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.

I have to wonder, sometimes, if I will spend the rest of my life coming to terms with who I am and where I fit into this crazy world. It seems to come so easy to other people, to find that little niche where they belong and spend their days in relative peace. They have never had a meltdown in a crowded grocery store, or felt tears running down their cheeks on the bus. No, those distraught moments are saved for the safety of their homes, behind closed doors, where no one will ever see their weakness.

It’s like, that moment of clarity never dawns and I’m left sitting in the dark wondering if the light of understanding will ever grace my face the way it graces the faces I see when I walk down the street. They seem to understand each other. Why can’t I understand them, and why can’t they understand me? Do I speak in tongues too fluid and fast for their ears to register? Then its my turn to wonder if its even worth opening my mouth at all, when all they understand are platitudes and spurious commiseration, and I have neither to offer. They turn those blank stares upon me and wonder what that murmur was they heard when there is nothing to see here. Please just move along. I’d like to be able to breathe again.

It’s still dark in here, and my flashlight is starting to flicker.

In my dreams sometimes I’m just like them, normal and average and able to understand. In my dreams I can speak with them. In my dreams I can fly without broken wings. So why then do I wake up in a cold sweat and wonder where I am when I know full well that in those moments it isn’t my flesh that is lost? I guess I know the answer to that one, that where they see the trials of an existence like mine I see the horrors of an existence like theirs, so lost in their own illusions that they cant feel what I feel, or see what I see. I would rather feel too much, than learn to be content with never feeling at all. They want me in their world, but that’s only because they are unable to witness mine.

To wallow in their suffering is a foreign concept. To see it for the fact that it is and stop fighting its inevitability must seem like giving up when you are surrounded by those who have nothing better to say than the sun will come out tomorrow. And what will you do if it doesn’t? Those hollow words are meaningless in the face of a future that cannot be predicted. I don’t see it that way, but what do I know locked in this little box I have created to protect myself from their prying eyes? Nothing, it seems, when they only take my words, hear what they wish, and attempt to show me the world in black and white.

I never wake up in a panic when I dream in full color.

Feigned

“So you think you know me?” she said to them. “You think you know what dark and desperate secrets hide behinds these eyes? You think you know what terrible truths lie locked behind these pale and bloodless lips, what it takes to satiate the demons whose poison burns through my veins? What do you know, what could you know, when I have never opened my mouth to speak and instead was content to let you believe the lies you told yourself.

An angel in the dust is all they have ever seen, her halo still shining dimly through the layer of dirt and grime that a lifetime of crawling through the mud has left behind. A sweet and innocent child scarred once too often by reality to really be considered beautiful if not for the golden aura of expectations they have built to cage her.

“Fly” they whisper back, “it is your purpose”

It’s a simple as that, or so they think, to take the proffered hand and rise to greet the sun. To shake the dirt from her soiled skin and spread her wings to dry that she might soar.

“This angel you see, this torrid reflection of grace and hope, is a mirage at best. Why do you choose to fill your life with lies? Why do you claim acceptance when you can’t even see the truth? Why else waste your breath without even stopping to ask why. I bear these scars like badges of honor and this sediment like a shield.“

“Besides, I never learned how to fly without broken wings.”

A Glimpse

Boxes

In the back of my mind there are a bunch of boxes. Beat up and dusty they sit in the corner out of the path of any direct light. Most of them hold nothing but air, the memories they once held now scattered to the winds in a million particles of dust fine glass. Corroded by the years and lack of attention they faded into nothingness without even a whisper to herald their passing. Some are full to the brim with the shining past, bits of happiness and comfort snatched here and there and filed away to peruse at a later date. Flickering lights of conversation long neglected that still hold out hope that one day I will open them up and see what they hold. A few, hidden at the very bottom of the pile, are dark and forbid careless tampering. Locked tight to the world they contain those things I have seen and lived and survived that lurk at the edges of my mind and make up the glue that holds this otherwise fragile and gossamer child together at the seams.

Rarely do I venture there, and bring forth one of those boxes. Rarely do I linger in the past where they live, wallowing in the mud of who I was, and who they were, and the choices we both made. I hardly even see them anymore hidden in the dusty mire where they have lain for so long, long ago cast from conscious thought to take up residence in nightmares and terror. These are the moments I would rather forget but cannot, jagged pieces of glass in my mind that could rend and tear if I spent too much time wallowing in their presence. Yet I know, in my heart, that these same bits of my past with such power to devastate me also fuel my strength and that to lock them away forever cheapens the horror and terror I felt when I was trapped in the moment. The tiny scrapes and cuts they cause allow the poison that could easily consume me to bleed from my veins.

I have a great deal of affection for those darker places in my mind, those corners lost deep in shadow where fear and hatred and misery lurk in patient silence, waiting for the opportunity to pounce. Most people shy away from the very edges of their humanity, never seeking to know what lies buried beneath that heap of lies we learn to tell ourselves in an effort to hide all that weakness from the prying eyes of others. In the pool of my own sweat and tears mingled with the blood of my pride and the dust at my feet I can see forever reflected back at me. These moments make me feel not less, but more and stronger each time I pull myself from the ashes of the fire to stand reborn and stretch my wings to the glory of their new span. It is only when held up in contrast to these moments of misery that I can witness the real value of the light and comfort that floods my life on a day to day basis. It’s only by carefully unlocking those boxes and rifling through their contents that I can achieve greater understanding. What I’ve done is such a huge part of who I am.

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“That one” she whispered, and he reached for one hidden back in the shadows of the already dim room. “No not that one, the one beside it” her voice got quieter as his hands neared the source of her anticipation. Wrapping it carefully in his hands he cradled it out of its place in the dusty past and lowered it carefully to the floor between them. She could barely look at it, knowing what it held, and tears started to creep down her cheeks, leaving tracks in the dust that had settled there in her search to unearth this long hidden piece of her past. With trembling hands she lifted the chain from around her neck and the key that dangled on the end danced in the small light offered by the one small lamp as she dropped it into his outstretched palm.