led to believe by everyone around
you that there's something wrong with you because everybody's sad
that Noah's leaving and you're not sad, or you don't
(37:12):
feel what you think you should be feeling, and that
makes you feel like there's something wrong with you. So um, honestly, Jacob,
like I can a thousand percent relate to. So when
people say that, they're like, don't you miss me? Like
if they go away, did you miss me? In my mind,
(37:33):
I'm like, I don't, I don't. I don't miss you.
And it's not because I don't love you. It's not
because I don't care about you. It's because I don't
miss you. Then Hannah asked Jacob if when he went
off to college himself, he would miss his little brother. Yes,
but like I can't. I don't even know if like
(37:54):
after I go to college US, I'll still be able
to keep texting him, I'll just like not do it.
I'll probably forget or something. I need to remind myself
constantly of that. It's like that I'm not supposed to
mean that, Like, no, there's not any supposed to What
do you mean? What makes you cry? Why does that
make you sad? Honestly because you feel like there's something
(38:16):
wrong with you? Yes, don't immediately think to text him
always you think your feeling is like, what's wrong with me? That?
I like, does this mean I'm a bad person? Yeah? So,
first of all, Jacob, like I feel very emotional listening
to you right now, because like the idea that like
you feel like there's something wrong with you or that
(38:38):
you're bad is like, like that actually breaks my heart
because one I've experienced that myself, and that was, like,
I'm forty two years old, and like, that was the
message that I got, and it takes a really long
time to unwind that. And so like, I don't want
you to think that, like you're bad or wrong because
of small things like that, Because one thing I know
for certain is that your brother knows that you love him,
(38:59):
and your parents know that you love them, and your
sister knows that you love her in the ways that
you show it. And just because you don't show it
in a typical way, or you don't do things in
a typical way, does not mean for one second that
you're bad or wrong. And I want you to know
that about yourself, and whatever messaging you've gotten that your
way of doing things is the bad way is incorrect.
(39:26):
As we drove, I found myself feeling so protective of Jacob.
How dare anyone suggests that his way of moving through
the world was wrong. Here's a smart, caring young person
who bakes kill or bread and cracks the best jokes.
So what if he finds eye contact challenging or is
constantly misplacing or breaking his glasses? Who cares if he's
(39:48):
terminally literal, or annoys the living hell out of us
with his video games. Here is a good kid with
a moral heart who's been getting the message for years
that there's something wrong with him. We need to do better.
Thank you, guys, no, thank you, thank you for the tissue.
(40:11):
Do you want to use a face mask? That was gross?
I actually do have a handkerchief, Let me get it.
(40:33):
And that was it. The curtain fell. We all wiped
our eyes and noses and moved on. Jacob played games
on his phone, and Hannah and I sat in silence,
and in that brief moment, everyone had what they needed.
The car conversation made me realize that I want so
(40:53):
much for Jacob to inhabit a world where he never believes,
not for one second, that he's deficient, Where no one
thinks he's a robot or that he doesn't have emotions,
where he is accepted and understood for exactly who he is.
The world I want for Jacob is also a world
where even if he, say, occasionally wears his pants inside out,
(41:16):
or forgets to trim his neck hair, or skips down
the street for no reason, he is still embraced, not
in spite of his quirks, but because of them, a
world that is good for Jacob is also a world
that's good for me, and it's good for so many
others who veer from the norm. In my fantasy land,
(41:37):
Jacob gets to be whoever he needs to be, and
so do I and so do you. So in the
next episode, I build that world for myself, a cilantro
free land where I never feel awkward, I always feel loved,
and I can be as loud as I want. You've
(42:05):
been listening to the Loudest Girl in the World. It's
hosted written end exact I could have produced by me.
Lauren Ober. Our senior producer is writer. Also our associate
producer is David Jah. Sophie Crane is our show runner
and senior editor. Jake Gorski is our mix engineer. Music
imposed by my autistic kiwie pal, the Inimitable Lady Hawk.
(42:27):
Our artwork was created by the autistic illustrator Loretta Ipsum.
The show was fact checked by Andrea Lopez Cruzado, and
our autism consultant is Sarah Cappett. Our executive producers are
Mia Lobell and Lee tom Mullat. Thanks to my lovely
(42:50):
pal Carter hug Lee for taking a trip down memory
lane with me. Also thanks to Molly Harris, Meghan Reid,
Laura Starchski and Emily Vesselin for being such good listeners.
Shout out to the painfully handsome crew at Queer Shabat.
Also big love to my and a sale for all
the good advice you can get her book, Let's Talk
(43:13):
About Hard Things Anywhere fine books are sold. To Jacob,
thank you for saying yes, and thanks to you friend
for listening.
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