One of the last things I learned about when I became aware that I am, in fact, autistic, are the problems autistic people have with self-care. Now, I can tell you that in some ways, being as germaphobic as I am is a real blessing because that is why many of these self-care tasks actually get completed. If I wasn't so finicky about cleanliness, being a hygienic person would be much more of a problem for me. All my adult life, I have had to complete self-care tasks in a certain way in order for them to get done at all, or in order for them to get done in a timely manner, depending on what the task is. I know that if you are an allistic, or a non-autistic person, you are probably wondering what exactly makes self-care so difficult. This is why.
Let's take a moment now to talk about various self-care tasks.
Showering 🚿 Steps Involved:
That is over SIXTY steps (because some of these steps are actually two or three steps) that need to be completed in order to take a shower every night. Doing that EVERY single NIGHT is EXHAUSTING. I take a shower immediately after dinner every single night in order to ensure that my shower is completed in a timely fashion. If I didn't do that autistic inertia would get in my way. I don't use a hair dryer, so I like to shower several hours before going to bed. I don't use a hair dryer because:
The other night, my mom came knocking on the door after I had already taken my clothes off because she had taken her glasses off & couldn't remember where she put them. And she couldn't see to find them. She wanted ME to find them for her of course. I told her I couldn't because I had already taken my clothes off in preparation for my shower. Putting my clothes back on after I had taken them off just wasn't possible due to my executive functioning difficulties & autistic inertia. Asking a neurotypical person to do this might annoy her or him, but for an autistic person like myself, putting my clothes back on after I had taken them off would make it so my shower take many more hours to get completed. And following the routine of getting my shower done by a certain time is EXTREMELY important to me. If I wasn't so germaphobic, my shower might not get done at all with such an interruption, but I have certain rules that I follow. They are:
If my dad hadn't been home & able to find my mom's glasses for her, I know this would've turned into an ugly fight. The entire mindset of not being able to put clothes back on after taking them off is a foreign concept for neurotypical people & is one of the many things that make living in a neurotypical world so stressful & so frustrating. Especially when those people just tell me I'm strange & they don't take the time to understand the way I live or WHY I do the things I do. By the way, my mom's glasses ended up being in her bathrobe pocket, a location I would've NEVER looked in, even if I HAD tried to find them. Childhood Difficulties: Growing up, my dad continued to wash my hair in the kitchen sink until a very old age because I just couldn't tolerate doing it on my own. My mom told the neuropsychiatrist who evaluated me for autism that washing my hair when I was a child was incredibly difficult because I would scream if even one droplet of water made it into my eye. Eventually, my parents forced me to wash my own hair in the shower & that was so, so, SO HARD. And it caused so many fights & so many meltdowns. Putting my head under the shower water felt no different than as if someone was pouring rubbing alcohol over my head. And then it seeped under my eyelashes & into my eyes despite the fact my eyes were squeezed shut. No joke. As time went on, I came up with the coping mechanism of using a face cloth to shield my face from the water & that is something I still use to this day. This is why I decided to call my blog Splashed With Water. I talk more about it in my first blog post, if you would like to go back & read it. Rather than boring you, by giving you the step-by-step breakdown of the rest of the self-care tasks, I'll just talk briefly about the following: Dressing 👚 I have to get dressed the second I wake up because with autistic inertia, it will get to be two o'clock in the afternoon & I'll STILL be in my pajamas. Brushing Teeth 🪥 Until I was in middle school or high school, I used a children's strawberry-flavored toothpaste. My mom forced me to change to a normal "adult" toothpaste at some point around the teenage years. Because it's what normal people use. Until I got more used to it, the minty flavor made it feel like my mouth was literally on fire. 🔥 And I just had to live with it. When I was talking about this during my autism evaluation, my evaluating neuropsychiatrist asked me why I couldn't use a non-mint flavored toothpaste. My response? My mom told me I had to use mint because that's what EVERYONE uses, that's what "normal" people use. I always felt like I was abnormal & needed to force myself to be "normal" in order to be accepted. And my efforts didn't work because I STILL wasn't accepted. I still can't use mouthwash, even though my dentist recommends it because the mint is too strong & it burns my mouth. Mint is a flavor that autistic people tend to be way oversensitive to. Now it all makes sense to me, but my mom still makes fun of me because I adamantly dislike mint-flavored anything, including ice cream & chocolate. How could someone dislike certain flavors of ice cream & chocolate? 🤷🏻♀️ Using The Toilet 🚽 Due to autistic inertia & executive functioning difficulties, I have great difficulty getting up to use the toilet if I'm not already in the standing position, so if I happen to be in the standing position, I literally act like it's a bathroom emergency when it isn't because I know that if I didn't do that, I'm not going to use the bathroom until I take a shower that night, many hours later. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but it's absolutely true. When I was a child, I wouldn't flush the toilet after using it because I was completely terrified of the sound it made. I also wouldn't use the bathroom if my mom happened to be doing laundry at that time. The spontaneous & LOUD sound that the washer & dryer made would scare the living daylights out of me!
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And This Is The Story: The Week Of August 28th: One morning, my mom was coming home from walking one of our dogs when she heard scuttling coming from underneath the hood of my car. Thinking there must be an animal in there, she asked my dad to investigate. When my dad opened the hood of my car, there was a chipmunk inside. He yelled at it & scared it away. 🐿️ Sunday, September 3rd: My brother, who was home last weekend for my birthday, was waiting to take a walk with my mom & one of our dogs when he heard scuttling coming from underneath the hood of my car. Knowing that there was a chipmunk in there just a few days prior, he told our mom about it. She gave him my car keys & asked him to get rid of it. When he opened up the hood, there were at least four chipmunks in there. This time, the chipmunks were staring at him, seemingly unafraid & unwilling to move. My brother, afraid of the chipmunks, grabbed a broomstick from the garage to try to get them to leave. They scurried out. My dad also put some mothballs inside a little KFC takeout container which he put inside there to deter chipmunks from making the hood of my car their home in the future. 🐿️ 🐿️ 🐿️ 🐿️ Tuesday, September 5th: A couple days later, I was driving to & from my dog walking clients' houses & thought to myself, "There is a really strange smell in the car." Not confident enough in my ability to recognize the unpleasant smell of mothballs, that night, I asked my dad if the smell of the mothballs he put in the hood of the car could possibly effect the smell of the interior of the car. He replied that that is certainly a possibility & one that he thought of, too. Wednesday, September 6th: The next day, my dad told me that he investigated the smell inside my car & it's definitely not mothballs. He smelt the hood of the car & it doesn't smell. The interior of the car did smell though, so he asked me if I spilt anything inside the car, even if it was water. I told him that I definitely didn't spill anything in the car. The only thing I ever regularly consume in the car is water & it's always in a very tightly sealed water bottle that I'm sure didn't spill. I said to him, "I wonder if Mom drove the car & spilt something in it without telling us." That was the only thing I could think of because I know my mom has a tendency to spill things in cars. Then, I went on to say that it was a very strange coincidence that a couple of days after we found chipmunks in the hood of my car, the interior of the car smells. My dad agreed. I was pretty certain that the smell had to do with chipmunks & not with a spill. Friday, September 8th:
It was a super hot & humid day & I was driving to & from my dog clients' houses again. Between walking my own dog & walking my clients' dogs, I was super hot & sweaty. So, I put the car's air conditioner on maximum strength. I then started to notice the unpleasant smell in my car getting significantly worse. A thought went through my head: What if that smell isn't mothballs & there's actually a dead chipmunk lying next to the vents in the hood of my car?! NO, NO, NO! That better not be the case! That better not be! Well, I totally forgot to mention this to my dad by the time I got home. The reason why? The largest rainstorm I've ever driven in happened that afternoon on my drive home. Super stressful drive. It came on so suddenly & without any warning. One moment it was cloudy & the next, it was like I was driving through the middle of a hurricane. There was so much rain that I thought the water was gonna swallow up my car with me inside of it. I could barely see & I didn't think it was safe to pull over either because I didn't think anyone would see me if I did. Saturday, September 9th: The next morning, when I was about to take my dog for his walk, I noticed that the hood of my car was open. So, I asked my dad if he was still investigating the smell. Not surprisingly, he pointed to the backside of my vents & said, "There's a dead chipmunk in there, but I can't see it. I tried looking with the flashlight on my phone & can't see it, but I know it's in there." I KNEW IT. I asked him what we're gonna do about it. Do I have to drive around with a dead chipmunk inside the hood of my car for the rest of the time I drive that car? And most importantly, how are we gonna get the smell to go away? His response? We're not gonna do anything about it because if we can't see it, we can't get rid of it. It will stop smelling. Eventually. The most surprising thing he said though? The chipmunk was probably sick & dying & went in there because it was a nice, quiet place for it to die alone. Yeah, right. 