as small as a world and as large as alone

10:15pm June 24, 2014

mayguhman:

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I totally understand why you wouldn’t want to be proud of being autistic, and unlike a lot of people around here I’m not going to think less of you for it or try to make you see why you “should” feel good about being autistic.  Not everyone feels good about being autistic and that’s just how it is.

But… I wouldn’t exactly say I feel ‘proud’ of being autistic, except in the sense of being like… extremely unashamed of who I am despite pressure to be otherwise.  It’s still not the terminology I use most of the time.

But I prefer being autistic, and I prefer being autistic despite a lot of difficulties that being autistic gives me.

And that is because, for me, autism is not my social problems.  I have social problems, and some of them are related to being autistic, but my autism is not centered around my social problems.  My autism is centered around perceptual and cognitive differences from the norm.  (Some of which cause social problems in some contexts.)

And those perceptual differences from the norm… some of those cause me a lot of problems too.  But some of them also cause me the most beauty I’ve ever seen in my life, they give me a way of seeing the world (more perceptual than conceptual) that I value very highly, and that’s why I prefer being autistic.  Despite all the hardship, and there is plenty.   But I prefer it because I like being highly sensing and sensory, despite all the problems those can cause in a world where you’re expected to be interpretive and conceptual all the time.  Sorry for using words you may not be aware of, but I’m not good at explaining what I mean at this time of night, right now.

Being sensing means that the default way my brain processes information isn’t in ideas about the world.  It’s not in “cat”.  It’s in the sensory experiences that make up a cat.  It’s in the pre-sensory experiences that happen before your senses are plugged in and working properly.  It’s in the patterns formed between sensory and pre-sensory experiences, that let me understand the world in an entirely different way than comprehending it with my idea-based mind.

That comes with a lot of limitations, including a lot of limitations that are not commonly discussed on #actuallyautistic, because highly sensing people are in a minority here as far as I can tell.  But it also comes with a lot of beauty.  And personally – and it’s always a personal choice – I wouldn’t trade the beauty for anything.

And that’s even though my visual system is so sensitive that the world falls into pieces in new environments (and even in old ones, but worse in new ones), it’s even though I have to struggle to get the meaning of basic objects in my surroundings, it’s even though I struggle to make my body do what I want it to do, it’s even though I need extensive help to get through a day on my own (as in paid services by the state department of developmental disabilities, which is constantly wanting me in an institution or something it seems like, but I’ve stayed out so far), it’s even though many of these things have gotten harder over the years rather than easier.  

For me, each good thing has a bad flipside, and I have to take both, basically.

But as far as I’m concerned… whether a person chooses to like being autistic is their own affair.  I won’t tell you how to feel about yourself.  I’m just telling you why some of us think it’s worth it.  It’ll be different for each person.  Each person who likes being autistic, usually has something they wouldn’t give up even because of the hard stuff.  And each person who really dislikes being autistic, usually has something that they just can’t reconcile with the life they want to lead no matter how they try.  And then there’s a lot of people in between, too.

I’m someone who definitely wants to stay being autistic, but I also understand a lot of autism’s bad side in ways some people don’t because they don't have some parts of the bad side that I have.  Of course there are plenty of people who understand autism’s bad side, but just think the good outweighs the bad, and that’s fine too.  YMMV.

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