A Kind of Howling - Searching for my dogs

```

My name is Wesley.

Last year, at the respectable age of forty-one, I was diagnosed with both autism and ADHD. Together, it is often called AuDHD, which sounds way nicer than the life it describes.

Being diagnosed late is not that unusual. Intelligent people often learn, (consciously or not), to pass as neurotypical. We study the rules, copy the gestures, memorize everything and their mums, to become fluent in a language that was never meant for us. It works, until it doesn't, then shit hits the fan. Because living in two worlds at once, constantly translating yourself, constantly suppressing your instincts, your natural curiosity, your feelings, and trying to shower every week, is exhausting. And in the end, the body keeps the score as Bessel van der Kolk puts it. There are always two warring sides inside our minds; sometimes they line up, but most of the time they despise each other.

Long before autism and/or ADHD ever enter the picture, we are misdiagnosed and labeled depressed, anxious, burned out, whatever. In most cases, it is a f*cking bumpy road toward some form of understanding; it is slow and painful, and for many, they will never reach the destination, because they wrongfully, but understandably, think that there is something wrong with them.

Being 'Gifted'

As a child, I was taken to psychologists and tested extensively. I showed many signs, but the conclusion was different at the time: I was gifted. High intelligence scores and an excellent memory. Extremely talkative and curious. Life would be easy, and I would glide through education and beyond. I didn't. I stumbled and crashed many times. Reprimanded for daydreaming, detention, and expelled from two different schools. Not because of bad grades, I did fine, but rather because during school I roamed the streets of the city I was living in, anonymously, observing life as it unfolds. It formed me more than the education system ever had.

I struggled with things others found easy for some reason. And because 'gifted' had been rammed into my identity by teachers, parents, coaches, and others, my failure wasn't due to lack of skill, but it was a moral failure. If I fell short, it meant I hadn't tried hard enough. That kind of pressure leaves bruises people can't see. Many intelligent people with ADHD f*cking hate themselves, I sure did. The bruises never heal, and to add insult to injury, we're called overly sensitive. The reality is that we're just tired of being what you want us to be.

Like many with AuDHD, I carried on while my spirit was fractured to bits. But wounds that are never named or even acknowledged don't heal.

Social rituals can be confusing for many of us. For a long time, I thought politeness existed to stop us from screaming in terror into the streets, to stop us from going insane that we are lost in space. Often, I think it is profoundly weird to have a body, and we can move our limbs by thinking about them. That we can understand the universe better than we can understand what is inside our tiny skull. It turns out most people don't think this way at all.

My dogs

Many neurodivergent people form deep bonds with animals. That's no mystery. Animals don't judge. They don't ask you to perform like a mechanical monkey. Muhammad Ali once said he refused to fight in Vietnam because the Vietcong never called him the n-word or denied his humanity. Animals don't deny our humanity either.

I don't hate humanity; I have met many kind people, but animals feel safer.

My dog Jura understood me better than people ever did. She sensed my stress before I did. She was reactive, like me, and can best be described as half Cerberus, half Lassie. We often escaped together, long hikes, away from the human world, just the two of us and our mental disorders. Without those hikes, she would devour the world in a day. We are amphibians in a world built for fish. And fish cannot imagine land.

We always mirrored each other. When I injured my foot during a trail race, she had to get one of her toes amputated. When she felt sick, I felt sick. When she was angry, I was angry (it's how we learned about nuclear reactions). She destroyed one of her knees, and so I had to follow suit. It's sometimes hard not to get superstitious when stuff like that happens all the time.

When she died in early 2022, something (or more precisely, everything) in me collapsed. People say God can't exist because no god would allow all this cruelty in the world. I think God must exist precisely because of it. Only the gods we have created could be this merciless.

During her illness, my body began to fail. Strange symptoms, I couldn't explain. Doctors were confused. I later learned this was Functional Neurological Disorder, quite common in autistic people under extreme stress. At the time, I just thought, well… that I was dying. How was I to interpret these worsening symptoms any other way? My vision changed, the horizon tilted, my sound sensitivity went through the roof. I probably should have understood that I was mirroring her once again. I miss these symptoms all the time. As the cancer grew in her, my physical problems worsened. I stopped running the trails because the twists and turns on the trail felt impossible, and went back to road running instead. It didn't even cross my mind that my problems could be psychosomatic.

