Asperger's on the Inside

So, going back to my story…

When I left off talking about my childhood, I was discussing how bullying and the difficulties I’ve had with fitting in were never big issues for me until I hit my teenage years. Thinking back on my more happy childhood times, I’m actually surprised I was left alone to the degree that I was, because let’s admit it: my play was quite unique, and you would think young children would be the worst at taunting and pointing out differences in others.

However, it turns out—well, at least according to my random internet browsing—that for children on the spectrum, this is actually a common pattern, and it’s often during the teenage years that a person’s Asperger’s behaviors can become more pronounced. It’s not because we actually change in any way, but—on the contrary—because our peers around us hit puberty and they start to change their own behaviors and modes of dealing with each other.

It’s around those years that teens start to adopt more complex social interactions and choose different friends to meet different needs. Girls in particular learn to remain positive and friendly even when they’re feeling negative things inside. They start caring about social status and how they appear to others. So sometimes, passive-aggressive behaviors arise in the place of direct confrontation.

Those of us with Asperger’s, however—surprise, surprise—usually don’t change and tend to remain childlike in our views of life and styles of friendship. Some refer to it as naïve, but I would prefer to think of it as a type of innocence. I have no interest in competing with those around me, overtly or covertly. I just want to be myself and love the things I love and be happy for those around me when I see them being themselves and having successes too. I want to cling to one person and have them as my very close, important, only friend.

Call me crazy, but I actually think this failure to mature in this way is a good trait in some regards, and I like the way I see things. But, of course, I would say that, coming from my own idealized, simple view of the world!

So, come my high school years, I think this shift of attitude around me is what I experienced. I sat there watching my friends grow and change in ways that I thought just made no sense. I continued to want just one or two very close and intimate friendships, but my closest friends stopped wanting the same and became more interested in mingling in the bigger group.

Some of them adopted different mannerisms that, to me, looked a bit false and occasionally even mean. They changed their topics of conversation to boys and fashion and small talk in general. Why they would want to change that way was perplexing to me. But they changed, so I had no choice but to accept it and follow.

But anyhow, that’s enough generalizing from me. It’s time to go back and start at the beginning of my story…

My senior school years ^[10], or what I would refer to as them, started early when, in Year Six ^[11], my mother decided to move me from state school to a more prestigious private girls school to see how I fared. My brother had just won a scholarship to a private boys’ school in the area, and I think she was enjoying the happy thought of us all attending nice schools—if it were financially possible, that is. But luckily, by the end of the year, I was awarded a scholarship to continue on at the school, so that’s how I came about attending high school years at St Agnes’s senior campus.

At St Agnes’s, I met Monique and Emma, my two close high school friends whom I mentioned in the early chapter about my childhood. We spent all our free time together during our recess and lunch breaks playing elastics ^[12] and hopscotch and creating our own versions of games, as kids tend to do. We had fun.

The three of us formed a bit of a friendship triangle, so usually at any one time, one of us was more on the outside while the other two were close, which didn’t bother me that much as I just went on playing with whoever was paying attention. However, I think in hindsight that it did bother the other two, who continuously sort of competed to be one of the girls on the “inside.”

One day, many years later, I remember Monique expressing that she thought we (and Emma) were really only thrown together as friends because we were the oddities who didn’t fit with anyone else, and I was surprised to hear that, because I’d never viewed it that way or noticed any lack of popularity at the time. But I wouldn’t have, would I! I was rather oblivious to the social world at that age. They were simply the people who sought me out, and however it came about, I was perfectly happy to just play with either of my two closest people. How would I have known if they were “weird”?

When I first arrived at St Agnes’s in Year Six, Emma was the person who befriended me first. We enjoyed each other’s company but had a less stable on-and-off sort of friendship. From time to time, she was offended by me or my views and comments, and in turn, I was regularly impatient with little things she did that I found wrong or inconsiderate. As a teen, I didn’t have much tolerance for people not behaving “the right way,” which I see now really just translated to “my way,” and I could be rather blunt about it. Emma was highly sensitive and conscious of the social dos and don’ts. But somehow, we held it together regardless—well, most of the time.

