Conflict resolution

I went to Greenock on Saturday evening.  The plan was to have a few drinks with my cousin, see his kids and generally have a bit of a laugh.

The kids were going to spend the night at their granddad's place, so after seeing them again, we were going to have complete peace.  I was even going to be able to sleep in one of their beds, rather than on the sitting room couch for once.  It was shaping up to be a great night.

And it was great, at first.  Joe, Pauline and I had a laugh, had a few drinks, insulted each other, played a couple of games, watched some TV - all the usual stuff.

And then, at around 2AM, it was just me and Joe.  And that's where it all went wrong.

We got talking about autism.  I can't remember how the subject came about - I think I'd started telling him about the upcoming venture with Kobi from Fixers.  But then, he cut me off and told me that I didn't have autism.  He wouldn't even concede that it was a matter of personal belief or anything like that.  As far as he was concerned, it wasn't an opinion, but a statement of fact.  He had decided that I just don't have the condition, that it was all just a cop-out and that was it.

Actually, "cop-out" was clearly a key term, because he used it three times in the resulting conversation, although I never could figure out what I was supposed to be copping out from.

It went downhill pretty rapidly, at that point.  I was stunned and then defensive and then angry.  I tried describing some of the elements of the condition, but every time I did, he just shrugged and dismissed it.

I spoke about the classically autistic meltdown moments - which are thankfully rare in my case - that happen when I get pressed into a confrontational situation that I can't escape from or resolve.  They're slow-burning situations, where tension is gradually rising and every attempt to defuse it is brushed aside by whoever it is that has me cornered until finally all rational attempts to escape have failed and all that's left is completely irrational.  Rage takes over, I start pounding at my temples with the flats of my hands and then I break something and run away.  I was embarrassed to tell him about these moments, because they feel childish and volatile and ridiculous.  It's only in the last couple of years that I've actually able to acknowledge the fact that I can literally hit myself in rage.  Genuinely, literally, hit myself in the head - violently and repeatedly - so hard that it gives me a headache that can last for ages.  This, I feel, is not the response of a person who has a sane grip on reality during those moments.

He shrugged again, and said "I do that all the time."

Then he started comparing me to the son of a friend of his.  The son "squawks and tweets" all the time, apparently, and that has become Joe's definition of autism.  I don't do that, so I clearly don't have the condition - it's that simple.  I tried to point out that there were lots of features of the condition, but by that point he wasn't even letting me finish any of my sentences or arguments.  He just interrupted and said "you haven't got autism."

I was already very pissed off, by this stage.  But it was his attitude at that point - calm, condescending and smug - that got me angry enough that I had to leave.  By this point, all I needed to do was step outside and walk about for a bit to calm down.  But as soon as I took up my jacket, he grabbed hold of it and told me that he wasn't going to let me leave until I calmed down.

That's not the way to get me to calm down and in fact, it only started to escalate from there.  To be clear, though - the meltdown moment I just described still wasn't exactly imminent.  I wasn't feeling cornered, yet.  If I genuinely hadn't been able to leave, and if I'd genuinely had to deal with this particular conversation - with those condescending one-line put-downs of everything I said in my defence - then it might have happened eventually.  But first there there would have been a lot more warning signs, a clear display of increasing frustration and finally, there would have been a very sudden and very rapid meltdown.

I really wanted to leave, though.  The situation had already become very stressful and I didn't want to be there, any more.  So the fact that he now had a grip on my jacket and was - literally - refusing to let me have it, was narrowing my options down even further.  I paused just for a moment, and he took that opportunity to take hold of it in both hands and I could see that he wasn't messing about.  His knuckles were white.  Before I could take it, I was going to have to prise his hands free and that was going to turn into a fight.  Or some sort of childish scuffle.

I'm running out of ways to describe how every fresh development was actually getting me more outraged all the time, and at this point I genuinely considered punching him right in the face - and that shocked me more than anything else.  I've got no idea how bad a move that would have been.  I know that when we were kids, Joe was always able to come out on top in every single fight we ever had, and I don't know if that's changed, but I don't really want to find out.  So the final option left was just to abandon the jacket and leave without it.

3AM in Greenock is not a good time to find yourself outside in just a t-shirt.

I was halfway along the street, when I heard Joe at the front door calling at me to come back.  I got to the end of the street and sat down on a wall, to calm down.  He called my mobile a few times, texted me a few times and then, after about half an hour, he sent a final text telling me that he'd leave the front door unlocked.  I gave it another hour or so, then got up and walked back to his place.  In my paranoia, I hesitated outside his front door for a few minutes to convince myself that he was definitely not still awake and waiting for me to come back, so we could start the conversation again.

Finally, I went inside and crept into the sitting room.  My jacket was lying on the couch, so I picked it up and put it on, then stepped outside again and left.  I didn't know what to do about the front door, and was concerned about it being unlocked, so I hung around a bit more, but eventually I started walking into town.

