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8:21pm October 16, 2014
madeofpatterns asked: cousinhood

madeofpatterns:

withasmoothroundstone:

I tried to live outside their cages
I tried to control my movements
The barely concealed rages
The cages at least had people like me
Or enough like me that, across a room
When staff weren’t looking
We could exchange a glance
A glance of familiarity

But then I would go outside on the street
Where all of the normal people meet
And I couldn’t be what they need
Their latest success story

I’d look around in puzzlement
As groups of teenagers came and went
Laughing and talking in perfect cadence
And no one like me in sight

And I don’t think it could be more lonely
Than walking down to the beach
And finally, finally seeing someone
Whose body moved like me
Then seeing the fancy wrought-iron bars
That kept her on her side, and us on ours
And realizing with a start
Either she didn’t belong caged
Or I didn’t belong free

One day my friend was walking with me
And a bunch of people came up to me
Not all at once, just one by one
As the day wore on and on

Sometimes they handed me hundreds of pages
Of handwritten screeds about religion and politics
Sometimes they tried to say it out loud
In a jumble of misplaced words and phrases
One woman said she’d get her computer to transmit
Directly to my mind, then walked off to her computer
Never to return

My friend asked me
“When you go out
Do people always approach you like that?”
And I said “Yeah, so what?”
And she said
“It’s not normal, that’s what.”

I realized they all felt like me
Confused about being set free
In a world where people like us
Weren’t really supposed to exist

I used to look around and wish
That someone out there would rock or twitch
Or incoherently yell at the world
Anything to show they’re a tiny bit
Just a little bit like me

And these other people wished that too
And when they saw me, they saw someone who
Might not be exactly like them
But enough to call me cousin

And cousins we were, and it kept us all sane
To have that idea (without even a name)
That anywhere walking down the street
You could meet someone just enough the same
To call them your cousin
And talk for awhile
And when we were done
We’d feel that much less alone
Because that is what cousinhood means

And I don’t think it could be more lonely
Than walking down to the beach
And finally, finally seeing someone
Whose body moved like me
Then seeing the fancy wrought-iron bars
That kept her on her side, and us on ours
And realizing with a start
Either she didn’t belong caged
Or I didn’t belong free

I’m almost crying because that was a real person and a real place. You walked down to the beach. Big white building, shining bright in the California sun, with little wrought iron gated yards around the back with hedges between them, one person in each, usually stimming. Cages. Fancy cages. I almost tried to get admitted there but it was way too upscale for me. I just thought institutions are where you go when you can’t make it on the outside and I wasn’t making it on the outside. Fortunately the autistic community helped me from there or I’d probably be dead by now.