I hate it when I run out of denial. :(

And the drama continues.  I honestly do not like it when my life resembles a soap opera.  All things considered, I'd rather win the lottery.

I've had yet another blood test, which has turned out to be normal.  These tests are showing that I do not have an immune deficiency (think 'boy in the bubble').  Only they used to show that I do, and nobody ever simply stops having an immune deficiency.  And if they did, I would assume they would actually stop getting sick.  Last winter was horrible (see www.debsisland.blogspot.com any time from late November through spring).  This September, while they weather was being unseasonably warm, I developed a double ear and a double sinus infection.  It still seems to me like my immune system isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing.

My doctor is trying to figure out how to do a 'pneumonia titer'--a test to see if the pneumonia vaccine (to which I reacted horribly--the word 'frighteningly' wouldn't be too extreme) I got this year 'took'.  If I failed to develop antibodies, that's another piece of diagnostic evidence in favor of my having an immune deficiency.  But my doctor is just a gp, and he doesn't know what he's doing.  All he's got going for him is a tendency to believe that I'm telling the truth when I tell him something.

While that's going on, I am also trying to find a doctor (psychiatrist?  neurologist?) who will test me for autism.  So far, the two doctors to whom I've been referred are both no longer practicing.



I've gotten to the point where I've run out of denial.  I honestly tried to keep the denial going for as long as I possibly could.  And I did keep it going for an impressively long time.  But I can't do it any more.

I am autistic.

And I can't just be autistic and hide it and have a normal life.

After years and years of public school with no friends, jobs that last a few days, weeks, or (if I was lucky) months, churches full of people who remained strangers, friends who've disappeared from my life, I have to admit that it doesn't look as if one day I'm simply going to figure it all out and become popular.  Or even tolerated.

I have twenty-seven facebook friends now.  Basically my children, a couple of my children's friends, my husband, my sister, a sister-in-law who hardly speaks to me, a handful of cousins, and a few strangers with CVID.  That's it.

I've watched my kids get online and make friends.  My husband immediately started piling them up.  This is normal, which I am not.  It's normal to have a whole string of friends from your past--relatives, school buddies, work buddies, church buddies, neighbors, etc.  I have nobody except my immediate family--kids, husband, sister, parents.  That's it.  I have no past.

I really thought that if I put myself out there, and people got a chance to know me better, that maybe I'd have a few friends.  The last blog was also partially an attempt to do that.  But I have so many strikes against me--illness, poverty, a slight hearing problem, neurological problems that make it impossible for me to remember pictures of streets, or cars, or faces--which means that if I do run into anybody from my past, I don't recognize them, and/or don't hear them....I think my unreasonably high IQ is in some ways yet another liability.  I seem to have two options--to hang around with people whose IQs are far beneath mine, only to completely fail to fit in and become completely disinterested and bored anyway, or to hang around with people with IQs around my level, only to be considered retarded because I have no job, can't hear all of what's going on around me, and don't recognize anybody.  When you add on to all of this the cluelessness of an autistic person, well, statistics say I've accomplished something impressive in that I was able to find a man and reproduce--my odds of that were not good.  Driving a car is another accomplishment--a happy result of my stubborn refusal to accept defeat.  I've done reasonably well.  For an autistic person.  But expecting to make friends might be too much.

I won't go into details about the one facebook friendship that just ended for me.  Everything was fine, and then, out of the blue, suddenly it wasn't.  I think it might actually have been about what she said it was about--our (suddenly) conflicting religious beliefs.  Or maybe it was something else that, being autistically clueless, I'll never figure out.  It's hardly the first time this has happened.  I find myself wondering what it must be like to have so many friends that you can throw them out instead of just being grateful that somebody (almost anybody) would talk to you.

These people were also my husband's friends, and my children's friends.  My children don't have a lot of friends to begin with--they're just starting to make friends now that they're old enough to go out into circles of people outside of my tiny circle.  I'm glad they're getting out there finally.  I've worried about what effect my isolation will have on them.



I've been keeping busy lately.  I've been cleaning the house, putting up all the Christmas decorations (yes, even the Christian-themed ones), playing the piano--started another piece of music.  I'm not sure what it is yet.  It might be another sonata.  I get up in the morning, do chores, and keep busy all day.  This morning I cleaned the ashes out of the wood stove, hung the Christmas lights--as long as I keep busy, I won't get too depressed, right?  After all, we wouldn't want this blog to a a documentary of what it's like to sink into a serious depression.

I'll see my family for Christmas--sister and parents.  I know I'm lucky to have them--some people don't have anybody.  I'll see my husband's family, probably, but I won't enjoy it.  They don't want me there.

I won't be going anywhere else this Christmas season.