I remember one more serious fight occurring one afternoon when I observed Emma standing around with her blouse bunched up around the front of her tunic in a peculiar way. I told her a little too flatly that she looked pregnant. I mean, she sort of did, with the material bunching out the front. As a larger girl, Emma had always been body conscious and didn’t take this remark lightly. I believe the period after that was the longest amount of time that Monique and Emma were best friends and I was the one on the outside!

Emma, unfortunately left the school at the end of Year Seven, and after that, it was just Monique and I who were left behind.

In contrast to Emma, Monique and I actually got along quite well. She remarked to me one day how she’d always admired my black-and-white way of thinking, so I guess that was the basis for her going along with whatever I wanted, making her the type of friend who was easy for someone like me to tolerate! As an adult, I’ve come to understand that Monique’s teenage life was complicated, with her parents going through a messy divorce and her father no longer being in her life the way she wanted him to be. She was dealing with a lot of rejection. I don’t recall ever realizing this as a child, unfortunately.

Monique and I spent a good deal of time wandering sections of the school that were unfrequented by other students. The school had acquired an acreage of land next door that was, at the time, unkempt bush land set aside for future development. It was out of bounds for playing, of course, not that that stopped us! We would find piles of bones belonging to kangaroos and wallabies and a variety of plants, scrub, and interesting bugs. Sometimes there were rabbits or birds or other little visitors. Mounds of dirt made up hills for us to climb up and down. As far as I know, no teacher ever noticed us going there.

Another place where we would often spend our lunchtime was the old drama room, that was always left unlocked, attached to the back of the school hall. I’m pretty sure the drama room was out of bounds also. We used to creep in when nobody was looking and, as far as I know, got away with it. Sometimes we would be lucky and find costumes or props or other interesting things left from the classes beforehand to entertain us, but we were always respectful and put things back afterward. We weren’t exactly the rowdy, destructive teen type.

The drama room had a door at either side that opened up to the backstage area of the hall stage. Between us and the stage hung long, drooping, black curtains, which provided us with hours of amusement and mischief.

I remember one day, the choir was rehearsing in the school hall, standing on some pews such that the conductor’s back was facing the stage. Monique and I devised an amusing idea and spent the first half of lunchtime giggling and running around the school collecting sticks, twigs, and plant parts from the garden beds. We created a little puppet head out of a rose seed and thorns and leaves, which we poked through the curtain to simulate a face looking around the stage. We may have stuck our legs through the curtains too, for all I remember. We heard laughter from the choir and ran away fast out of the back door of the drama room and were never caught.

I guess I was a bit of a serial rule breaker so long as the chosen behavior wasn’t hurting anyone. I felt like if I caused no harm, then logically, I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

I suppose, in hindsight, it must have seemed odd to the other girls at the school that Monique and I spent all our time sneaking off alone. For me, it was anything to get away from the noisy crowds of schoolgirls, which I found extremely irritating. I had an audience of one, which was all that I needed—someone to voice my opinions to and to keep me company.

Unfortunately, Monique had to leave the school at the end of Year Nine, as she had a bursary ^[13] that ran out, and the school didn’t intend to renew it, whereas my scholarship remained intact. I’d always been the more studious one, and I guess I kept my grades at the point they needed to be for my scholarship to keep getting renewed. It never felt right to me, the way she was pulled away, and her moving on was a big loss. But somehow, I managed to keep my spirits up about it all and made plans to still see Monique on the odd occasion after school and on holidays. We intended to stay in touch, at least.

As the summer holidays came to an end and the new school year approached, I started looking forward to attending class again. I did like school, after all, and just assumed I’d go about my business the way I always did and new friends would stumble into my path. This year—Year Ten—new friends were going to be on the top of my agenda.

