Random Autistic Thoughts

Things that are on my mind lately: ” aha moments”


Things are kind of quiet and sad at our house. Our good old dog is ageing and it won’t be long before we have to make a painful decision. I am getting up very frequently to let her out at night and sleep is scarce lately. I am very very tired. This will be our last dog. Our cat too is elderly and has a chronic sickness, also not doing well. We have decided it would be unfair to bring a new animal into our lives at our old age and risk leaving an unwanted pet behind if we might pass on before it does. Risks of falls and all the chores of caretaking another animal might be too much as we continue to age. Animals have always been a very big part of my life, so my mind is working on this sad transition even as I expect it is coming soon.

So these circumstances got me thinking about my own ageing process. I am 70. Women in my autistic mother’s family tend to get dementia by age 80, although their bodies have gone on much longer. I feel as if my time is running out and there is a certain sense of urgency to almost everything I write or post these days.

Random thought two days ago. I am still sorting the past and gaining “aha” moments of insight, still putting past upsets, pains and struggles, humiliations, failures, etc to rest.
My mental filing system is working well and after maybe a couple of repeats even the worst memories agree to go to the “finished business” file where I send them and don’t seem to appear.

But with those issues settled, my brain keeps bringing new experiences from the past up for examination. I am rarely truly troubled by these memories as I have alread re lived and painfully examined them over time all these years, and can readily assign them to the files as soon as I recognize they too are “finished business”.

It crossed my mind that I have known about my autism for about 6 years, had diagnosis 2 1/2 years ago in Sept of 2022. I suddenly realized that I will probably be sifting, examining and sorting the past for the rest of my life.

I have loads of difficult memories in the memory bank to work through.
I wonder if I had obtained diagnosis earlier , would this still be the case?
I am willing to do the emotional homework, it is still interesting to understand those old traumas through the new lens of my autism.

I am randomly struck again by how truly impaired my sensory processing struggles and my neurology are. I have been so interested to follow random studies and look for blogs, books, articles on pages about autism, and to follow groups online which support older autistic adults and those of us who are just learning about autism and suspecting we may be autistic .

I made a comment in one forum about some books and links that had been helpful to me, and immediately after my comment, another participant listed many many websites and youtube, twitter, and other very recent media which all involve video and visual presentations.
I realized that I have missed out on many, many sources of input because I simply can not process video content (movies, videos, moving pictures or images of any sort or real life interactions/lectures, podcasts, etc) in “real time”. I was stunned with a huge feeling of loss for my inability to participate in those things.
I have long ago accepted my limitations, so the feeling did not last long, but the infrequent self insight is always an unpleasant surprise and involves for that short time a painful feeling of loss. I know everybody experiences these feelings off and on. It just tends to be something of a surprise. Like other “aha” moments it is a sudden unexpected insight sneaking up on me.

Like the disturbing memories I must file in my “finished business” mental file, and like the sudden insight into how impaired I actually am in one way or another, I suspect that I will also have other “aha” moments for the rest of my life.
I welcome most of those insights.

I have 68 years of not knowing about my autism to sort and understand. I have far less time on earth than that to continue to work to sort it all out. I truly consider myself a “work in progress” even at this late stage of life.