I learned that I had 'poor coping mechanisms'. But I asked myself: "Would you have it any other way?" No, I did not. That simple question would solve a lot. Because in reality, I would sew her soul into my flesh with a rusty nail if I had to. Poor coping mechanisms? You can sod off, thank you.

All my life, the state of impermanence always scares me, and there is always a part of me connected to the violent and raging flux behind our day-to-day reality. It can be unbearable sometimes.

I didn't know I had AuDHD yet, so I kept pushing. My relationship of twenty-two years unraveled, and I felt like trying to hold on to loose sand. F*cking impermanence again! I became harder to reach. Everything that she thought I would be had fallen apart right in front of her. From the outside, I must have looked like a dead horse. You can kick it, but it will not move. And it must have been equally traumatic for her as it was for me.

Inside, thoughts became fragmented. Identity dissolved. Time seemed to fold into itself. I couldn't filter reality anymore. Because isn't that what the brain is supposed to do? The brain is a filter that prevents us from going insane. Traumatic memories of the past bombarded me constantly. Everything was noise. At first, I hoped for some silence, but not long after, I screamed for death.

Substance abuse

I turned to substances that offered brief relief. Then less, and then none at all. I was trying to survive. But this stupid way of surviving came at a cost. I hurt the people I loved. I thought the only way to stop causing pain was to just stop existing. A thousand years ago, before harddrugs I would probably go and sit under a tree, fight of some inner demons and start a cult or something. But I turned to substances; I saw no other way.

When my relationship ended, I lost my pack. My dogs were split apart, two with her, and one with me. The loss hollowed me out. I pushed so hard for years, but in the end, it didn't even matter.

Professional help failed hopelessly, and my addiction got worse. I took about 5 grams of Ritalin (a standard dose is just 40mg) and around 100 benzodiazepines to counteract it every f*cking day. I was told quitting cold turkey could kill me, but at the same time, I was denied the opportunity to quit at a clinic because the designer substances weren't recognized. So I did what I've always done when told something is impossible...

So by the power of Grey Skull, I did it anyway.

Withdrawal was f*cking brutal. Seizures. No sleep for over five days, hallucinating all the while. My dog, Mahru, never left my side. In the past, she would leave the room when I had the hiccups. Animals feel stuff and aren't dumbed down by metaphysics for monkeys, like protocols and etiquette, which I barely understand anyway. The hallucinations and seizures worsened over time. Sometimes, I snapped back to reality and then, oh, there goes gravity, and went on a mental rollercoaster again, the shittiest ride imaginable. But eventually my body shut itself down. I slept.

Then I had to literally learn to walk again. Do your arms swing with your legs or against your legs? The angle of my upper body seems to be off. Should I walk more straight or relaxed? What the hell was I doing? I must have looked ridiculous. People in the grocery store looked dismissively when I tried to pay with my debit card, shaking uncontrollably.

The seizures returned a few weeks later, and I lost consciousness many times. Doctors blamed drugs because they do not understand autism. I said I had similar problems before I touched any substance, when I was still running ultramarathons.

What I miss most are my dogs. They are my family. Reuniting them feels essential; healing cannot begin otherwise.

Just try to help

I have lived in near-total silence for months. When I spoke again, I couldn't remember how, and I almost bit my tongue off at first. Isolation is a hellish kind of torture.

I was lucky, though I didn't know it at the time.

Walking my dog through the woods, I ran into a woman with a dog. I talked. And talked some more. Probably some explanation of a natural phenomenon, the kind that only feels important to a biologist. After a while, she cut through it and asked bluntly: "You're autistic, aren't you?"

I said yes. "With an extra dose of ADHD for completeness sake!"

She said she worked with autistic people.

I thought that was good. Not for me because I have the wit of a staircase when it comes to these social situations. People deserved better help than I had received. So I kept yapping, Goldbach's Conjecture, or something equally high-voluted and pompous horseshit I probably just read the days before, and thought I was destined by God to solve. We parted and said goodbye. My dog Mahru, and I hobbled back into the woods and got lost again. I really hoped people with autism could have help like that instead of the nonsense I received.

Only then did I realize I'd reached a new level of autism...

By luck, we met again. This time, I asked for help. And it was finally good help.

Every slight sign of rejection becomes a paralyzing red light. But it does not have to be this way.

We've been wandering in forests where two plus two equals five; we just hope that when we get out, there is someone waiting for us. In my case, preferably with fur.