A message about curebies

I’m not complaining about having Aspergers Syndrome. I’ve never been complaining, and yet I get endless inquiries about treatment options and heartfelt suggestions for ways I can improve my life. My life is grand. My life is a product of the choices I have made and for the last little while those have been damn good ones. Things run fairly smoothly from my point of view, and yet all anyone else sees is how miserable they would be. My happiness apparently has no bearing on my happiness when it comes to public opinion. They are too busy listening to people who have never lived my life tell them how badly people with ASD need a cure.

I try not to get involved in the political drama that surrounds the issue. I try not to get worked up, but it makes me want to scream from the rooftops, or pull my hair out because I know no one would hear me even if I did. Any cure they offer could be compared to a lobotomy. If you take away all that makes up my personality then what is left but an empty shell that once held a vibrant and inquisitive spirit. I couldn’t live as less than I am. I wouldn’t know how. No one would.

There are very few adults with ASD looking for a cure. I say very few to be politically correct, but the fact of the matter if I haven’t been able to find even one and I’ve been looking. I belong to forums chock full of people on the spectrum and not one of them is screaming for a quick fix. Yea they bitch about the shit parts, but doesn’t everyone? I do however hear all kinds of yelling about “curebies” when all we are looking for is acceptance as a different sort of thinker. Not better mind you, different. FFS we make up a fair chunk of the population, we WERE the children being “stolen from their parents”, and a good percentage of us turned out just fine. Just for the record, a good percentage of Neurotypicals didn’t.

Its hard not to be upset by it all, when the assumption is constantly being drawn that there is something wrong with me, something wrong with the way I think. The only thing wrong is feeling that they have the right to judge when they cannot possibly know what its like to walk in my shoes. We are a minority, but we deserve the right to be heard.

It doesn’t seem to matter that those who know me love me for my differences, that even though I take some getting used to there are those who simply wouldn’t feel the same about me if I didn’t think the way I do. It doesn’t seem to matter that I’m standing in front of them saying that I am content with who I am. That we are standing in front of them saying we are content with who we are. That had we been cured as children we wouldn’t be the people they know and love today.

My message is pretty simple. The truth always has two sides.