So it wasn’t until that next year, without Monique by my side, that I actually noticed for the first time that things weren’t going to be as easy as I’d thought. I walked in that first morning ready to socialize with the girls in my classroom, and I made an effort to look at and talk to them properly—the girls I’d failed to notice before. I tried to tell them about my interests and get to know who they were. I walked up and stood with them to join in on conversations, and that’s when I really saw it. I saw what Monique had noticed all along.

Somewhere in time, unbeknownst to me, I’d become unpopular. I’m not exactly sure how it happened. I thought I mostly got along with everybody—well, as much as I cared to acknowledge them anyway. Maybe that was the problem.

Then another small piece of the puzzle came to me early on in the year when I discovered that a few of the girls (at my girls-only school) had circulated a rumor that I was gay. I suppose it had started during all that time I spent alone with Monique. After all, in other people’s eyes, what other explanation could there be for two girls sneaking off to private places? It’s not something I think should have made a difference, but apparently it did, and the gay snarks I got when going about doing seemingly normal things were surprising.

I should note, it has certainly given me an appreciation for the difficulties faced by those who really are gay and have to go through the torments of high school. Teenage girls can be so cutting in their remarks!

Anyway, whether it was this rumor or just elements of my personality that made me unfavorable I’ll never know. I just know that I was lacking that one friend I needed to confide in, which has and will always be an essential thing for me to have.

As the school year moved on, I found that lunchtimes became quite difficult for me to get through. The school had three Year Ten classrooms and imposed a rule that lunch must be eaten in one of them. I naturally tried the classroom that I’d been allocated to first, but a few of the girls in that room seemed agitated by my company.

One girl liked to flick bits of food at me and made remarks that I can’t now recall. I remember finding rice stuck in my hair later one day. Another girl referenced bad smells as Michelle Stutsel’s B.O. (Stutsel being my maiden name), and that was the point at which I realized I needed to start wearing deodorant! Oops, I’d just thought that was normal sweater smell. But I fixed that quickly. For the most part, I tried to just sit to the side away from them and eat my lunch in peace.

I remember one particular lunchtime when a few from this group were repeatedly flicking water at me from their water bottles as I tried to eat my lunch, and they just wouldn’t back off. I was getting fed up, so I went to the bathroom and filled my whole lunchbox with water and sat back down. I told them if they flicked me again, I would tip my lunchbox over them. I guess they thought I was bluffing.

One completely soaked student later, I think I had made my point, and they stopped bothering me, at least with food and water. I think if anything, they were shocked I actually followed through! But that’s me. If I say I’m going to do something, I will!

When the teacher came in for class after lunch, I remember her demanding an explanation for all the water spilled on the floor. The other girls laughed and said a few times, “Michelle Stutsel wet her pants.” I said nothing. It was pretty clear that I wasn’t wet. Fortunately, at the mention of me being the culprit, the teacher didn’t pursue the issue any further, so I got away with the “crime.”

Interestingly, this wasn’t the first time I got away with something that I’m certain other students wouldn’t have. At the time, I didn’t think a lot of it, but it occurs to me now that maybe then, even the teachers knew I was different and took pity. They just didn’t tell me that.

Another similar incident happened during art class one day. A girl in my class, Nadia, was touching my leg under the table, saying, “Do you like that, Michelle?” in a provocative tone. It was all in the theme of “gay taunting,” and of course I didn’t like it. I told her to stop or I would throw my paint on her. She didn’t, so I picked up the paint and threw it at her, much to the shock of everyone on the table.

Immediately afterward, Nadia went running to the teacher, protesting about the paint on her dress. The teacher looked maddened at first at the sight of someone with paint on their school clothes. This was a Year Ten ^[14] girls’ class, and paint fighting was definitely not the sort of behavior you’d expect. Her anger seemed to subside, however, when Nadia pointed me out as the culprit. I never actually got asked for an explanation, and I never offered one. I suppose I didn’t talk that much back then, at least not in public. In the classroom, I was quiet and seemingly shy. The class moved on.

After that incident with the water, I didn’t try and eat my lunch in that classroom again. I joined a second one in the hope that the girls would be nicer, and for a short while, I thought this had turned out fine. But then I heard the rumors that, apparently, I was visiting because I was in love with Debbie, one of the girls in the room.

