The Haunting Spector and Debilitating Emotional Crisis of Compulsive ASD-Like Tendencies
My dad loved Coca-Cola.
Diet Coke was his drink of choice, although he would begrudgingly accept the cheaper, store-brand alternatives -- just as long as they weren't alternatives to Pepsi, fuck-you-very-much. He collected Coca-Cola products to the point where they became a reliable birthday/holiday gift-giving standby.
The man died in 2009, and I still have his deck of Coca-Cola playing cards and a spinning Coke logo keychain. Aside from genetics, that’s all I have left of the man, which speaks to how absolute his Coca-Cola obsession was.
After he died and was remembered fondly, a common refrain was how he made his wife and three kids literally walk out of a restaurant if Coca-Cola products weren’t being served. It was a quirky affectation that -- if you knew Charles Krumbine -- was about as definitive a description you could ascribe to the man.
In hindsight, talk about red flags.
Along with Coca-Cola, there was an obsession with Star Trek (which was passed down to a sibling where it became overtly symptomatic) and a (very) long list of jobs where, for one reason or another, he just couldn’t fit in or make it work.
The red flags abound.
A few months ago, as I was gathering archival family photos for my mother’s 65th birthday, I noticed another glaring red flag that -- once again, with 20/20 hindsight -- is about as obvious as they come. As each photo flipped across my screen, I remembered with stunning clarity: the man always wore a polo shirt tucked into slacks. And don’t forget the pen stashed in the breast pocket. Always.
He refused to wear shorts and absolutely never out in public.
And this was Southwest Florida I'm talking about here, so comfort be damned, I guess.
It’s easy to assign a post-mortem, armchair diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. It’s also easy to recognize the upwards of 80% contributing genetic factors in both myself and a sibling.
For the sibling with the Star Trek obsession: extremely narrow perspectives; singularly focused on writing novels; said writing demonstrates challenges in understanding emotional motivations; the individual is challenging to talk with unless the conversation goes to their subjects of expertise -- then: behold the info-dumping.
I'm not close with this sibling, and it’s honestly been years (a decade??) since any real interaction, so I can’t talk much about social settings. Although, I suppose that’s a red flag, too: it was complicated for them to maintain relationships.
For myself, well, I can speak explicitly about those social red flags.
And boy, are they red as fuck.
As a child, I didn't like to play, and as a very young child, it (anecdotally) took me a long time to start talking. There are a few telltale moments in family videos: at one birthday, it’s clear I don’t know how to react to gifts -- it’s only through prompting from mom and sibling that a quasi “expected” reaction comes through.
During a sibling’s birthday, mom is trying to get me to run a relay race outdoors. I'm not having it, period.
And then, the peak moment. It’s a moment that has since become an inside joke -- a moment that, by itself, is a quirky affectation. Still, in the context of literally everything else, it underscores and forecasts a lifetime of social struggles. In the video, the parents walk around their (new?) house, capturing moments and messages to send to extended family.
The siblings sing a song and read a story for our cousins.
“Jordan, do you want to do a somersault?”
Fuck no, I don't want to do a somersault. Why the fuck should I want to do a somersault? What value is there in performing a somersault? I have no frame of reference or motivation to do a somersault, and the mere suggestion is making me uncomfortable.
“Come on, Jordan, do a somersault for your cousins!”
A sibling chimes in with encouragement, but even today -- despite barely a faint recollection -- I can empathize deeply with the younger me. It simply didn’t make sense, and that broke my fucking brain.
I grew up in an evangelical, home-churching, homeschooling household. Part of the extra-curricular activities my parents provided were acting classes from a young age. Looking back, I’ve realized this early foundation in acting unwittingly taught me some powerful skills and coping mechanisms for the challenges I would face later in life.
And it isn’t all that surprising. What is “acting” for a child? Other than putting on a costume to become someone else -- someone with scripted lines and actions that are blocked and choreographed. I didn’t even have to figure it out myself -- a director told me what to do.
That was the foundation. Movies and television shows would fill in the gaps, but learning to act at a young age was what first taught me to behave and engage with other people.
Which doesn't mean there weren’t red flags later in life -- the point is that I learned early on how to cope and subsequently mask my natural instincts and behaviors.
One of those awkward, divergent behaviors was flagged at around 14 or 15. I had a job at a Dairy Queen (we can get into the absurdity of working professionally at 14 some other time, thankyouverymuch), and after finishing my shift, I would go to the library down the street and wait for my older brother to finish his shift behind the circulation desk. Apparently, I had a tendency to sit awkwardly and glare at people, giving off serious “devil child” vibes, to the point where something obviously had to be said to me.
Let me be clear: I was not sitting there plotting the morbid demise of every person who crossed my field of vision. I probably should have, but no -- I was probably just trying to cope with an extreme sense of isolation that can plague me to this day.
The point is that ever since this was called out at age 14 or 15, I became hyper-aware of my facial expressions, affectations, and external emotions. In other words, I became very good at looking normal.
After all, if I didn’t look normal, people might complain.
A few years later, I had a driver’s license, terrorists were flying planes into towers, and I had a job at Chick-Fil-A. So much of that job was regrettable (and I have since made my feelings about the company very clear), but as an isolated, homeschooled teenager, I can genuinely say that I didn’t know any better. The Chick-Fil-A was in a mall food court, and while the structured, scripted nature of taking orders and transacting meals is worth noting, the critical part was the environment.
Because the mall is a chaotic and painfully noisy place.
Even now, just thinking about the noise, I'm getting uncomfortable.
This visceral reaction was underscored later that summer when, during a statewide 4H event that had hundreds of rowdy kids crammed into an auditorium for “spirit night”, I stepped outside to get away from the anxiety-inducing chaotic noise. I received a talking to from a chaperone for not participating (in the abhorrently insipid, incomprehensible, infuriating spirit night), and I remember candidly explaining that all the noise made me uncomfortable, referring to my job at a mall food court where I had similar issues. I recall the chaperone not really empathizing or grasping what I was dealing with, and I presume this singular interaction may have contributed to never trying to explore these issues further.
It’s a loud crowd, after all. Who the fuck is bothered by loud crowds?
Perhaps the social anxiety and the struggle with loud noises were always there, and it was the process of growing up that put me into more situations where they became noticeable. Either way, these are the two defining ASD-like symptoms that plague me to this day. Plague, I suppose, because unlike falling back on scripts, speed, and efficiency at a register or clerking at a library, there aren’t many coping mechanisms to combat crowds and chaotic noise -- other than avoiding them altogether, that is.
Of course, even if I had an official diagnosis and truly understood what I was dealing with, avoiding crowds and loud environments isn’t much of a life strategy. Eventually, I figured out the usefulness of headphones and calming music, and for a while, that became an essential tool while shopping (oh for fuck’s sake, must we talk about shopping?!). Similarly, to deal with a partner’s shopping excursions, I dove headfirst into digital art, finding an intense comfort in the process of designing, sketching, inking, coloring, and lettering comic strips. At the time, I understood the calm as a key creative component of slipping into a flow state -- and while that remains 100% true, I now also understand how essential that creative flow state was in coping with these stressful social situations.
The first time I properly noticed the compulsive, inescapable circle of rage was in my early-20s. Obviously, the rage had existed before -- today, I recall being a very angry child, but I have a hard time recalling why I was so angry. Maybe it had something to do with that somersault.
Anyhow, I was coming home from work to a house I shared with my at-the-time partner, and she had a friend over. The garage door was open, and my partner’s vehicle was backed into its usual spot. The spot for my car in the garage sat empty, but her friend’s vehicle was sitting in the driveway, blocking my access.
It is with zero hyperbole that I tell you the next part: this broke my fucking brain. And unlike the childhood events, this one is recent enough for extremely vivid recall.
I couldn’t park my car where it belonged. I couldn’t put my car away. Who was this person invading my space AND WHY WHERE THEY INVADING?! AND WHY -- FOR FUCK'S SAKE, WHY -- DID THEY PARK IN FRONT OF THE EMPTY GARAGE SPOT?! They could have parked in front of the other car, leaving access to the open space! Why did my partner not tell them to park on the other side? Why, upon SEEING THE EMPTY SPOT IN THE GARAGE, did they not realize I was coming home, would need to park my car, AND WOULD BE PULLING INTO THE EMPTY SPOT THEY JUST FUCKING BLOCKED?!
The rage is not the story here. The inescapable, circular thought-cycle isn’t the story, either. The real story was that while I was (silently) raging the fuck out, I could see fully outside myself, realizing the reality of the situation was, well, not really that big a deal.
After fully digesting the situation, I intellectually knew it wasn’t an issue.
And as if that circular thought-cycle of rage were an avalanche, I was still consumed by it.
Talk about feeling helpless.
I remember being stuck all night long. Even after the invader left and all the cars were put back where they belonged, the trauma of that first break loomed over me and is still fucking bugging me today, more than a decade later.
I've written about my big writing pet peeve before: clarity in premise. Most bad writing (or bad creative, in general) stems from a shitty premise, and if writers would just nail their premise at the start, things will usually work out just fine. In other words, it’s easier to fix a bad premise than it is to fix a bad novel that’s been written on a bad premise.
As I was chewing over the content of this blog, it slowly dawned on me how illuminating the very concept of a “premise pet peeve’ was to my whole fucking existence.
Let’s skip forward to one of my worst ASD traumas. I was working at the Orlando Sentinel, where I simultaneously was thriving in a creative position and suffocating in unstructured, poorly-planned, and badly-managed environments.
Saturdays were the absolute worst. I was hired as a video editor and the occasional photographer/videographer, but the nature of the position required working Saturdays and dealing with the dreaded Saturday assignment. So, follow along, and see if you hit a bingo:
Saturday events worthy of newspaper coverage are usually just that -- events. So, crowds and chaotic noise.
Always a new, unfamiliar location and environment.
Dealing with people, often in unscripted ways.
Invading other people’s personal space.
Having other people invade my personal space.
Working on deadline to accomplish a job that more than likely has a premise so nebulous, I don’t have any fucking clue what I’m supposed to be doing.
