I remember the first therapist I ever went to, who sent me home with the job to let something that was weighing on me go — I could choose what. I came back the next week, utterly baffled as to what this meant.
“What does it mean to let something go?” I asked.
“Well, what things have you let go of before?” she asked.
I stared at her. “I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. I don’t think I know what it means.”
And then my therapist began to understand what a difficult case I was.
She suggested that I think of a memory in the past as a piece of paper. I needed to crumple up that memory and throw it away and then — stop thinking about it.
I tried to do this. I really tried. I think I might have found two or three small things that I could crumple up like a piece of paper and let go. But truly, one of the realities of living in an autistic brain that collects random facts and files them away is that letting things go feels terribly wrong. It feels like lying, and lying is the worst possible thing to an autist. Pretending that something is true when it isn’t — that’s worse than immoral. It’s, well, untrue.
Yes, I’m capable of lying. In extreme situations if you convince me that it is necessary to help someone do something very important. Surprise birthday…
