My in-laws just lost a family member to a very unexpected and unexplainable suicide. The tragedy is obviously beyond words. Caregivers and kind souls from counselors to religious leaders to community first responders weigh in on the heightened risk of accidental or irrational suicide on a regular basis, but never more loudly than during the holidays when people are most vulnerable. Yet, all the autopsies and frank discussions about the person who looses his life at his own hand, will never completely explain why a life was lost. Drugs and alcohol, an argument with a loved one, a loss of house and home- none of the normal passages of live (no matter how devastating) should never be enough for anyone to end their life. That’s the rational side of logic and thought. Suicide isn’t rational or logical. It’s cryptic and stealth. 

I have looked at suicide with more than morbid curiosity. I know more about it than most people. I imagine most of the people reading my blog do, too. You see, there is a positive correlation between suicidal thoughts and ASD. Every time I meet with a group of Aspies, I can guarantee I will eventually hear terrible suicide talk. I’m not alone in thinking ASD’s comorbid issues lead too many in our community down the sad road to suicide. We are more prone to loneliness, poor self-esteem, residual effects of bullying, dissatisfaction with quality of life tied to employment and education struggles, relationship qualms, and then some. Fact is, no matter how well a person with ASD is doing, there will be emotional and psychological sharks infesting our waters.

The religious holidays of December have passed, but New Year’s is calling and its message is often misconstrued to mean if you aren’t part of a party, you aren’t part of anything. As fraught with lies as it is, the message is strong like a barnacle. Once it grabs hold, loads of fast scraping is needed.

I’m not in a good enough mood to write about something as bad as suicide, so I’m turning the topic over to Ginger Voight, a bestselling author and screenwriter who handles the subject very well in her ehow column and in her blog. Check them out (and take a peek at her books- they are fun rubenesque romance novels that make a fun New Year's Eve read!)

If the New Year’s Eve hustle is hurting you or anyone you know- call a first responder or depression help line NOW. And remember, the anybody who’s anybody will have fun on New Year’s idiom, is a crock of cow pies. There is nothing special about New Year’s except for the new calendar it brings.

When we talk about traveling, the norm is to focus on the stress, OCD, & anxiety trials of the journey along with all the valuable discussions that encourage some creative and well-worn supports worked around each issue. But let’s take the discussion a bit further, into the grimy and often stealthy world of germs! Whether you are traveling to family, friends, or a hotel, germs exist and thrive quietly waiting for you to touch the light switch, use the remote control, or walk on the floor. Yup, no matter how clean a family or place may be, some germs will be waiting to take their own trip, on your clothes and your body. For most people, this is more a gross nuisance, than a big worry, but because people with ASD tend to have weak immune systems, even the most mundane germ - one a different family or person may easily live with and be immune to - can wreck havoc in the bloodstream. Think cat allergies. Some folks can have a house full of felines; some can’t be around a person who has been around a person who fed a kitty a treat. Follow the metaphor and imagine checking into a hotel where herds of wild tigers named MRSA and E-Coli sit ready to pounce and devour the weak immune system. 


Disgusting.

Is there a need to go into full germ-be-gone assault mode when visiting Grandma’s for tea, or using a public restroom? Probably not. Common sense cleanliness like hand washing and using paper towels to touch switches and other vulnerable places should suffice. But when a trip takes you to a place cleaned by strangers or folks you think might not be up to the task of above average cleaning, take some sensible precautions. 

This blog by Huffington Post’s Smartertraveler offers some simple tips you can easily follow for your safety and peace of mind. Bottom line~ don’t be afraid of germs. You’re bigger and smarter than all of them and so is your disinfectant. :-) 

Change will happen. That’s an inevitable and 100% reliable truth. People with AS will not like change. That too, is a 100% reliable truth. I have no idea why change is so difficult for my peers and me. I can absolutely wrap my intellect around the certain passing of time and situations, but I can’t wrap even a pinkie around why I can’t handle it very well. Seriously, I can’t even deal with small changes very well. Example: I get upset when the ice cream flavor I specifically went to get from the creamery, is sold out.  If the flavor I want is gone, everything else, even my second favorite kind, sounds absurd and completely wrong. No, I won’t pitch a big fit… at least not on the outside, but on the inside, I’m screaming like a two year old. Oh sure, people will know I’m unhappy. I’ll make some verbal complaints and will likely argue with the ice cream server and the importance of keeping stock up and customers happy, but the major hissy fit will be inside and it will feel like a bowling ball is chasing a half a dozen little steel balls through a pinball machine. Other thoughts will get crushed. Planning my next move, next step, next statement, will move to autopilot where God only knows what might happen. My entire day will be ruined, possibly the next day or several days, too. And this is all a reaction to sold out ice cream. Big changes are shattering.

I just found out my dad’s only sibling is moving into a nursing home; the very thing my uncle had been vehemently trying to avoid for over a year now. He’s a farmer by birth and by trade. And like me and many in our family, a man who looks at change with disdain. My uncle would have farmed every day of his life, if he had had the choice, but his wife’s unexpected illness convinced him he had to leave the fields and the big green machines to provide the care my aunt needed lest she be moved to a caregiving facility. Big change had come and took its place at the front of the table. Yet, my uncle persevered. He carried on as my aunt grew more ill, as the crops were planted and harvested by a new farmer, as his big brother, my father, never recovered from a fall. But eventually the tick tock of time threw out another change. Last year, Uncle’s 88 year-old bones quit being good stewards for his body. His stomach started rejecting his favorite foods. His mind started wandering father away. And his hope disappeared.

Every one of us will recognize a story like this. We’ve heard such a tale, lived it or witnessed as someone else went through it. But it won’t make our turn at this kind of change any bit easier.

I knew this day was coming, or if not this day, then something else painfully inevitable. Yet, I can’t accept the change as natural, normal or anything else of the sort. I’m screaming inside my mind while tears give my silent screams a voice. This is one of those times when I can both understand a change and yet do everything in my power to deny it’s happening. I’d like to be able to write down a list of the support strategies I use in times like this, but I don’t have a list of things I can do to ease the trauma. The only thing that helps me is my favorite obsessive interest- word play. Just as my special interest in the written word helps in times of stress, confusion or depression, it helps now. So I write and I read and I make up stories or rewrite memories of old times to keep my mind on things it can control. And I am calmed. Not healed, but calmed and that’s a feeling I can use to pull me through the inevitable change I hate so very much.