Oh, for heaven’s sake! Debbie was a student who talked a lot, so it was hard not to look and listen. In those days, I think I had a slight tendency to stare and hadn’t fully mastered appropriate eye contact. (I.e., look for a few seconds, then look away. Look slightly to the side. Look at people’s noses, cheeks, or forehead if looking at their eyes makes you uncomfortable. Look back again and repeat, etc.) So that didn’t help. To me, Debbie wasn’t anything particularly special, but these rumors take off fast!

Following that, I gave up and found myself a new alternative. The school had a quiet strip of dirt beside a fence, hidden at the back of the Year Ten classrooms between the tall brick building and the fence. It wasn’t much for scenery, but I found it an easily accessible place to sneak out to and eat my lunch for the rest of the year.

I was breaking rules by eating outside, but I assessed my risk of getting in trouble for doing so as low, and it wasn’t completely unpleasant there. I had peace and quiet and time for my own thoughts and even a little grass and the movement of bugs and small animals out and about. But I was alone. Every lunch time, for about six months, alone. I don’t have to explain to you how depressing that semester was.

I think I changed my behavior a lot over that year. It was that year I suddenly started to notice and pay attention to my peers, and with no one to talk to, I had a lot of time for studying other people’s interactions. I picked up on some little rules of what people do and don’t do and adopted a few more “usual” behaviors. Now that I’d taken interest, I learnt quickly and became a lot more what you would call “normal” rapidly. After all, I’m a quick study.

However, it was also unfortunately the year I started to lose my own personality and self, an unfortunate consequence of being required to act in order to be acceptable. I felt sad and alone frequently and was willing to bend more than a person should have to. I had to try so hard.

As the year moved on, the good news is that I did slowly start to find girls in my classes who were more positive toward me, and I gradually made new friends. In fact, by the beginning of Year Eleven, I’d integrated into a new social group entirely. I wasn’t a core member of the group, of course, but I was accepted as a “B-lister” and included in the odd events. It was a new type of social interaction for me, and some girls were actually nice.

However, even though things were looking up for me, for many reasons, I made a pretty bold decision that year, that I didn’t want to continue at this school any longer. My history and expected personality there were too set in stone, and I felt like I needed a clean slate to really be free to find myself. I wanted to start afresh around people who had a positive impression of me, and more than anything, I wanted to see my old friends again. I missed them a lot.

So, toward the middle of that year, I told my mother that I wanted to change schools to the school that Monique and Emma were now attending. And fortunately, she supported my decision. It was really very good of her to help me in this way, considering it meant me dropping a scholarship at a private school to move to a far less prestigious, government-subsidized high school. I’m not sure all parents would have been so understanding. But it was definitely a positive decision for me. And that’s how I came about changing schools midway through my Year Eleven Victorian Certificate of Education.

Before leaving, things became a little strange for me in my last few weeks there, as I had difficulty telling the other students about my plans to go. I’ve always found it hard to make big announcements, especially the ones that bring out the most emotion, as it’s so awkward for me to try and work out whose reactions are sincere and whose are not. I mean, in reality, not everyone would be expected to care, but they all say they do with hugs and kisses and “lots of love” language.

I don’t know how to react to it, and I’m worried that I may not feel enough at the time to make the right sorts of expressions on my face. How am I supposed to look? Am I supposed to tear up? Eugh. The situation is awkward, and I can’t stand being in it.

So in the end, I didn’t say much to many of my friends and just snuck away quietly. And I suspect after I did go, that one or two of my closer friends (one in particular whom I can think of) may have felt betrayed that I left without ever telling them in person. It wasn’t an intentional slight or a statement about how I valued them. I just couldn’t bring myself to raise the topic, especially to those whom I wanted to care. That’s always the hardest part, so I’ll say sorry now to any of them who ever get to reading this!

And then that was it. My time at St Agnes’s was over, and I was gone, ready to begin a brand new chapter…