Autism? Do you consider it a curse?

Post Reply New Topic

Curse, I consider some traits of autism that.

I think that if I were non-autistic, I'd consider some non-autistic traits as a curse too.

Blessing, I consider some of the very things blessings that are just as much curses.

On the one hand, sensory issues are a big problem. I realise how significant this area of issues is more and more. On the other hand, I cling to and enjoy how I perceive my environment each day. From what I hear of non-autistic and some other autistic people, I things so vastly different.

I cannot imagine seeing the world like any other person. It would be a missing, lacking and dreadful perception.

So I pay the price, but with complainant, because I'm a vocal person.

I even find something positive about meltdowns, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to do away with them. I somewhat am fascinated by flipping, because I love everything essentially hectic, loud etc.

Anyway, I want to point out that even things I want to get rid of can have positives can't they? I'm still all for getting rid of my meltdowns though.

I'm thinking hard on what I think are the advantage of routines, yet I can think of none. I know there are several advantages to it though, because many people strive to keep to a schedule, to not be tardy, to have certain routines. I'm also all for getting rid of my routines.

No, I do not think the quality of my life would be better without my ASD. I don't think anything is quality or that life should be a certain way.

I couldn't name my strengths or weaknesses unless I look them up (or have them learnt by heart), because I don't care for what a detail is;

I'm kinda... floating.

Haha... maybe I lack imagination.

I just realised that most people probably think about 'how life should be'. I have no answer to that. Life is as it is, full of pleasant smiles and annoying cries.

If you wonder about how a different life would be, it could make you sad about the life you already have.



I really tried on this one...

That's what I always say! No school, sleeping the whole day... But living only 15 years is a real curse to my mind.

Meow.

Yeah... 15 years is a bummer. But maybe it feels like 75 to the cat!

Some parts of autism bug me, too. I wish I didn't have meltdowns, for example; I'd like not to be over-sensitive... You can't take those things completely without also taking the little bits of me that are built on them, though, so no-thanks to anyone who offers to magically remove them! What I've learned, though, is that it's possible to turn autistic traits to one's advantage, or to find work-arounds... If you're trying to solve an autistic problem the NT way, you're probably doing it wrong! Solve autistic problems YOUR way--that is, take into account your own abilities, weaknesses, tendencies, personality... Meltdowns, for example: Find out what causes them, find out what you can do to stop the cause... Sensory overload? Wear sunglasses, wear comfy clothes, bring a stim toy... Unexpected events? Schedule, check up on things before you do them... Find little places where you can go to calm down--a public restroom; an empty office... I mean, there's ways to work around all this stuff. You might have to do "weird" things to get it to work; creativity's a big bonus in that area. I don't think I'll ever get rid of meltdowns entirely. It's not impossible that they'll stop being a real problem, though.

To me, it is both. If you have a disability (autism isn't always one, but it often is), it is part of your identity--whether you reject or accept it. Most people with disabilities accept this part of their identities... The biggest obstacle tends to be whether people around you accept it too. Autism is one of the least accepted disabilities; so it is no wonder that many autistics try to distance autism from themselves... I feel this is not possible, even with a purely physical disability, because disability by definition affects a major part of your life. Either your identity includes autism, or your identity includes rejecting autism; but autism's going to be in there somewhere.

Last edited by Callista on 19 Aug 2008, 12:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Would you say that physical (as opposed to social) disabilities are part of people's identities too ?

Yes. For example, if you use a wheelchair, it'll affect how you relate to others, how you spend some of your free time (and the amount you have of it--probably a significant amount less); plus there's the extra medical/therapy stuff... it's a big part of your life. Deafness? Well, just ask anybody who's active in Deaf culture; they'll tell you it's a big part of who they are. Or let's say you have a disability that leaves you with less energy than everybody else; having to budget your energy means you do things differently from other people. All visible disabilities affect how others see you. And the invisible ones mean that you feel different but don't look different--which also affects your identity.

Disability doesn't make you so very different from everybody else; the difference due to disability itself isn't overwhelming compared to the differences between human beings, period. It doesn't make you some unapproachable, inscrutable alien. But it does affect who you are; it always will.

I totally agree on the atypical way of solving problems!

I have the impression that very often, 2 distinct ways of how social interaction can be like are discussed in the autistic community and everybody that's somehow connected to it. Yet I think there are many more ways than a supposed non-autistic and autistic way. It really amazed me that people can be so metaphorically blind to alternatives.

I interact with every person differently. I also only interact with people willingly on terms that say that we both have to give something and accept something. Fuse our ways of communication to get a new basis that we can try to be both equal on.

It's very noticeable that I interact differently with people than they do with others. But unless somebody is out to bully me or tries to force their idea on how to communicate on ours, this odd new communication fusion works great.

On meltdowns however, I for example cannot work around these I think. I hate routines, so I don't want to keep to them. Yet my brain doesn't work without a routine (I become like a living statue then). Then comes the meltdown, when I try to fight against my stupid brain.

My character is kind of against my ASD and both win and loose that battle hehe.

I don't have so many problems with my environment anymore, because I'm always trying the compromise and free creative way. