For many years, I've had dreams in which I am walking through a seemingly familiar building, often with a resemblance to the large, open studio spaces that I occupied as an art student; suddenly it becomes maze-like and unfamiliar. I start to hurry, perhaps late for a class, then to rush panic-stricken through the wrong doorways, up and down the wrong stairways. Sometimes the dreams hold a strong sense of menace, more than just the anxiety of being late or getting lost -- there is a real terror that I will never get out, never find my way clear.
More recently, there is less fear and panic in these dreams, and more a sense of resignation. "Ah yes, here I am again, lost in this maze of vaguely familiar passageways..." Have I come to accept that I'm not going to get to my original destination, the place I intended to go when I first started out? The dream is full of entropy, too many wrong turns to try to retrace my path, no way to get back to the start.
Tears came when I realized what had changed about this dream. I'm grieving for all the possible lives that won't be lived, all the desirable, attractive destinations I won't reach, no matter how frantically I chase through the hallways, stairwells, underground tunnels.
Dreams really are the keys to the locked rooms in our brains, and our hearts.
A friend, whose child also has a condition that attracts the label "special needs," shared with me a story, a way of thinking about what we're facing as parents. In this story, having a baby is likened to going on a trip. You're planning a vacation in France; everyone who's been there tells you how wonderful it is, what museums and cathedrals to see, how to use the Paris Metro, where to stay. You buy maps and guide books, and pack the clothes you'll need for sight-seeing in France. The flight is long, you get off the plane exhausted, but excited, ready to go and explore French culture and cuisine. You see a big sign that says "Welcome to Norway."
With Asperger's, you are more likely to have spent several days (years) trying to figure out why your French-English dictionary isn't helping you communicate. Why the guidebooks and maps don't get you anywhere. When you finally do see the big "Welcome to Norway" sign, you realize it wasn't just you, after all. You weren't incompetent at following maps. Your weren't really slow to learn French. It's all starting to make sense, and you can forgive yourself for not being able to find the Champs Elysee.
It might take awhile before you're truly ready to let go of the idea of the French holiday. Eventually you rekindle a sense of adventure, buy a sweater, new maps, a new dictionary. You didn't plan on Norway, but you're here now, and you will damn well make the most of it. Still, a part of you knows you will not see the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower. And yeah, you do have the right to grieve a little. Because it's not, in fact, just the Champs Elysee you have to relinquish, it's sleepovers, birthday parties, kids giggling and conspiring together, having a blast, growing up into themselves and away from the nest. You're letting go of a whole world of childhood experience that every expectant parents looks forward to.
So I open the locked door with my dream's key, and find myself in a hotel room where the names in the phone book have a lot of dots over the o's. I sit in that room for a very long time, and cry until I'm empty.
Then I put on my sweater, and go out in the streets that I have to myself; hardly any tourists in Norway. And I go look at the fjords. They don't have those in France, you know.
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