Tonight on Greentea: Aspie artist making it...MILLIE ! !!

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shhh take your seat, here's some popcorn left.

what is it like to have 7 siblings? While growing up and then as an adult?

may i be so bold...

Well...having seven siblings is interesting. It was fantastic and also hideous. chaotic and disruptive. creative and mad.

I never see them all at once and i have not been to a family Chritsmas for over 12 years. My eldest brother who lives in the south of France was here in Australia a couple of weeks ago and i did not see him. I adore him, but i did not see him. He is a brilliant linguist, and a classical composer and is undoubtedly on the spectrum. His great sprawling cat is called "ginger boy."

As a tomboy girl with AS, having siblings really benefited me in terms of devleoping some social skills. i think it would have been much more traumatic for me had i not had a bunch of siblings. in a sense i was able to hide behind them. i used them strategically - a bit like a Spartan phalanx I suppose -- or that is how i perceive it visually anyway.

We rarely had people over to our home - very insular as is typical of autistic families. And so, the connection with each other was fostered by that insularity. As a child i supose i felt a greater affintity with patterns and objects, although i did do a lot of mimicry and i would have terrible on-off phases. My siblings had to contend with me as a rather strange sister who looked like a brother. There was incredible richness to it too. It was hard because my mum is so eccentric and was unable to parent very well. But it was amazing in that we were left like a great rambling free for all. very creative and clever bunch -- none of whom have really zoomed in life. funny that!! My suspicion is there are a few in tha family who could do well with a dx. Really amazing people. Makes me sad actually - how much autistic energy and brilliance never gets polished up or appreciated because society never knows how to understand our shine.

It was chaotic and difficult as well. My mum had very poor executive dysfunction beyond mananging for herself - same as me as an adult - so 8 kids and mess and clutter was a constant feature of our lives. there was also a lot of music played - the piano, guitar, my mother learned the zither at one stage, flutes, recorders, etc etc. That was a given.
MYbrother wrote a brilliant comic strip on the Christian Brothers teachers at his school - a kind of ripping yarn on the Catholic system. Another brother painted. A sister became also.
We were an unusual bunch. a lot of reading. a lot of tv watching - a lot of art, a lot of original thought. and a lot of meltdowns , criticism and abuse.

Our house was the ramshackle one with an overgrown garden and junk and clutter.
My parents got a kombi to drive us to mass.


My mum rang a big dinner bell to call us in for dinner - like Ma Kettle...and we would all tear in from around the mad garden or the suburban street.

THere was not much love to go around. well, there was and there was not. My mother - Misssion Control - was very violent in her meltdowns. Then my dad left her with the 8 of us when i was 9. And basically me and my siblings were really fending for ourselves then in all sorts of ways. My mother woul dhave relaly bad meltdowns and take my sister and say she was going to jump off "the Gap" - a rathe rpopluar suicide spot. SHe wrote listst everywhere. We would come home to lists and lists stuck all over walls.......trying to find control and ordeer where there was none. Jus lists about this and lists about that. scrawls and scrawls of lists. i can see them now in my brain - all there in the filing cabinet up in the grey matter..a bunch of them sitting there now on the green laminex kitchen table in that old kitchen.

SHe would beat us and do all those aspie things some of us - NOT ALL OF US - do in meltdowns like hit her own head and stomp feet and make animal sounds and howl and have tantrums. it was a tad scary when she was chopping the dinner vegies with a knife.......

I understand her. I know what it is like to be like her....

I liked our World Book Encyclopaedias. they were the coolest brother/sister i could have. i also felt thefamilyhome was as much a part of the family as the siblings. i can bring out thousands of images of it now...details of surfaces, textures and patterns in rooms, curtains and we had these great dragon light fixtures. Ilov ed my things and my marbles. they were siblings too.
Our house did look a but like the Addams Family home. THe neighbours complained that we were unruly, werid and messy. We wore hand me downs. We really fought to survive. We were looked down on really....this brilliant bunch of eccentrics. no-on really understood us and i think each of us was deeply bruised by not being able to fit into a kind of mainstream social set...even though how we grew up was extraordinary.

WE had LOTS of animals...lots of cats, a dog, guinea pigs, a rabbit, tadpoles, and my brother had a beaut aviary with lots of little birds. We had a big willow tree. we had little money.
One neighbour said we should be reported to DOCS - which is the government agency that takes kids away. My mother kept us together against incredible personal odds.




Now, as an adult, we are very dispersed. i talk to most people on the phone. i speak to some of my brothers less than once a year. we do not give presents or pay much attention to birthdays unless it is for kids. I love myfamily, but in true AS style i have little to do with them. I will however talk to 3 sisters regularly. Two of them are my younger sisters and have alwaysl looked out for me. A third one is older and is nice.

My relationship wiht them is a kind of out of sight out of mind scenario. It has nothing to do with love as i love them. I just do not have them in my life too intensely. in early adulthood we all hung together. they wre the conduit for the real world for me. they were my connection to a world beyond myself.

along the way, i picked up another half brother and two step brothers....so it gets complicated.
i do not see them and do not feel much connection to them.




...[b]I understand you've been here on WP for 2 months, is that right

Yes...that is right. I was introduced to it via research on ASD's. IT was in 2008 that i became aware of AS as more than the geek syndrome. Prior, i had assumed one had to be a computer nerd or a tekkie. My nephew was diagnosed with autism in early 2008 or so, and so i began reading avidly on it - as i do with anything i get stuck into.....many of you will relate - it is the intensity ofthe speical interest...hurrah!! My mother and i began reading up on ASD's and its manifestations. 2008 was an extraordinary year in terms of answers, deeper understanding of myself, obtaining a name for what i am and being more fully released from suicidal ideation since being dx'ed.


My nephew is a delight. He is terrified of butterflies, is a train nut and my sister is so great with him.

I enjoy WP although i can get fed up here and there. I do however enjoy the camaraderie and i do enjoy the intensity of some of the people here. They are a match for me in terms of how deeply they ponder and consider things. I have been desperate for that kind of relating my entirelife. I also find the written format so comfortable. I can take my time, consider and comprehend. i have great problems comprehending people face to face. too much. But the written word helps me enormously.
I started posting everyday in the holidays. my son and his dad have just had the big summer break - it is their holiday and my nightmare as most days i like ot spend on my own. I just retreated into Wp for those six weeks - much safer and less stressful than trying to make sense of the dynamics of a small family......with WP i have that convenient screen distance.

That was a fascinating read about your family...with all the good and the bad. Like watching "Interiors" with Woody Allen. Have you seen the movie? If so, what were your impressions? If you haven't seen it, I really recommend it to you.

I'd now like to open the book of your life at the chapter of your education. Tell us something about it. Schools, subjects you enjoyed, relations, whatever comes to mind that you would like to share. And what did little Millie look like on her first day of primary school?

[quote="Greentea"]That was a fascinating read about your family...with all the good and the bad. Like watching "Interiors" with Woody Allen.

Have you seen the movie? If so, what were your impressions?

If you haven't seen it, I really recommend it to you.


Now Greentea, becaus ei resepct you intellectually - i shall go and get "Interiors" today. I think Woody Allen is brilliant, although I found some of the sublteties of his interpersonal relationships depictions quite diffiuclt to follow when i was young. As i have developed and compensated for some of the AS deificits, I have been able to grasp his whole approach far more successfully.

He is a genius. i reserve that word for only the best.

I am writing a book about my family. i will not give the title as someone may steal it, as it is a beauty. A few WP friends do know it, though.

I'd now like to open the book of your life at the chapter of your education. Tell us something about it. Schools, subjects you enjoyed, relations, whatever comes to mind that you would like to share. And what did little Millie look like on her first day of primary school?[/quote]



well. My first day of school was hell. i had never mixed with children beyond my siblings and it was so terrifying. in addition, the fist day at Mount SAint Bernard Catholic PRimary SChool at Pymble is most aptly remembered - NOT - for anything other than.....

