Service Animals

I’ve been training my dog as a service animal. We noticed early on that she would pay attention when I was “rumbling” or having a meltdown. We started rewarding her for it. Now she will come right up to me and lick my hand or face if I start being upset. I’ve trained her to sleep with me, and if I wake up late night she comes to me and sits and I can talk to her and be comforted.

I’ve also trained her to stay asleep with me. She isn’t like typical dogs who demand food or walks early morning, she will wait for me to get up, which is really useful if I haven’t slept well and need to stay down. Sometimes she lays on me or partially against me, and it’s so soothing, especially if I’m curled up and she lays against my back, warming me.

There are other tasks we are training her for. I never had a dog and never liked them much. IDK if this dog is unusual or what, but she isn’t like any dog I ever spent time with. It’s like she was magically sent to me at one of the worst, weirdest times of my life to help me.

I spent a week away from her this fall when Jason and I broke up briefly and I thought I was going to die.

Tojisha Kenkyu

Deer Isle, Maine, Today, 2022

There’s a method developed by researchers in Japan called “Tojisha Kenkyu” in which an autistic person is to learn themselves through journaling. Like any kind of journaling, the process empowers one to understand more directly their strengths and weaknesses and how to cope with them. I’ve been doing this since 2021, when I was informally diagnosed, and figuring out a lot of funny things. It’s like wandering through caves of my mind with a candle, illuminating places that were always dark before. It’s uplifting but also extremely sad sometimes. I guess it kind of draws you out in a way, which makes sense, considering that the term “Autism” was originally coined from the Greek word “Autos” which means “being inside”, or, as Oxford puts it, “with reference to a condition in which fantasy dominates over reality.”

I would say that the Oxford definition resonates pretty closely with my experience of life. Nothing inside ever matched up with the outside, and most of the time, I like what’s happening in my mind a lot better than anything else. The journaling has definitely helped me to align things a bit more, and to understand myself enough to attempt to fit in more naturally to my surroundings, especially with people. It’s also helped me to make better decisions for myself and calibrate an “inner compass” which relies less on what others want, more on what I do, think, feel. So, here it is.