I’m on the autism spectrum. I’m high-functioning, what would have been called Aspergers prior to DSM-V. What that means is that I largely function in day-to-day life, and that I don’t need significant supports. The term ‘Aspergers’ is helpful, because people have a rough idea of what you mean when you use it. Austism spectrum disorder is more nebulous. Treating differing levels of support as being ‘hierarchical’ is not useful, and will–in the long run–tend to mean that everyone gets the same levels of support, rather than people with greater needs getting more support. (Would it be nice to get therapy? Sure. Do I need it as much as other people might? Probably not.)
And fuck yes, if there was a magic pill that I could take and I’d suddenly be absolutely dead-average neurotypical? Yeah, I’d take it. I’d swallow a handful. I’m probably a lot older than a bunch of other people on the spectrum here, and lemme tell you, it does not get better. If anything, the older you get, the worse it is, because the friends you had in school drift away, and you don’t make new ones. I know that social lives tend to get worse as people age, but at this point, the ONLY social life I have is two hours of church (non-denom universalist unitarian; I gave up theism years ago) on Sundays.
I have a degree, I have a job that I’m good at, I own a house and land, I have a ton of cats that mostly like me, blah blah blah. But goddamn, I feel very alone. I tried for YEARS to do what I thought you were supposed to do to meet people and make friends, and shit always fell flat. And now I know that yes, it IS me, I’m the problem. I’m the one that’s fucking up. (And apparently it’s really really autistic to send out questionnaires to ask people where I could improve in my social skills.)
You look at the others and there’s the glass wall you can’t cross, and they tell you to come over as if it isn’t there. We just can’t fit in the narrow roles society has to offer without diminishing ourselves by masking, and that’s just suffering alone in a different way anyway.
I don’t blame other people. I know that there’s this idea that if people just treated autistic people like allistic people, that everything would be fine. But that completely ignores that way that allistic people make and maintain relationships. You don’t really have direct control over who you like, who you don’t like; insisting that allistic people can just be besties with autistic people is a pipe dream. There’s no ‘fault’ in any of this. It just sucks, that’s all.
Anyways.
There’s no cure, so it’s just, y’know, keep muddling along. I’ve got a nice house, I’m married again to someone that’s very probably also on the spectrum–not that we always understand each other, but we’ve managed to make it work for almost a decade now–I’ve got a job, I’ve got an ungodly number of cats. I keep busy enough that I don’t think about it much any more.
I’m on the autism spectrum. I’m high-functioning, what would have been called Aspergers prior to DSM-V. What that means is that I largely function in day-to-day life, and that I don’t need significant supports. The term ‘Aspergers’ is helpful, because people have a rough idea of what you mean when you use it. Austism spectrum disorder is more nebulous. Treating differing levels of support as being ‘hierarchical’ is not useful, and will–in the long run–tend to mean that everyone gets the same levels of support, rather than people with greater needs getting more support. (Would it be nice to get therapy? Sure. Do I need it as much as other people might? Probably not.)
And fuck yes, if there was a magic pill that I could take and I’d suddenly be absolutely dead-average neurotypical? Yeah, I’d take it. I’d swallow a handful. I’m probably a lot older than a bunch of other people on the spectrum here, and lemme tell you, it does not get better. If anything, the older you get, the worse it is, because the friends you had in school drift away, and you don’t make new ones. I know that social lives tend to get worse as people age, but at this point, the ONLY social life I have is two hours of church (non-denom universalist unitarian; I gave up theism years ago) on Sundays.
I have a degree, I have a job that I’m good at, I own a house and land, I have a ton of cats that mostly like me, blah blah blah. But goddamn, I feel very alone. I tried for YEARS to do what I thought you were supposed to do to meet people and make friends, and shit always fell flat. And now I know that yes, it IS me, I’m the problem. I’m the one that’s fucking up. (And apparently it’s really really autistic to send out questionnaires to ask people where I could improve in my social skills.)
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I don’t blame other people. I know that there’s this idea that if people just treated autistic people like allistic people, that everything would be fine. But that completely ignores that way that allistic people make and maintain relationships. You don’t really have direct control over who you like, who you don’t like; insisting that allistic people can just be besties with autistic people is a pipe dream. There’s no ‘fault’ in any of this. It just sucks, that’s all.
Anyways.
There’s no cure, so it’s just, y’know, keep muddling along. I’ve got a nice house, I’m married again to someone that’s very probably also on the spectrum–not that we always understand each other, but we’ve managed to make it work for almost a decade now–I’ve got a job, I’ve got an ungodly number of cats. I keep busy enough that I don’t think about it much any more.
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