Maxfield Sparrow

unstrangemind.com

angry-4714149
[Image: Young white boy with an open-mouthed,

yelling expression, and hands over his ears.]

Dear Young Autistic,

I am like you. I am Autistic. Now I am a middle-aged Autistic (I’m probably older than your parents) but I was once a young Autistic like you are now.

One of my biggest struggles was (and is) with anger. People have commented many times over the years about my anger. You might be angry, too? People around you might talk about your anger to you or to each other where you can hear them. Or maybe people don’t talk much about your anger because you’ve got ways to push it down and hide it from everyone. If you think you aren’t angry at all, check to make sure you didn’t hide it so well you can’t see it yourself.

Why was I an angry young Autistic? I felt stuck in a world I never chose and couldn’t understand. There were many things in life that were easy for me to excel at — often things others found difficult, like playing the piano, solving logic puzzles, quickly memorizing long poems and plays, learning foreign languages. But everything in life that required me to work and play with other people was out of my reach.

I was angry because people would see how hard it was for me to try to fit into the world of people and they would laugh at me, call me names, tease me, exclude me, even hit and hurt me sometimes. I learned early that everyone talks to kids about how important being good at academics is and almost no one talks to kids about how important understanding humans is. But it turns out that understanding people is more important for success in the world of people than understanding academic subjects is.

I was angry because the world was so frustrating and exhausting. I was stressed out, worn out, burnt out, cast out.

My anger got me in a lot of trouble. My math teacher called me “argumentative.” My English teacher called me “overly reactive.” My parents said I was bringing trouble on myself by showing my anger, because as soon as the other kids saw that they could make me mad, they had won. “Won what?” I wondered. Was it really a game to the other kids? Some kind of contest? What sort of cruel game is it to single out a classmate who is struggling and suffering and burden them with taunts and blows? Who “won” when I retaliated in anger and ended up being the only one punished for an experience that was designed from the beginning to punish me in every way possible?

I want you to know that I understand. The world is completely unfair and there is so much that is genuinely worth getting angry about. I know you have been worn down by your anger and by the world’s reactions to it, but I want you to know that you should never feel ashamed of your anger or lesser for having a hard time controlling it. It is logical to be angry when you are stuck in a confusing, often violent world, tormented every day, forced to waste so much of your energy trying to hide your very understandable anger, punished for things you can’t help.

I also want you to hold on to hope. I am decades older than you and I am still angry. I am very, very angry. Sometimes the only word for it is furious. But: I also get better and better all the time at channeling that anger into producing things — writing, art, dance, music — that I value, and that others (usually) do not want to harm me or shame me for producing.

We are Autistic and that means that we have our own ways of growing and changing over time. You will learn to cope. You will learn to manage your intense feelings more and more every day. It will never be perfect; we will never be Mr. Spock. But it gets better; it gets easier.

When I was young, I bit people. The last time I remember biting someone, I was 14. I would still bite someone now if they were attacking me and I needed to save my life or someone else’s, but I haven’t bitten anyone in anger in 35 years. That’s a victory. I used to hit people with hard things and I stopped that, too. I no longer hit, bite, scratch, or kick out of anger, though I would do all these things and more if I were being physically attacked. That is what I have been able to control: responding with physical violence to those who tease and torment me.

Yes, I still get teased and tormented as an adult. But now I am (usually) able to walk away from that person and have nothing to do with them. I know school can be hard. Hang in there! It seems like it will be forever, but soon there will come a day when you get to make more of your own choices. Soon you will get more choice about who you spend time around. Soon you will be allowed to avoid so many of the people, places, things, and words that make you so angry right now.

In the meantime, don’t let bullies and anger distract you from academics. Learn everything you can. Specialize in knowing about the things you love. Your knowledge and the use you put it to will be what lifts you out of the places you feel stuck in now. Learn breathing techniques. Consider studying meditation. Find a strength inside yourself, even if you think it isn’t there. It is. And while emotions rage through you like seaside storms right now, trust that you can and will find calmer seas as you age.

With autism, we get a great gift. Those kids around you will grow and change but somewhere in their mid-twenties they will hit a point where changes are slow and small. They may seem ahead of the game right now because they had all kinds of emotional growth spurts early in life while you were still working on getting your bearings. But we Autistics grow and develop throughout our lifespan. No, you won’t see much in the scientific literature about that, but I know lots of Autistics my age and older and I feel very confident in telling you that you will continue to change and grow in your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, and beyond — as long as you live. Take a moment to think about how marvelous that is, what a treat, what a privilege.

You will find it easier and easier to remain calm, saving your anger for those times when you need its emotional jetfuel and not wasting it on automatically reacting to jerks. Those jerks will be running the same tired emotional-social-developmental treadmill for the rest of their lives while you will be ever reaching toward new adventures. Don’t be ashamed when they make you angry. If not now, one day soon you will come to pity them.

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This article was previously published at unstrangemind.wordpress.com.