This has been a difficult thing for any of his family to come forward and talk about. Obviously it is upsetting for us, and I think we’ve also felt for some time that it wasn’t really necessary, or appropriate, to make public announcements about Marc on the internet. However, ten years on, finding Marc’s name in unexpected places all over the net, from blogs and autism forums to Hollywood film proposals, I’m beginning to realise that, whether we like it or not, public interest in Marc is now a fact, and I would rather put up the facts from our perspective and an e-mail address for questions than keep stumbling across guesses and speculations.

Marc’s death:
Marc’s death was a suicide, not a car accident. He drove out to the M1 in the middle of the night, parked at a services and walked onto the motorway. He was suffering from depression, but not panic attacks as has been suggested, and I believe that he was thinking clearly and knew what he was doing at the time. He had written a very brief note on his computer, which he hadn’t shown to anybody or left anywhere it could be accidentally found. It wasn’t a cry for help, just a confirmation of intent.

There was no one particular event that brought it on, but many contributing factors. We have been through the process of blaming his (mild) drug use, his difficulties in maintaining friendships, the stresses of his work, and of course we have blamed ourselves for not seeing it coming. I still believe that the greatest influence on his decision was the pressure that he put on himself to overcome the barriers of Asperger’s Syndrome, and his difficulty in putting those barriers into perspective with his many achievements.

Marc’s Guide:
The Guide itself wasn’t an enduring obsession but a passing interest, which he updated a few times and then dismissed as too incomplete to be useful. He began work on another guide to help with conversations, which was full of lists of band members, football teams, films and TV programmes, so that readers would know what NTs were talking about when they discussed these things. He gave this up when he realised how quickly it would become outdated, not to mention the enormity of the task of writing what was essentially a bluffer’s guide to everything.

His view of the non-autistic world, despite his wide experience, extensive research and personal disregard for the conventional, remained irredeemably cut and dried. I remember arguing with him about the first draft of the Guide. I thought it gave the impression that it was somehow wrong or bad to be autistic, and that he should include a passage to the effect that readers didn’t have to follow these rules if they didn’t want to – it was just background information to help them make a personal choice. He said that those who read it all had to live in this world, and the world wasn’t going to change, so there was no choice. I think he changed his mind later, after meeting more people with Asperger’s Syndrome, but he never quite made the leap of extending the validity of that choice to himself.

I wish that Aspies For Freedom and all of these blogs had been around then. There was really very little at the time in the way of information or organisations run by and for Aspies, and perhaps a group of that kind might have persuaded him that he could lead the life he wanted to without having to put himself in such intensely stressful situations. I believe that he would have had a lot to say on these forums, and the most difficult thing about posting this is to see him being talked about here, instead of seeing him talk here. Even those who knew him best can’t begin to speak for him, but I know he would have had a great deal to say.

I tend to agree, but the line isn’t really that clear. For someone who wants to get involved in the non-autistic world for example, eccentric behaviour can be seen as embarassing and non-autistic people will often also feel embarassed by association with or out of sympathy for the eccentric person.

In reality, every social action has a destructive aspect to it, however minor, and in the example above, it’s possible to handle that aspect by “displaying” that you’re TRYING to be eccentric. Comedians use this trick all the time.

I’d love to know exactly how to define that line though. It turns out to be an extremely important question because the rules reguarding eccentric behaviour can often be dropped amongst auties and often amongst non-autistic people too.

Creeps cashed in on my avoidance, others feared I was a nutter. And I used to be so triggered into agression by friendly affection I’d accidentally slapped a few people and stomped on their toes. So these things made ME feel bad. I didn’t want to have such dysfunctional responses even if I CERTAINLY DONT WANT TO BE A CLONE. So I think there’s a middle ground without anyone getting too extremist on the issue.

Those who are just ‘a little odd’ are in a different situation to those so seriously lacking in social skills that society won’t trust them and will abuse them, so we need to remember that.

Fact is, if I slap strangers and stomp on their toes just because they touched me not knowing my reality, then if I really want my system I can handle the consequences of being manhandled, booted out or slapped back by those I’ve assaulted due to not having had the training to desensitise safely.

