Revising Loneliness

Over the weekend, I met a woman with autism at a party. She pushed my head into my friend’s head. She wanted us to kiss. It was initially jarring.

She asked what my sign was. I told her and then asked what she liked about astrology. Her mother interrupted us– she just likes asking the question, she doesn’t really care about signs or astrology itself.

Oh, okay.

Although I knew she was talking about certain aspects of autism, I found that interesting. In my own life, I feel shy about answering questions, and also prefer to ask them. So, in a different way, I understood or related.

Later in the night, I saw her again. When the party was winding down, I opened a door and she was talking to herself in the mirror. Alone. It felt like a movie from the 1970s– not a horror movie, just a pretty movie, soft, well, the light was soft and the room felt alive, a beautiful quiet vibrancy.

I felt immediately horrible about entering the room, disrupting the space.

She turned to me, asked what my shoe size was.

I said it was a 5, then inquired about her shoe size.

She said hers was a 5 1/2.

We were standing face to face. The same height. To make conversation, I noted this fact– we are almost the same.

She wanted to know if we were more different or more the same.

I told her that I guessed we were a little bit of both.

Then, she backed away from me, visibly shaken by what I had said.

My heart sank. I excused myself and found a family friend of hers. I was worried I had upset her.

The family friend assured me that I had not.

Right now, she is mostly fascinated by relationships. How people are with one another. She has a photographic memory and can memorize scenes from movies and then replay them throughout the day, like reenact them, or perform them for herself. Likely, I was just a minor player in one of her movies, and she was just acting.

I realized that in the news, I hear so much about children with autism, but not as much about adults with autism.

It is such a delicate, artistic, bravely autonomous, and intricate state of being.

I took this photo above through the glass of the Gold Line that goes out to Pasadena. The light reminds me of the woman I met.