Mind conversation with myself.
How to speak about the differences in perceiving the world before you learn that your view of the world is not the typical way? How would you know the difference between you and others if people don’t normally talk about things in such fundamental level?
You think you perceive things like everybody else, and everybody else thinks you are just like them.
In a world made to please a certain type of a relation to reality and ignore all others, those that are different will suffer in many levels by the inadequacy of their way of being.
It’s hard to function in a world that assumes you work in a certain way when that’s not how you function, this only increases the difficulty as soon as others notice the differences and you are now aware of who you are not, you are not normal, and what you are, you are flawed, broken, you need to be fixed.
You may accept this or reject it, you may accept and reject at the same time, but this will be how you are saw by others, and in the end how you see yourself.
It’s not the reality, but how would you know that? Nobody accept that people can be different in a way that is not wrong. You need to accept that maybe different was all there was, not flawed or broken, just different.
Label after label was placed upon this person, negatively proclaiming failures, failing at being a typical person, the person that was supposed to be.
You do not understand why things turn out to be like this, after trying so much, struggling so much, why keep failing at everything?
Never imagining that there are many realities and people sometimes work differently. Nobody talks about that. If they do, they may be accused of imagining all of that in their head, just another problem.
When people notice, normally very soon, that you are not like they are, you become a target, be it exclusion, cruelty or any form of violence, and you suffer because in your head it’s your fault, you have problems, you don’t know what problems or where they came from, but they are here, everyone knows that.
You suffer until you stop feeling. You stop feeling until you break apart.
After being such a weird thing, a weird not-person, after so many labels, you are destroyed, the solution?
More labels, more ways of telling you are broken, not why you are broken, just the reality they see, you are depressed according to good people, you are lazy and spoiled according to bad people.
Why?
You want to know, you really do. Nobody guesses why, people are just different, but nobody says that.
You lived like a ghost, you broke apart, and you climbed up again to being a living ghost. Life moves on, guilt of not doing what you were supposed to do overwhelm you.
Life overwhelms you.
Then someday you hear something, something about people who are not like everybody else, but you think not me, still you want to know more, you always do, so you ask, what people tell you is almost like if those people were like robots, they are not creative, they don’t feel empathy, etc, weird things that are not like you, so you forget this for awhile, but you like knowing things, so you read something about it, and some more, because you understand it that what people told was not the truth, there is more about it, and you get what is being said in a way you never get before.
Finally you understand why things were like that, because you are different, not bad or good different, simply different functioning, different perceiving, and different being.
Now you start the fight of accepting that this is real, you are not imagining, this it’s not wishful thinking, the fight of removing wrong labels for a new one, one that does not put limits on you, but explains and start to validates your experiences.
A fight of trying to accept yourself, learning finally how you function so you can start to live, all the things you tried to ignore, the not-real things, the suppressed behaviors, the necessary but forgotten things that needs to be understood.
You are happy because of this.
But you are alone, so few care and nobody will believe, you have no one to talk about (or write, talking is only the hard way), people never heard about that.
(Deep down, you are afraid of what they will think of this nonsense. You are always afraid of something. Nobody will believe it, you have no proof. You are sure, but you are not, because how can you be? Maybe it’s because it’s about you.)
You have been left behind so many times, you need sharing sometimes, but nowhere to turn to.
You are severely traumatized by the past, the few times you talk about it people say they had the same or worst experiences, they diminish what you feel.
Nightmares, terror, permanent fear, destroyed hopes, those things are the result of cruelty, but people only say that it wasn’t that bad, they say something happened in their past that was bad and today they hardly care, they say they know what it’s like. If that’s true why am I the only terrified and stopped in time.
You can’t exactly remember the past.
You can’t forget the fear and pain, the despair.
You hide, you don’t tell, you are scared and alone but finally you can accept and see some hope.
It wasn’t the label itself but the process the new label brought with it.
It wasn’t just a label, but an explanation.
Those that criticize that you are limiting yourself with a label were the first that before would put you under lazy, depressed, spoiled, shy, weird, or any other category. But this label you understand, this fits and explains, it’s not a limitation.
There are other non-permanent labels that are needed for now, but those are consequences, not the entire process of perceiving and functioning.
Maybe there is hope.
Alicia Lile blogs from Brazil at Moonlit Lily.
Mind conversation with myself appears here by permission.
[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]
Alicia Lile on 10/26/11 in Autism, featured | No Comments | Read More
