1 post tagged “self-preservation”
I had to look something up for an article on autism and accidentally stumbled into a whole world of autistic bloggers. Below are three that I particularly enjoyed reading:
Autism Demonized
Autism Diva
Ballastexistenz (this one is more than just enjoyable - it's absolutely mindblowing)
I love these voices because they sound so fearlessly individual. It has to be a horrible thing to have your entire outlook on life, your brain structure - everything about you, really - pathologized.
When I was a kid they sent me to the school psychologist because I was, you know, not like other kids. I was the kid who sat and read books about dragons while the other kids did whatever it is kids do on a playground. I felt closer to my cat than to any human, and I once got in trouble with a neighbor for talking to his tree. Plus, of course, everyone knew my parents were freaks.
I knew what was up with the psychologist, of course. I'd prepped by reading "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" I knew that this person was a danger to me, because he would try to turn everything I liked about myself into a problem to be solved. I also had a habit of going into every situation assuming that I was smarter than any adult, and in this case my assumption was completely affirmed. He showed me a bunch of pictures and asked some canned questions and adminstered some tests. It was painfully obvious what the "right" answer was - how a normal kid would answer - and it was the easiest thing in the world to tell him what he wanted to hear.
He must have stamped "SANE" on my file because I never saw him again and no one ever mentioned it again. However, I knew that my true answers were not really the same as the answers I gave. I had already picked up on the fact that many people saw something wrong about me - there's nothing like a pack of schoolchildren to make that abundantly clear - but as far as I was concerned they had something wrong with them and life was fine as long as they weren't actually bothering me. (This very funny site actually pretty much sums up how I felt.) I knew from then on that there were people out there who would try to cure me of being "me," and I felt passionately opposed to that process. It's that voice that I identify with in the autism blogs.
There was not, in fact, anything wrong with me. I was just a bright kid who was very introverted and had a mom that dressed me funny. I had no pathological behaviors - I did well in school, I didn't have many friends but the ones I had were very close, and besides some fits of teenage depression I was happy. As long as I was alone (or on a horse - by "alone" I realize what I mean is "away from humans" - I never actually felt "alone" when surrounded by trees), outdoors, in the woods I was totally happy, and I was fortunate enough to live where that was easy to accomplish.
However, if I did not have a deep distrust of authority, a feral sense of self-preservation, and age-inappropriate reading material, I might have thought that psychiatrist was there to help me. I might have answered honestly. I could have been transformed magically into a Disabled Person. I might have been labeled and stuck in a slot, and worse, I might even have believed it.
I found, as I was going through these blogs, a couple of different screening instruments for autism spectrum conditions - I answered honestly this time, since nothing was riding on the outcome. No surprise, I test positive for Asperger's. I don't believe it, though. Not that I don't believe that I have these characteristics, that I share a collection of behavioral traits with a particular population, or that these traits are different from most of the population. What I don't believe is that this is a disease, or a disorder, or a disability, or any of those words that imply that it's something to be fixed. I function quite well, actually, and generally I like myself and my life.