I was completely worn out.  From the moment I started wandering the streets of Greenock, it wasn't the argument that was particularly fresh in my mind.  It wasn't the rage or the frustration.  It was a sort of bone-deep exhaustion and all I wanted was to be at home and in my bed.  But I still had to wait four hours for the buses to start running and even then, I knew, the journey home was going to at last at least another three hours.  Despite all that, though, going back to Joe's was never going to be an option I would consider.  Not for one minute.

I haven't heard from Joe since then.

Movin' out

The mood in this house has been getting exceptionally ugly, just lately.

I've been living here for nearly eighteen months, now. I moved back into my parents' home back in 2009. I'd been in a car accident and - in quick succession - lost my job, my home and even my career. Suddenly, whiplash made it impossible to work as a massage therapist any more, so suddenly I wasn't able to call myself a professional. This probably doesn't seem too bad to a lot of people, but I worked very hard to gain that profession in the first place, so it was something that provided me with a genuine sense of accomplishment. Even more so after I received my diagnosis and realised that I'd had to work much harder than the other students to gain it. Then there was a year working at Glasgow Airport, nurturing my skills, followed by three years at a clinic in Glasgow, working incredibly hard for incredibly long hours to try and create a successful business.

And six minutes on the motorway in a stationary vehicle destroyed the whole lot of it.

You think I'm bitter? Mostly, I tend to be philosophical about it. Shit like that happens. But yeah... I have to confess... sometimes I do get exceptionally bitter about it. I try not to, but I can't help it.

I was a good therapist. At the airport one day - and this isn't a breach of client confidentiality, because I won't name any names - a girl came in for a ten minute massage. It went fine, with nothing particularly exciting about it. She went away happy. The following day, she was returning through the airport and she returned to me. And everything was different. As I worked on her neck that second time, I realised there was something very different about how it felt. I explored it carefully and came to the conclusion that one of her vertebrae had rotated. Something that sounds dramatic, but is probably a lot more mundane than people might think. I mentioned it to her while I worked on the muscles surrounding it and gradually relaxed them. She told me she had fallen from a horse a long time ago and ever since, once of her vertebrae had a habit of shifting - and whenever it did, she got blinding, devastating migraines. Eventually it would shift back and the migraines would fade. While she spoke, I was fascinated to actually feel the muscles of her neck slowly pull it back into place as I relaxed them. I don't know if I worked on her early enough to prevent the migraines or if they were already on the way, but I was definitely on a high that day.

I still do work on people occasionally. But no longer as a career. Now, if I do too much massage in the space of a single day, it hurts me too much - it aggravates the whiplash.

So... anyway... back to the main topic of this particular instalment of my AS story.

About a fortnight ago, my dad asked me - point-blank - why I was still staying with him. I explained that it was because I couldn't afford to move out without a job. The income from the hen nights is lucrative, but too intermittent to be reliable and I had just gone through three months without a single contract. He accepted that grudgingly, but his comments over the following weeks have become more and more cutting. More and more barbed.

Then yesterday, my mum's dog growled at him. Molly - a beautiful and very intelligent dog - felt threatened by his attitude and warned him off. I won't describe how he was going to respond, but I will say that I stepped between them, saying - literally - "nonononono", then took Molly by her collar and led her away. At this point I was actually a bit scared that either Molly would bite me, or that he would turn his anger against me, but I sort of defused the situation. Sort of.

Today, he's been snubbing Molly all day. She's very confused and clearly doesn't know how to respond. She'll approach him and he'll snap at her and she'll back off, looking very bewildered. He says he no longer trusts her and admits no responsibility for his actions. And the mood has been bleak. For most of this evening, my mum, my dad and I have shared the living room and nobody has said anything at all. It's like - since he came home from work - he's brought this oppressive atmosphere with him and it's weighing us all down. He watched football on TV, my mum read a book, then went to the dining room to play games on her PC and I watched downloaded episodes of "Fringe" on my laptop with the headphones on. Grim.

Last weekend and the weekend before, I went through to my cousin's place for the weekend. Both times, on my way home, I wished I was going back to an empty flat rather than a home I shared with other people. Not merely because I'm anti-social (which I am) but because I wanted to go to a living space that was mine, rather than one I simply resided in.

My bedroom - the room I pay rent for - is shared with stuff that isn't mine, but which takes up half the available space. It's not somewhere I can go to relax. (Although it's been worse - when I was fifteen years old, my dad decided to build a trailer. He welded the frame together, then seemed to get bored of the job. For at least a year, that trailer was stored in my bedroom and I actually had to climb over it to get to and from my bed.)

I've set myself a deadline. I have to be out of this house by the end of March. Now, that's a realistic aim. In the first weekend of the month alone, I'll make enough money to at least pay the first month's rent on a place in the city centre. I just have to make sure I can make the deposit as well - and then find some way to get past the credit check. I'm approaching the people at the AS support centre to see if they can think of ways round that.

Sadly, even that's not good enough for my dad. He's become aware that if I lower my standards and accept a place in Craigmillar or Gracemount or Niddrie instead, then I'll get a place through the council almost immediately - and he's putting pressure on me to do that instead. Why hold out for a decent place when I can get a shit place tomorrow? That's his logic. And he's starting to wear me down.

If I accept the shit place, though... well, then I'm stuck with it. So fuck that. Right up the arse.