by David Finch
After we fell in love I threw caution to the wind and began navigating uncharted social territory (“Sure, I’d like to attend a hippie baby shower. Tell me, will I have to eat the food?”). But I figured that I could force myself to enjoy parties as long as Kristen was there. After all, regardless of where I was, if Kristen was there, I was good. She made me feel so included, so present in social situations. So . . . not lonely. Standing next to her, I would be introduced to everyone in the room, one at a time. She would invite me to share funny stories. She would merge me rather gracefully into other people’s conversations. “Oh, you’re into jazz? Dave and I were just talking about his favorite drummer . . .” I was no longer that weird guy skulking around behind the fern; I was Kristen’s boyfriend, and it was my pleasure to meet you.
By the time we were married, I had come to rely on Kristen to get me through every party and family get-together until we could finally go home, almost like a drug. When she no longer saw the fun in that, we started having problems. She grew tired of carrying every conversation for me, and without her help I would become uncomfortable and want to go home. She couldn’t take the awkward moments I would create—fetching our shoes and coats as more guests arrived, for instance, or sitting by myself, refusing to socialize. We reached a point where if I went anywhere without her—even to the mall—I would feel not unlike a provincial traveler lost in a foreign city without his guide. And when we were out together, I knew she felt as though she were walking across a minefield: Something. Is going. To happen.
After six years, it was enough already. I wanted to be better than that, for her sake. I wanted her to be able to enjoy our relationship.
As luck would have it, my friend B.J. happened to be getting married at the end of June. I was happy for him, but I also couldn’t get over what a perfect opportunity his wedding would be to show Kristen my commitment to bringing back the fun. Call me egocentric.
It helped that he was getting married in Charleston, South Carolina. When the wedding invitation arrived, Kristen asked her mom to keep the weekend clear to watch Emily and Parker. “Mommy’s going on vacation!” she said, marking her calendar. Her message was crystal clear: Mommy needs to have fun.
Unbeknownst to Kristen—had she known what I was up to, she probably would have told me to chill out and stop obsessing—I decided to approach our vacation as an experiment with two objectives. The first was to stop making things less enjoyable, and the second was to actually make things more fun for her. It was a lot to cram into a short vacation, but like anyone with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, I tend to overpack.
Most people might have preferred to fly to Charleston, but Kristen was perfectly happy to spare me the agony and make a road trip of it.
Knowing how much they would miss us, and how much we would miss them, it was incredibly difficult to say good-bye to the kids when we left. But once we got on the road, Kristen found her vacation energy and I renewed my determination to be fun. When we reached the interstate about an hour east of home, Kristen plugged in my iPod, kicked off her shoes, and read me the menu of snacks available in our travel cooler. We belted out tunes karaoke-style as we buzzed past the Chicago skyline and started in on the snacks somewhere in Indiana. Kristen was in a great mood and my only responsibility was to keep it that way. I hadn’t consciously done that in six years, so it felt both good and unfamiliar—like working out for the first time after years of putting it off. I didn’t go overboard trying to be fun—the drive wasn’t saturated with corny jokes and slide whistles. I just tried to keep myself from being the opposite of fun.
We stopped to eat somewhere in Indianapolis. By that point in the drive—the four-hour mark—Kristen was in an even better mood than when we left. I’d had exactly the same number of negative, anxious thoughts as I would have had in any four-hour period, but I had chosen not to dwell on them (this was hard but so worth the trouble), and I had chosen not to voice them. I had also had the exact same number of happy thoughts, and I’d made the same number of lighthearted observations about the things happening around us that I normally would have made (“How do sneakers get wrapped around those overhead power lines? Do you think the utility crews go out and install the shoes themselves? Is there a guy radioing back to his foreman requesting a pair of size elevens?”). The difference was that I chose to dwell on those things, because positive things kept Kristen in a good mood. Reinvesting all that energy kept our conversations positive and exploratory, rather than depressing and angry sounding. It was enjoyable.
Over lunch, I thought about the fact that all of our lives cannot be spent avoiding the negative things. We had to be able to talk to each other about things that were bothering us. We had to be able to give a voice to our frustration from time to time. But not right then. Not on vacation. Not during my experiment.
It was late in the evening when we arrived in Greenville, South Carolina. Charleston was only a few hours away, but we were tired and happy and decided that Greenville would be a good place to spend the night. We had been in stride all day—not a single freak-out from me and two of the most relaxed bare feet I had seen in years resting on the dashboard above the glove box. I had remained faithful to my experiment, and I’d stumbled upon a very important discovery: Kristen is perfectly capable of having her own fun, and if I prevent myself from derailing it, then she stays happy. Is that what she means when she tells me to stop worrying about stuff and just let it be?
As we got ready for bed in the hotel room, I made my second discovery of the evening.
“Kristen, did you happen to pack my syringe before we left?”
“No,” she said. “I thought you packed it with your stuff.”
“Hmm,” I said calmly, though my head was starting to stir a little bit. “That’s a shame. I forgot to pack it.”
Kristen stood next to me, finding herself on eggshells for the first time in almost twenty-four hours. She had every reason to feel that way. Normally, this would have become a highly dramatic situation, even though I probably didn’t even need the syringe.
Three weeks before the trip, I had had my wisdom teeth removed. I would have preferred to wait until after our trip, but the pain of my impacted teeth warranted an immediate extraction. The holes were stitched up, my mouth was stuffed with gauze, and I was given very clear instructions: “Use this special syringe to flush the sockets out with water after every meal for two to three weeks to avoid any complications such as dry sockets.” Dry sockets? Good God, that sounds terrible. I followed the instructions exactly every day for almost three weeks, until that day.
“I’m sure it will be fine, Dave,” Kristen said as reassuringly as possible. “You shouldn’t have any problems at this point. I think most people stop using the syringe after a couple of weeks.”
“Right.” But the doctor said two to three weeks. Wait, don’t tell her that. This was exactly the sort of thing that would send me into a tailspin and more than ever, I needed to prevent it. I pretended not to care at first, but an hour later I was lying in bed, unable to sleep. I didn’t even know what dry sockets were, yet they were all I could think about.
“Kristen,” I whispered, waking her up. “I’m going to run out and find a Walgreens.”
She mumbled something that ended with “drive careful” and went back to sleep.
I hated myself for worrying about something as stupid as a syringe on our first day of vacation, but I figured it would be best to just find one and buy it so I could get the matter off my mind. I found two twenty-four-hour pharmacies within ten minutes of our hotel, and neither had the kind of syringe I needed, so I returned to our room and tried to calm myself down. Waking Kristen up to tell her about the fruitless search would not have been uncharacteristic, but I knew a vacation was all about doing things differently. The stores didn’t have a syringe, I thought. Kristen can’t snap her fingers and make one appear, so why wake her up and bother her with it? I climbed into bed, curling up behind her, and as I kissed her cheek, he
r mouth curled into a little smile. So worth it. Day two starts in a few hours. I fell asleep praying, asking God to stand by me and guide me as I worked on being fun.
The next morning, I awoke with unbelievable confidence in my transformation (it certainly helped that Kristen woke up, rolled over, and held me tight for a while). By midmorning, confidence had turned into near-cockiness; I was cracking jokes and taking turns leading our conversations. It felt like friendship. As on day one, a tremendous amount of effort was required to pull this off. It didn’t feel natural, but it did feel like an accomplishment that we had been talking for hours and I hadn’t annoyed Kristen once.
When we arrived in Charleston, we had a little bit of time to walk around and get acquainted with the town before B.J.’s wedding began. We ate lunch and did some window shopping, and as we strolled from storefront to storefront, Kristen took my hand and held it; it tingled as if she were holding it for the first time.
The wedding ceremony was beautiful, of course—held in a timeless old church that we were convinced was haunted.
“So beautiful,” Kristen whispered during the vows.
“And so spooky,” I replied.
“Oh my God. Totally.”
Then it was on to the reception, which was held not far away, in the decidedly not-haunted South Carolina Aquarium.
I had little time after the ceremony to regroup and prepare for the remainder of our evening, but to my own surprise, I didn’t feel as though I needed to. Positive energy, I was learning, is rather sustainable. I figured that a couple glasses of wine would help, too.
I stood in line at the bar, watching from across the lobby as Kristen introduced herself to an elderly couple standing near a large fish tank. Though there were swarms of strangers milling around, and sharks swimming overhead, all I saw were Kristen’s smile and her eyes and her beautiful hair. She’s here with me and having fun! Whether she knew it or not, Kristen didn’t have to worry about me melting down or begging her to leave early. She wasn’t going to have to deal with me hovering behind her or clinging to her side all night, as I had made a conscious choice to be fully autonomous during the reception.
Kristen saw me and gave a little wave, and I was transported back to an evening that I had spent with her when we were first dating. Her best friends, Valerie and Meredith (who would later become our roommate), were getting together after work, and Kristen had sent me an e-mail at lunchtime saying she’d love for me to come along. I just love the time that I get to spend with you, she had written.
I flipped out.
Andy and I were supposed to hang out after work, but I called him and canceled. I started organizing things on my desktop: lining up the edges of the papers, straightening the telephone cord, repeatedly tapping the keys on my calculator. Because they had nothing better to do, people in other cubicles had the nerve to answer their phones and talk to one another. Such distraction, while I struggled to pull together a mental game plan for my upcoming evening. A night out with friends. With her friends. Okay. No problem. Four people, three of them talking a lot. Figure we’ll meet around eight thirty, maybe stay out until midnight or so . . . I should really need only about an hour’s worth of stories and maybe a handful of wisecracks . . . that would be more than enough. What could I do tonight for an hour?
I opened my lab notebook to jot down some ideas for anecdotes. Fun anecdotes, to be specific. Spotting a guy at the gym yesterday—no good ending. Dropping my glasses in the toilet—strong stuff. Getting chased by a goose last week—good for a few minutes, will work in a pinch.
In my mind, I envisioned the four of us sitting in a pancake restaurant. (Why pancakes? I don’t know.) I imagined Valerie telling a story from their college days, her recollection furthered by my line of thoughtful questioning. Meredith and Kristen would exchange knowing glances, silently saying to each other, “Such insightful questions! This guy is the real deal.” Yeah. I can make it work. I have to make it work, there’s no other way.
Satisfied that I had enough material to be good company for her and her friends, I began writing my response to Kristen, a note that took me close to an hour to complete. The first draft included a few drawings to supplement the jokes—dumb little stick figures that I could have attached to the e-mail as JPEGs. I took a moment to read it over, trying to imagine her reactions, and though I couldn’t gauge precisely how she would react, I did have the good sense to remove the jokes and drawings altogether. I will seem like a normal guy, busy at work, if I keep this short. The final draft read something like “That sounds great! Your friends are so much fun.” Then I added, “How’s your day going?” before clicking “Send” and downing a fistful of Advil.
The evening with Valerie and Meredith went perfectly well; I’d have given my performance an A+. Kristen would have, too. I was ecstatic that night. I knew that since they were Kristen’s best friends, I needed to earn their approval—not unlike how a presidential candidate needs to win Iowa. No one that I know can explain why it is so important; you just have to win it to be successful. Without the approval of her friends—the Asshole Identification Council, as they were—Kristen might have begun to doubt what she saw in me, her interest in me would have evaporated, and then I would have lost my best friend and my girlfriend. I would have been forced to return to my pre-Kristen life, which was rather lonely.
There is a clear distinction between being alone and feeling lonely. Being alone is not so bad. Most often, I’d prefer to be alone. It’s peaceful with no one around. I can enter the world of the mind—a decidedly more comfortable place to live, since I am in complete control there. I can dream, reflect, ponder, fantasize, or just replay images and sounds in a constant loop. It’s my world, my way, and because no one has access to it, it can’t be contaminated, altered, or ruined. It’s not a lonely state, being alone. To me, being alone is quite comforting.
Feeling lonely, on the other hand, is the worst. Logic would have it that one feels the sting of loneliness the most when one is all alone, with no one around. That’s the loneliness we all know so well, the loneliness that appears when we’re by ourselves, wrapping its strong arm around us, providing us, at least, with some company.
But there’s a different side of loneliness, one that I see very often, and it’s much more sinister. Far from consoling, this side of loneliness savors every moment of our abandonment. I see this side of loneliness when I’m out with a group of people without a prayer of being able to relate to any of them. Loneliness is being the only guy in the pub who might honk like a goose at the bartender, and knowing you’re that guy. Worse than not fitting in, however, is finding someone you like and annoying them. This is part of the Asperger’s package—our exuberance around people we like sometimes pushes them away. Ironic.
As a result, I’m often conflicted about going out with people. Every friendly get-together feels like the evening when my performance could make or break the relationship, and the pressure freaks me out. For neurotypicals, going Out seems to involve looking forward to a great evening of sharing, gabbing, and going with the flow. They’ll enjoy themselves in clothes that look good on them without fretting over their itchy collars and cuffs as they raise their glasses and lean forward into their tables. They’ll talk about sports, husbands, about other times they’ve been Out together. In short, going Out seems to be all about being in a moment together and having a great time. It sounds horrible.
I like In. I can’t screw up In. Stay in, shut in, turn in. Unlike the people whom I meet when I’m Out, I get all of my jokes. I don’t have to explain to myself why a horse driving a high-speed train would be a riot. It’s easier to internally recite a phrase I heard a decade ago than it is to have a conversation with someone, and sadly, it’s sometimes more satisfying. Why go to a party and suffer overwhelming real-life anxiety when I can sit on the edge of my bed and imagine myself being the most happening guy in the room? “When the boat capsized,” I imagine myself saying, looking out into a sea of admiring faces, �
��I knew that I’d be okay, but I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t swim back under the bow and rescue those very frightened orphans, many of whom I’d taught to read. Who wants more champagne?”
The problem, of course, is that in real life, I’m not suave. I haven’t rescued any orphans, nor have I taught any to read. I am difficult to talk to sometimes. And you know what? I thought, waiting in line at the bar at the South Carolina Aquarium. Oh well. That doesn’t have to mean I can’t enjoy myself when I’m around people. Socializing wasn’t my strong suit, true, but I realized I could find a way to have fun and be fun at parties by contributing in my own way. My contributions wouldn’t look like everyone else’s, but that didn’t necessarily matter. I think I’m onto something here.
Prior to my diagnosis, such a revelation would not have been possible. Perhaps that’s what a diagnosis does: it helps you to understand that you have unique operating parameters—unique limitations and preferences. Knowing why you don’t naturally fit in alleviates the shame and embarrassment. (That’s my brain, folks. Can’t help it. Who wants more champagne?) My diagnosis gave me an explanation as to why I was relatively alone in my circumstances whenever I went places, and that knowledge somehow made me feel less lonely. Best of all, I wouldn’t have to use a persona anymore. I could just be me. These people don’t realize how interesting I am! I need to show them.
Determined to keep the magic rolling, I spent a good amount of time at the reception introducing myself to people and talking with them. There were stretches of time when Kristen got pulled into other conversations, and I consciously prevented myself from clinging to her. Let her talk. Stand here with B.J.’s coworkers as if you need nothing from her.