THE BLACK DUCK TALE.

Teacher tells children to sit at their communal tables and colour in the stencilled sheet of ducks using the pencils in the tins on their tables.
the small children, of which millie is one, proceed.

After some minutes, all the children begins to commune and chat and start getting up from their seats to get pencils from jars on other tables.

Millie stays in her seat drawing with the available pencils from the jar on her table as instructed. All the coloured pencils have been STOLEN by the swinging set - which includes everyone in the class escept millie who is plied to her seat and intent on pursuing the task at hand.

She colours and patterns her ducks. Black. all black
As the only available pencils were black, all her ducks are black.

The other kids - the swinging set - have delightfully coloured ducks that shriek joy, happiness and the whirl of social groupings and easy exchange.

Millie sits at table with stencil in front of her.
Teacher walks by.
Teacher sees black ducks.
Teacher hauls her out the front of the class to parade her rather depressing feathered friends in front of the other children. Millie thought they looked ok...at least it showed an early understanding of tonal interplays.
Teacher tells Millie and the rest of the kindergarten class her ducks are lousy.

Millie thinks......but i was only doing what i was asked to do.



on this fortuitous day, i was wore a maroon pleated school uniform with a faun collar and faun buttons, a maroon beret - all hand me downs, with faun socks that may have actually been new. I carried a hand me down globite school case - those hard and tough ones that were a bit like bakalite - and when it was opened at little lunch it exuded a pungent explosion of banana scent and tomato sandwich perfume. I rememebr the smell as vividly now as then. oh...with a bit of apple tossed in. Very Proustian that......."Remembrance of THings Past...."

I looked like a boy and had a boy's bowl haircut thanks to Mummy Scissorhands.

i had knock kness and still do.
i hat a wart on my right thumb which was burned off later at the doctor's
one of my most horrific and vivid memories in kindergarten was seeing the orange wax in Alex whatshisname's ears as we lay down for afternoon nap at the back of the class.

i remember the patterns of the school playgound...the yellow circles painted on the bitumen and right now i can conjure the taste of the metal of the monkey bars and the netball pole and hoop. I can see the peacock that lived adjacent to the school in a rambling old house wiht a fountan and dark garden and i remember looking for its stray feathers at the back of the playground.
I remember the whiskers coming out of Sister Monica's face and the rings all the nuns wore and i remember the holy pictures we were given if we were good studfents.

and i remember the FOUL smell of that teacher who hauled me out the front of the class because of my black drawing.

(sensory issues...some of you know how it is....)




Actually at primary school i ended up being at the top of the class in everything. i was a good, philosophical, and interested student. facts were MY THING. Fact, facts and more facts and creativity.
I had some friends but viewed them as objects really. they were secondary to the world of facts and patterns and ideas and creativity and nature. My firends always looked after me. they deferred to me on factual matters and took care of me in social and emotional matters.

By secondary school i was collapsing into a heap academically and was coming top in english and art and bottom of the class in maths and sciences. once algebra came onto the horizon i was totally lost. I began to exhibit a very very unneven pattern of abilitites that was more or less disguised by the rote learning tendencies of primary school.
i was always a weird and eccentric leader type - very individual and strange - and used drugs as a trading exchange that bought me kudos. I was bullied a lot. I was bullied a lot by boys because i was an ugly duckling back then (those black stencilled ducks were a forerunner to something.....) and i wore weird clothes.

The girl's club did not know how to cope with me. I was ostracised more than bullied really. Nasty things were said. there was a rumour going around that i was frigid and there was all sorts of stuff said abou tme and my family.

i spent most of m yteenage years bulimic and anorexic and with self-harm issues. i used a lot of drugs and alcohol. i ran away a lot and received no negative attention as my mum was busy with numerous eccentric boyfriends who were either junk shop owners or engineers. They were too. i do not think she EVER brought a man friend into the home who wasn't AS.

