8:42am March 21, 2013

➸ my two cents (or more): Another thing about those groups that are really parent-dominated even...

Another thing about those groups that are really parent-dominated even while everyone tries to pretend that they’re not.

It seems like in any given one of those communities, there are always at least five or six of these things running around. The things that don’t want you to exist, even if…

I’ve found that surviving that experience for an extended period of time has provided me with a weird kind of armor.

Like “They did this to me. And?” Yeah they keep doing it. But it hurts me less over time. It’s still a horribly cruel thing to do to me, to you, to anyone. Even when the things they say are false, it’s an invasion. Sometimes they also say truths or half-truths, but twisted to make the person look bad when combined with the ever-present lies.

And yet, now I can say, they have done this to me. The world did not end. The sun is still in the air. The sky has not fallen. I still have real friends, friends who love me for who I am. And I have learned who my real friends are.

I am not saying that surviving defamation, slander, libel, stalking, is not awful and traumatic. But at a certain point, it gives me a strength I would not have, if I were still worrying about bullies and stalkers coming out of the woodwork at some undefined point in the future. They have come out of the woodwork. They have attacked me. They have turned enemies and a few former or would-be friends against me. They have given people a stupid, easy out when it comes to not listening to me. They have managed to convince some people that I am not real, I am not here, I am a fraud, I am impossible and so are any people like me.

And unfortunately that’s where I see the greatest damage done – where people with lives much like mine have become terribly afraid to show themselves lest they get the same treatment. I’ve gotten emails by people who were bullied in the same manner I was. Who made the same concessions to ill-treatment in and near the psych system, pretending that what doctors and parents and “friends” said about us was true because of fear, and then taking all the responsibility for doing so upon ourselves, because of an overly heightened sensibility that we were always the one doing the wrong. People with internal worlds, now seen as either real or fantasy, doesn’t matter. People who lost skills in ways that are very common but very non-stereotypical. Letters from these people told me in no uncertain terms that there is nothing rare or unusual about my history. But given the autism community’s tendency towards strict orthodoxy when it comes to what traits people show, there’s a lot of people hiding out there in plain sight. People who wrote to me about their experiences like mine who would never admit them in public. Including some fairly well-known people. Their fear, their feeling they need to hide, that is the worst damage done by this overall.

And their hiding, justified or not, causes problems. I don’t blame them for causing the problems. But the hiding, the fault ultimately of the bullies, causes problems. It convinces some people that they need not look beneath the surface. That every autistic person is exactly who they appear to be. That people like me (in these regards) are rare instead of fairly common. That every real autistic person fits the stereotype the bullies work so hard to build. That we are not complicated and do not have complicated or confusing histories. That there is not tremendous variation among the experiences of autistic people. All this happens when everyone pretends to be the same.

That pretense of sameness is not just because of bullies either. Groupthink brings it out just as easily among autistic people. You can watch the trends over the years among communities of autistic people, where, as one guy I know put it, if someone convinced them that those who twiddle their pencils are more autistic then everyone would claim to do it. That tendency is one the bullies make use of in singling out anyone who claims not to twiddle pencils, or is claimed by others never to have done so even if they did.

But the bullies did something for me, even though they hurt me. They also gave me that armor that is so hard to describe. I learned that they only attacked a mirage. They never attacked the real me. They can’t see the real me. They never have been able to. The person they have described in such lovingly malicious detail, was never me and they know it. And they made themselves clear to me as lying about me, because they made up things about themselves, me, their connections to me, that can’t be explained even by passing me off. So they have shown their true colors. And they have failed to touch me. They can’t touch what they can’t see. And they will never be able to see me for who I really am, because doing so is completely beyond them.

People who seek only to hurt someone can never see that person for real. Because they are acting on hate. Hate can never perceive love, and love is required to see people for who they really are. Seeing things as they are, seeing through glamour, is one of my strengths and it is a strength they will never have, not as they are now.

Even if they did their worst. Even if they acted on their threats to kill people. They haven’t touched us. Because we will always have existed. They can’t erase that. And because that deepest part of us is tied into the most important parts of the world, and they can’t perceive it let alone destroy it. It’s beyond anyone’s malicious intent.

Also. If you do or say anything useful or important, you’ll eventually make enemies. It’s best to learn these things about them now. That malicious people, in the act of malice, can’t see who you are and can’t harm the most important part of you. Because you’ll either learn it on your own. Or else you’ll learn it through some rather horrible experiences. It’s much better not to require going through those experiences. Because they can do damage, even if they leave the most important parts of you undamaged. It’s hard to explain, because the damage is on one level, and the parts of you impervious to damage are on a different level most people aren’t used to looking at themselves on. But it’s incredibly important to learn to see yourself on that level nonetheless.

Notes: