It explained that many autistic people have high functioning and low functioning days dependent on any triggers, stresses, biological changes etc that may have impacted them.
This has been quite impactful for me to consider as I always felt like I was going stir crazy when Peter's personality would completely change when he was on annual leave from work. The difference was so astounding that when I first noticed this in the early months of dating Peter, I thought that he was going on and off me. I'd often wonder what I might have done to upset him, then he'd be off work again a few weeks later and we'd be loved up again. However, as it turned out, Peter could not actually function in an intimate relationship and go to work at the same time. Too much demand. Emotional overload.
I am finding this in other areas of our lives too: he can't go to work and make parental decisions; he can't go to work and empathise with our child's emotional needs in school; he can't go to work and make plans for the future; he can't go to work and keep track of any family events at all.
When Peter is working he forcefully functions all day and he returns home a shell of himself. He sits in the quiet, scrolling mindlessly through his phone. He does not want to speak, he does not want to cook, he can't read, he can't have sex, he can just about exist. He returns home and stares a lot, his body is sluggish, he can not hold a conversation, he will keep falling asleep for a few minutes at a time as he sits with the children. At meal times, he eats and stares whilst his family connect all around him. He will eat dry foods mindlessly like crisps and crackers late into the evening, not realising how much he's eaten. He is completely unaware. He often can't remember his journey home from work.
Contrastingly, when he is not working, Peter is full of lively energy. He can not sit still. He has ideas of places to go and things to do. He has packed a family picnic before everyone else is dressed. He's impulsive. He wants to plan. Of course, he ignores vital, important details and his time management is still crazy, yet he functions. He listens to our daughter's problems although still prioritises solutions over empathy, he chats at the dinner table, he cooks. He's a different person in the same skin.
It made me ask myself, could I actually consider Peter to be high functioning after a hard day's work? Absolutely not. He is a zombie.
Peter and I no longer live together of course, but the article made me reflect on the times of low functioning and on my own self doubts at what I was seeing and experiencing with him.
From the reliable, dependable, chatty, friendly personality that I'd come to know, that his work colleagues know, who was this vacant man who used to sit at the dinner table with us at the end of each day? I know now that he was functioning on his basic settings because he was depleted and burnt out.
So many Cassandras are confused by the cognitive dissonance of their partners, unable to fathom how they can switch between two distinct personas. It's another layer to the cassandra syndrome- feeling like we're seeing and imagining things. But, we're not.
Peter used to describe me as an emotional roller coaster and he was right, I was. But I now find myself wondering if this was a side effect of his roller coaster- as I had to sit next to him in his carriage day after day, functioning at his best one minute, to barely functioning at all, up and down, around and around. Yet, he was too mind-blind to even notice. And as often our men don't look inward, they only see that we are to blame.
It's sad that he can not recognise his own limitations, get the support that he so clearly needs to enable him to be a better partner and parent. Autism isn't to blame for that, pride and ignorance is. I'd like to think that one day, he'll look back and wish he'd have committed to helping himself, but I'm not sure that he'll ever truly remember how much he needed help in the first place.
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