THey all suffered from "Talk to The Ear Syndrome."

In the final two years of school i applied myself a bit. i duxed all my subjects except for a couple where i came second. I hardly attended school except for roll call and i had an agreement with the principal Mr Eyles, who let me come to school to pick up assignments and go home again. I really could not cope with the sensory issues i had or with the people. in the last two years of school i did not take any drugs at all And so these issues were not masked by my self-medicating. I went ot school on my terms and was highly individualised in my approach.


I got hell from the other girls in the final two years. the rich girl set - what do you call them in the U.S i wonder - really got vicious because they were allstraight A students and i came brack from drug f****d oblivion to topple them off the higher echelons of the academic strata. IT was delightful but horrendous and i really had a hard time and got a lot of flack. A lot of flack. i think that period of my life was so dark and awful.

but i duxed the finals
and then came second inthe HSC (final state exams) in my school.

In those final years i did not do any science or maths subjects.that was allowed back then. i flourished because i was able to pursue all the subjects i loved and i did not have to bother wiht extraneous and rather tedious subjects like mathematics or physics.


In short, school was hell.
leaving school was hell-er.

i tried uni twice and dropped out in spite of duxing subjects at one of the top uni's in Sydney.
i could not cope with imposed routines, with people or with an academic system of learning that impinged on my more individualised AS pursuits and special interests. it has always been this way. and it always will be. when younger it was very painful. I have never been able to adhere ot any type of learning except that which is gnerated by my special interests and tendencies.

these days i say FRIG the world...i know who i am and i am weird and ok. i would encourage others here on WP - and i speak to those younger ones who REALLY DO have ASD's and do not percieve it some latest fashion garment - to do the same.

subjects i loved:

English
Art -of course
Ancient History,
General Studies

i loved biology but always came about 3rd or 4th in it so i dropped it as a subject. that is true. that is how i used to think.

I enjoyed very much the vivid account of your years at school. I'm looking forward to reading more.

What happened next? How old were you and what did you move on to after your college experiences?
What were your hobbies at the time? How have they changed or not?
Were you living at home?
Any romantic events to write WP home about?

thx for sharing Millie (:

THis thread is being revived after a long break. Greentea's mum died and I did not know she had posted new questions for me. I hope Greentea can get back to her interviews as they are entertaining, fun and insightful.

What happened Next? How old were you and what did you move onto after your college experiences?


In the midst of my school years i was also anorexic and bulimic - like many women with ASD's.
I also had a "nervous breakdown" around the time i went to uni and was put in a psychiatric ward for about 6 weeks for a kind of catatonic depression. There was no diagnosis for AS at this stage. they tried to get me to join in on the groups - basket friggin weaving or some such thing ----- and i refused to go. (just like school and just like uni - the group tutorials - the small collections of people together talking and discussion = were hell for me. I invariably avoided them. just too much.)
I could not communicate with people, I was 22 and still living at home, and unable to work out how to actually go and move out on my own. My father and stepmother actually kicked me out of their house. they were probably right to do so as if they hadn;t i may still be there, catatonic and dosed up in psych drugs. They did it in a nice way. But the bottom line was they knew if i was not FORCED to learn life and some social skills i would hide out in the family realm forever more, unable to move beyond it or develop a life. In hindsight I can see they were right.

Anyway, they helped me rent a small terrace house in Sydney and they helped me find a flatmate (a girl from school.) she went on to art school and i stayed at home all day and basically taked to no-one and was bulimic. I could not even focus on daytime television and was trapped in a cycle of reading about hindu gods and goddesses and India (a special interest,) doing some art (another special interest) and dieting and spewing up my food. (A MAIN SPECIAL INTEREST and rigid routine - OCD stuff _ completely locked into it.) Hideous time. My adolescence and young adult life - like so many people with an ASD - was hell.