If I am so scared to look sexual predators in the eye that they find my avoidance enticing, then teaching me timed eye contact is a damned good thing. A stalker in a powerful position once used to be such a person, constantly intrigued by my oddity and using that for his own needs. Today I would no longer be such a play thing. Social skills have taught me that - non-autistic version of them in order to use them at least for social safety.

… Donna Williams *)

*Hot tears well up in eyes* Don’t I know it…
To take someone’s passion, someone’s freedom away is probably one of the most destructive things you could do. No one who cared about being perceived as tolerant and compassionate would ever, ever advocate that for someone who was not autistic, or for themselves. Some experts even recommend forcing children to act like their peers, such as by dressing them in their clothes. Or breaking down their resistance to peer pressure.
The last time I checked, individuality and resistance to peer pressure was GOOD thing. They complain about peer pressure in non-auties and encourage it in Aspies. DOUBLE STANDARD!

Social skills training-B.S. Not if people like that are that I have to look forward to!

Marc is often held up as an example of what can happen to auties who get too involved in the non-autistic world. “Personal reasons” is now the third explanation I’ve heard for his death, and I’m happy to leave it at that but the thing is that there aren’t enough of Marcs writings to be able to tell what his story was. Still, telling totally isolated auties not to get involved in the world around them at all is a little silly.

From what I’m told about suicidal people, the ones who leave a suicide note are looking for help, and the ones who don’t, aren’t. They’re just out to make peace with the world and they do this by cleaning up their affairs before doing the act.

Marc might in fact have been having some sort of panic attack. From what little I’ve read of and from him, I think that he probably didn’t suffer from panic attacks, but I can’t tell, given what little information there is about him.

The thing that makes me wonder though is that he wrote down what he learnt, and not only that, but he wrote it down in a readable way. I have tried to write a book just like his using concepts I find easy to understand, and frankly it is near impossible to make it broadly readable.

I reckon Marc put a HELL of a lot of work into those small books and I suspect that when he read back over them and tried to “road test” them, he wondered what the effort was for. Now, add to this that he was no older than 23 when he learnt all he did.

Many people have said that they wished they’d had those books around when they were younger. There clearly is a need for such books because learning these things is near impossible even with the motivation to actually get involved.

There also clearly is a need to know exactly what kinds of problems someone on the spectrum is likely to be confronted with when they attempt these things. Social skills training is still used as a treatment for perfectly healthy aspies despite the news reports about how NONE of them work. Parents and carers are even willing to take their kids passions away from them to give them more time for social skills training.

In attempting to become more socially aware, I’ve encountered many different suicidal and antisocial feelings. If I didn’t have a passion to turn to when these feelings rise, my life probably would have ended the way Marcs did by now. On the other hand, my computing passion isn’t as “successful” as it has been for many other aspies so I’m still faced with a deficit in social interaction.

These things tend to get glossed over when people talk about treatments for aspergers. The antisocial and suicidal tendencies “get disappeared” in the reports and people aren’t willing to talk about personal experiences. Consequently, social skills training still exists and new ideas like RDI and Sonrise are often passed over.

I was told I had a ‘death wish’ but I didn’t consciously feel suicidal, just as if death was irrelevant or even casually welcome. My relationship to my body was not developed much. I didn’t identify self with having one. Also I’d been self injurious since infancy and used to attacking it. It was a real battle to care about it, think ahead, take action to avoid it being harmed etc.

Later I came to terms with this as part of Rapid Cycling Bipolar which had probably bee there since the ‘emotional fits’ I had since age 3.

This was my story, not Marcs, but what happened to Marc could easily have been me. Certainly when stressed I was more likely to both walk in front and run in front of cars.

In my case it couldn’t be blamed on pre-meditated attempts at suicide. Nor could it clearly be differentiated from my autism as I’d done this since around age 8 (previously lived in a dead end street). Nor could it be solely blamed in my case on pressure to conform as I did this in MANY different mood states, some ‘lost’ and zoned out, others in euphoria and ‘bliss’, others in acute agitation and distress, some just blunted and others defiant, almost willing cars to hit me. I also did this before I really understood or consciously grasped my ‘difference’ from others (which was more around age 9-11)

Since medication for bipolar, I’ve done none of this in front of cars business.

I’m surprised I made it this far an around 15-20% of people with unmedicated bipolar kill or endanger themselves and die.

As I said, that’s my story, not Marcs. Ultimately only Marc can tell his, though his writings.

Donna *)