The awesomeness of autism
I dont mean the experience of autism being awesome, its often in my experience, absolutely fucking terrible. What I mean is that the word autism itself that explains me and thats awesome. It makes it so much easier to accept myself.
Even better, there are communties around autism (as you can see lol) so I dont feel so alone. I can learn from other people how to cope that actually are similar to me.
My friends often joke about autistic experiences/observatiobs (a few of us are autistic), and while perhaps thats something to be careful about, I feel as though I just dont need to worry about being weird around them. They understand that I may say odd things or stutter, or whatever else. The knowledge of the autistic experience aids with this. (although not required, since empathy and paitence are things).
it feels as though the word autism washes away all the times ive been called weird or a freak, called a sook or whatever else. I know I should improve myself despite my limitations, but knowing the limitations are there and therefore not to be so hard on myself is so relieving.
The thought of this word never being in my life and I just wonder what the hell is wrong with me is so damn lonely. I guess I did experience that throughout my childhood, and it did indeed feel terrible.
Anyway, midnight rant over.
Hope you all have a wonderful day/night.
-Minty
6 replies
It helps but I provide a different perspective. Being an autist is awesome. The issue that makes it hard is other people, sometimes intolerant (sometimes their fault sometimes not). As Jac den Houting put it: I am not disabled, I am being disabled.
Autism in itself is something I can be proud and happy of. It's just different from NT.
The washing away is done e.g. by the awareness of the double empathy problem. If it were only autists, we wouldn't have this issue.
I can see what you mean. I suppose I have difficulty reconciling with the emotional pain of social exclusion.
But your right, it is awesome. I wouldnt want to be born a different way (neurotypical), because that wouldnt be me.
I'd like to see the reality in which i was that.
Then I'd decide which reality I'd prefer
Exactly. If there were such a thing as a 'cure' I wouldn't want it. Actually one of the fears of therapy was me not being me anymore. That was before I found out, so I'm safe.
I had a revelation a few years before I got my diagnosis. I was sitting in my uncle's garage watching the family interact: misunderstanding each other to the point of it becoming schtick, having long convos about the current special interest du jour, digging around for stuff my uncle found forty years ago and has been saving for this exact situation... stuff like that. And I realized that everybody was completely nuts in exactly the same I was. This was pre-diagnosis and I didn't have the right terminology, but I knew that we'd spent most of my childhood pretending to be normal around each other and now we weren't. We were all trying to hide the same thing. And whatever it was, it wasn't as awful as we thought it was.
We're all on the spectrum and we all married people on the spectrum. Our kids are on the spectrum. The best thing we did was have a few beers with each other and let the masks slip.
I love this perspective and it’s a great response to the people that think labels are only harmful!