I did get more into my art again at this time. I began to think about it as what i wanted to do again, and i stopped listening to idiotic parents who told me to go to uni and be an academic and follow the path of what i consider to be for me - soul-destroying adherence to institutionalised thinking.

I did not go to art school. I have never been.

I then came across drugs again. speed. whoopee.

what were your hobbies at the time? have they changed over time?

At the time I was obsessed with India and with Hinduism and comparative religions.
My main interest has always been art and painting and after flunking at uni i recommitted to it.
I was also obsessed with dieting, losing weight, and gourmet recipes and southern Italian recipes and the cookbooks of Elisabeth David.

I do not really call anything a hobby. Anything i get involves in becomes a special interest - even if fleetingly - because of the intensity of my relationship with it. It is always like a love affair and ecstasy with me.



[b]Any romantic interests to write WP home about?[b]

At 16 I found a boyfriend and liked him because of his fair-isle jumper. IT was a fantastic jumper. I don;t think i ever talked to this boy. there was no communication.
He was a boyfriend for a year. I remember at the time thinking, "people get boyfriends. i should get a boyfriend." I had also been bullied and teased for being "frigid" and a "weirdo" just before i found the fair-aisle jumper pattern, and I do know my need to have a boyfriend albeit briefly was tied in with this bullying. it was hideous.

Aside from that there was no romance or boyfriend until i was 25. except for a few alcohol induced flings. sporadic one-off events that were horrid. i did not know how to converse. I had no idea. I was fairly quiet and blank in those days. There was a lot going on internally but no skills yet in terms of being able to converse with others.
I never really met anyone of my own volition. they were always people my siblings knew.

It was not until age 38 that i actually had a sexual encounter without drugs and alcohol. Up until then all my sexual encounters (I do not really understand romance or what it is about and i do not know how to do it properly) were drug and alcohol related. every one.

More on Millie, the aspie artist topic

Thanks, Millie. I think Greentea has had too much to deal with lately. She may need some space.

well yes. I agree.
Greentea needs lots of support at present and needs to know we value her and see her as a valuable member of WP. I resurrected the topic so she might feel a sense of purpose and inclusion and value in the midst of what has been a very difficult time.

They can give Greentea th sack in the real world, but here on WP - she HAS A REAL JOB and is THE ACE INTERVIEWER and the girl with brains plus!!

Thank you so much both of you. I clicked on this just as I was telling myself "Nothing good will ever come out of me".

A soothing cup of Greentea topic

Millie, you are so considerate. I usually leave people alone when they are upset. This is not always best.

Hey, Greentea! I was worried you would be more sad. The other thread may have made you unhappy. I am glad you will still be here. I like the interviews with Acacia and Millie. We do not always see the other sides of people, and especially in print.

Well...i can be narcissistic and very clueless thanks to my ASD and not picking up on cues. (I actually thought greentea just stopped interviewing me and it never occurred to me she might have struggles. I miss cues and sings if they are not cllarified.) BUt once i know someone is having a bad time, i think i jump in - and like many ASD people - actually CARE VERY DEEPLY. Most often it is just that we need to be clearly told what is going on. I see this very often in people with and ASD and i heard tony atwood talking about it at a conference. We care deeply. we just need a context of literal explanation and clarity so we can start to express it.

Otherwise we can be clueless!

so on with things greentea. chin up and do not let the world get you down. for many of us autistics our value is not to be measured through the normal channels of status and employment and that kind of shallow stuff. we do not fit. we need to support each other. I know this. We need to help each other through as best we can in our virtual community.

Greentea, It is about how fascinating you are and how much you give to WP.
onwards and upwards.

yeah. this thread is...weird

i am deeply fascinated by this thread. do not have a question as my brain is too filled with (aforementioned) institutionalising university essay which is due tomorrow. but 100% and two thumbs up.

loving this, millie and greentea.

A long story topic

This goes back a loooooooooooooong way...But it turns out all right in the end, and then it begins again.