🤦🏻♀️ When I told my mom about my chipmunk situation, she Googled what to do about a dead chipmunk inside the hood of your car. I mean, what else should the queen of Google do? An article she came across said that it can take many months for the smell to go away on its own & it suggested purchasing something called a dead mouse deodorizer. We purchased that from Amazon. 🐿️ Sunday, September 10th: The next afternoon, I had to drive to the next town over to meet my new cat sitting client. I had just barely left home when the world's most horrible smell came over me. I had walked my dog just before this, so yes, the A/C was on. And due to the humidity, it was on maximum. I quickly opened both back windows & put them as far down as possible. I seriously thought I was gonna vomit. The smell was a gazillion times worse than it had ever been before. I was so glad it hadn't started raining yet or I don't know what I would've done. I probably would've died. Or come close to it. By the way, my dad's story changed. Now, he told me that my brother only saw three out of the four chipmunks scurry away last weekend. One of them disappeared. That makes a lot more sense. A chipmunk did not in fact choose its dying place to be behind the vents inside the hood of my car. So, that means one of two things likely happened:
Sensory Sensitivities: Now, let me take a moment to tell you about the open windows in my car, as I mentioned above ↑. I can't tolerate open windows in a car, in a bus, in a ferry, in anything that is moving pretty much. Blowing air, breezes, wind, etc. They all bother me SO much. Convertibles, open air jeeps, etc.? Forget it! That's why I opened my back windows & not my front windows. You know when kids are little & they sit in front of a fan, going, "Ahhhhhhhhhh..." because they love how the fan changes the sound of their voices? I never did that because that would require me to sit in front of a fan. Sitting in front of a fan meant air blowing in my face. Nope, nope, & nooooope! I even had trouble in college with fans. The dorms when I was an underclassman were not air conditioned, so we depended on fans to keep the room cool in the warmer months. That was a problem for someone like me who is intolerant of fans. Also, I have all the vents in my car turned away from the driver's seat so that no air will blow on me while I'm driving. During times where I'm really hot, I have turned them back towards me briefly, just until I cool down before turning them away again. In fact, one time when my dad drove my car, he wondered why he was so hot & then he realized that the reason why was because all of the vents were turned away from the driver's seat! 💨 Monday, September 11th: Last night, a very close friend of mine took me out to dinner for my birthday. Just what I needed. I texted her the evening before to ask her if she could pick me up. I had no clients yesterday, so if I didn't have to drive to dinner, I wouldn't have to drive at all that day. Breathing in that horrible, vomit-inducing stench right before sitting down to dinner? I'd rather not. I mean, there's no good time for that, but right before a meal is an especially bad time for that. Tuesday, September 12th: I had three clients I needed to drive to today & I could barely smell the stench in my car. Could the stench have not been there at all & I'm just imagining it? Quite possibly. I'm still not convinced that this is the end though. There were days that the smell wasn't as bad & then it got bad again. I guess we'll just have to wait & see. Many autistic people have sensitivities to smell. Luckily, I am not one of them. But, being that I am so sensitive to blowing air, my sensory sensitivities did play a factor into how I am surviving this chipmunk situation. And that, everyone, is my story about autism & chipmunks. 🐿️ |
AuthorHello! My name is Kim, I didn't know I was autistic until I was in my thirties, & this is my story. Categories
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