An Aspie's Life: The Untold and Unknown Story

Chapter 11 - Safety

In its own way, this chapter also links in with the previous one. Sometimes when you come face to face with a bully, you might actually get into a situation you can’t handle. Or maybe you’ve gone out with some friends and they are driving too fast or doing something they shouldn’t while driving. Or maybe you end up at a place you don’t feel safe at. A set of decisions brought you to this point. You stood up too forcefully to a bully without thinking about what could happen. You got in a car with someone driving that you didn’t know. You didn’t ask where you were going to hang out or didn’t find enough information out about the place you decided to go. These things and more can bring you into an unsafe situation. What you have to do is to learn to become aware of the situations around you and try to avoid those unsafe situations. However, there may be times that is impossible so you also need to know what to do to leave a bad situation.

In a manner of speaking, the book as I’m writing it is sort of a step by step guide. Although I hadn’t originally intended it to work out that way. By this point, you might have less to worry about as you’ve had Asperger’s Syndrome for a while or maybe it’s a new thing to worry about and you are learning as you go for someone else or even yourself. But being a confident Aspie, which may seem like an oxymoron, is also the key to being able to remain calm and avoid unsafe situations as well as get out of those same situations. If you aren’t a confident Aspie, then you need to keep someone with you that can help you out should you need to be helped. Someone who has the confidence and knowledge to help you stay out of bad situations and protect you during them. This could be a close friend or a family member. They need to be a part of your planning should you need their help on your way through dealing with your Asperger’s Syndrome.

I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record with this at times. However, being able to make decisions and plan is something that you will have to do your entire life and as an Aspie that helps keep you on track. In my case, I know having a plan can make me feel safe and comfortable but also can make me feel uncomfortable should that plan fail. But before we get into if the plan fails, let’s deal with the beginning. The beginning is making the right choices.

The right choice is going to be different for each person because it all depends on what you can handle, what you like, what you want, and what you need. Depending on those thoughts in your mind you have to make the choice. Do you trust the driver you haven’t ever ridden with? Is it safe to go to the bar or club? You have to think about each step along the way and ask the right questions when these situations come up. If you are going out: where are you going? How long are you staying? Is it a safe place? Are the people you going with safe? Do you have a ride back? Do you have a way to call home? Do you have enough money?  Is it possible plans might change?

Every situation has a possibility that it can change into something else. That someone new will come along or someone will get an idea for something else to do. Out of all these questions you have to make the right choices. What is safe and what isn’t?

Now, a perfect example of that came for me in the most unlikely of places. I had a close friend of mine that came to visit me. We had more plans than we knew what to do with and not enough time to do them in. However, we certainly were going to try.

Part of these plans was to try to go to a venue a town over and see some local bands that you wouldn’t see at just any old concert. These weren’t the big names just yet that you hear about on TV or the radio. They are relatively unknown to most and only book small venues to increase the knowledge of their existence. It had been years since I’d been to a concert of any time and with my best friend and cohort by my side it seemed like the best idea in the world.

So, we looked around trying to find a place to go that would feature bands like that in which we could get to easily. We found a place and checked out what sort of bands were playing there in the time she was going to be in town. As luck would have it, there was a concert of a couple of bands playing at a perfect time for us to go see them. We checked out their music and found, to our pleasant surprise, that we liked what we heard. To hear them live sounded perfect. That became the plan. After spending the morning driving about, wearing the clothes we wanted to wear to the concert, we’d park near the building and go hear them play and then have dinner afterwards.