Sometimes I’d have a partner on these assignments, which could be helpful. Sometimes I flew solo. One of those solo excursions was on Earth Day, and the nebulous premise was covering the big annual Earth Day event at Lake Eola Park.
It was vendors, mostly. Animal rescues were pushing adoptions. I remember there was a tiny house on wheels -- probably the only thing that actually sparked my interest.
The premise for the newspaper is always the same: capture one good photo that tells the story of the event.
The premise of the event was clear as fucking mud. Was it a celebration? Of the earth? Was it just an outdoor market and Earth Day was an excuse? How could a single photo tell a story about an event that had no story?
My brain, once again, was fucking broken. This time, it was broken in all the worst possible ways, bombarded by all of my worst anxieties.
I made it through the assignment and was unsurprisingly crushed by my inability to turn in a piece of creative that satisfied my own standards -- and how could I? THERE WAS NO GODDAMN PREMISE! When I finally got home, I hid away in my room and literally pulled a blanket over my head for hours.
It was devastating.
And I would do it all over again in another seven days. And then another seven days, after that.
Today, I’m 37 years old. I’ve thrived during the pandemic because who the fuck really wants to be going out, anyhow? I have the best job I’ve ever had and have discovered a work-life balance that has allowed me to pursue creative projects and endeavors that have otherwise been unattainable. I’ve learned the value of structure and organization, and even now, as I write this in a darkened office, I have calming music playing against mesmerizing galactic visuals. I’m even blessed with a partner who is not only engaged, but fully-understanding and empathetic to all of these struggles and more.
One might even think the struggles of my past are firmly behind me.
And then, while working on that recent novel, I lost 600 words. 600 words that I knew I would rewrite, recover, and make even better. 600 words that I knew weren’t that big of a deal. But I lost them, and an old compulsive friend tapped me on the shoulder.
“… didja miss me?”
Like I said, I have the best job I’ve ever had. I work remotely and have the privilege of being the creative point-person for an entire tech company. It’s pretty cool. However, this past week was one of the worst I’ve ever had.
All because in this little throwaway video I was producing, the opening line of voiceover had absolutely nothing to do with the opening visuals.
The premises did not agree.
And it’s not like it mattered: the people who requested the video and had given this specific (premise-conflicting) instruction didn’t care. My boss didn't care. It was such a tiny detail that no one else would even notice.
But I did.
And once again, my old friend tapped me on the shoulder.
I screamed silently at my computer and jumped up, angrily pacing my room -- THE PREMISES DID. NOT. FUCKING. AGREE.
But no one cares! It doesn’t matter! I get paid the same, and I’m delivering the video ahead of schedule, as requested --
BUT THE VOICEOVER AND VIDEO LITERALLY CONTRADICT THEMSELVES.
It. Doesn’t. Matter. I delivered the first draft where everything aligned and made sense -- they didn't want that, which was their prerogative. My job is to assemble the video and move on to the next thing --
MAKE THE FUCKING THINGS AGREE. THIS IS YOUR JOB. YOUR WHOLE FUCKING JOB IS TO PRODUCE VIDEOS. AND THE VERY BEGINNING OF THIS VIDEO DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE --
But no one else sees it that way. I’m the only one (there’s that isolation again), and I’m the only one who cares that the premises don’t agree. And I know 100% it doesn’t matter. But that’s not how my brain works, and that’s how quickly my week turned into an emotionally exhausting shit show, my brain trapped in vicious cycle with no off-ramp and the only viable strategy to wait for it wear itself out.
Already, I'm working on new coping mechanisms and buffers to prevent a similar situation -- this has been my adult life in a nutshell, acknowledging the trigger issues and developing ways to compensate. I’m also unspeakably grateful for my remote status and the life-saving nature of email communications. Last week would have been exponentially worse without these things, and while I instinctively wear my heart on my sleeve, it’s much easier for me to put those blessed acting skills to use in a thoughtful, well-crafted email.
I first recognized all of this as shades of Autism Spectrum Disorder several years ago, back when it was still in vogue to call it Asperger's Syndrome -- again, looking at my father and my sibling, it’s easy to see the parallels. While I was chewing on the subject matter for this blog, I took a few of the self-diagnosing tests on embrace-autism.org. They all confirmed what I expected: mild neurodivergence with excellent masking skills. If you’re a grown-ass adult who’s curious, I recommend the CAT-Q test, which specifically addresses a lifetime of masking and coping mechanisms.
When I started writing this blog (Hydrate & Caffeinate, not this particular story), I wanted to put an honest, personal version of myself into these words. This is probably the most intimate I’ve ever gotten, and while I’m not holding up this mild-ASD self-diagnosis as a flashing neon label that defines who I am, in my entirety ... I am offering a peek behind the creative curtain and a quiet introduction to my compulsive, constant companion -- this thing that provides a guiding hand to ensure organized, productive structure and clarity of premise.
And this thing that will just as quickly turn on a dime, becoming a destructive, whirlwind of anxieties and inescapable thought-cycles, waiting to derail the most competent of coping mechanisms.
“... didja miss me?”
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