Diary of an Autistic Boy

Feelings

I was struggling to find something to write about so I decided to write about something that most autistic people and especially me struggle to cope with.

feeling/ˈfiːlɪŋ/

nounplural noun: feelings

an emotional state or reaction.

These can be physical feelings such as a pin prick on the arm or an emotional feeling such as happiness.

I am talking about the later.

From an early age I have always struggled with emotions and feelings. It is a side effect of most cases of High functioning autism (the type that I have) I like to think of it as the brain sacrifices the part that understands feelings and emotions in order for it to focus on other areas such as the academical side. I have had to have many emotions explained to me from an early age and I picked up some form TV shows. In my young life I managed fine because I only really needed to understand 3/4 basic emotions: Happiness, sadness, and anger. it was only when I got to the age where social circles became more important that I actually had to understand the wide spectrum that is emotions. this came to light when I was around 10 when I started realising the importance of friends and having people around to depend on.

during that time, I had several people explain to me more and more emotions and have to figure out how to comprehend them and the effects that they have on me. the first one I had explained to me was pretty much by accident. it was before I was going to audition to play the piano in my school's talent show and someone made an offhand comment about whether I was nervous about the performance. I didn't understand what they meant as I had never really been 'nervous' I asked what they meant and they then explained it as like 50% fear 50% excitement. I understood these concepts enough to give a half answer to the question but that began my long, long journey of understanding emotions.

After that I had several 'new' emotions in quick succession. Pride, annoyed, and jealousy. The most complicated of these for me was annoyed as I had always thought of it as the same thing as anger or sadness, however as I discovered it was not although can lead to either of these emotions. I learnt about it when another group got picked ahead of me for my year group. I did not understand what I was feeling until I had a meltdown and my mum explained it to me. pride I kind of figured out after I became really happy with my performance and a teacher said that I should be proud of myself so I just accepted that feeling as pride and then adjusted it in later scenarios until I fully (or as fully as I could) understand it. jealousy came after another group got picked ahead of me from my year for said talent show however I would not describe it as an extreme case of jealousy but it was my first experience of it. I didn't completely understand it until a lot later however.

The next emotion I was exposed to was grief this was when my great grandma died. You can read about that in my previous chapter however I will briefly explain it here. it was one where I did not know that I was experiencing until it was completely explained to me however as I had thought that it was just extreme sadness which I suppose it is in part but it is also so much more than that. This led me to a time where I was unsure of emotions and where combined with the transition form primary school to high school led to a lot of things at once.

I then had a few years of no real new emotions other than the development of some ones that I already had encountered such as nervousness and jealousy.

The next emotion that came knocking was the big one. The one that nobody understands. The one that makes sense to absolutely no-one. The one that makes clever people do stupid things. No, I am not talking about hunger I am talking about the other one (Humour ha-ha) the big L. Love. Of course, I already knew what love was, it was something you said to someone in your family it was something that you said to your mum and dad before you went to bed and it was something you (hopefully) get shown everyday through random acts of kindness and not so random acts of kindness from people that you may or may not know. I went through a time when I thought that love was just so simple as liking someone, or looking at someone and thinking that they look nice. To put it simply it is everyone of them things and it is none of them. When you are a 13-year-old kid figuring things out by watching tv shows that is all that you are shown. You are shown the way it makes people feel deep inside and how it makes people act.

I would say I first truly experienced an essence of that emotion when I was around 13/14. It was when we got a new dog. (sorry not sorry for the long winded build up for this) when I first saw her and stroked her and itched behind her ears I knew that I would love her from every moment onwards and knew that if she was there then everything would be perfect and whatever happened from then on would be fine. It made me realise, especially watching my previous dog get put down the hard fact of life. Horrible stuff happens and you just have to burn through it. I know pretty deep for a 14-year-old. What this also opened up to me was the side I never knew I was capable of having. The side that laughed at my robotic mindset. It made me begin to realise something that I had always known but never really recognized. The fact that other people feel like this as well. You may wonder (and rightly so) why it took me 14 years to properly understand that people had feelings even if I thought that I didn't. I would put it down to my obliviousness for things that do not directly involve me as I did not feel the need to interest myself in anything other than what I was focusing on.

I decided to write about this to help people who may be having trouble realising and understanding emotions as I did. I hope that if anyone is they realise that they are the same as everyone else. Even though you may not know an emotion or feeling that does not mean that you do not feel said emotion. It may just be that you are either trying for whatever reason to be the person with no emotion like I did for years of my life, or having the emotion but calling it something else or using an umbrella emotion such as happiness, sadness and anger. jealousy and rage for example can cause one another however are definitely different emotions as is excited and generally happy. I hope that this helps anyone who is at a stage where they are struggling with emotions and feelings. I know how hard it is and hopefully you have someone who can explain and guide you through the complicated world of emotions.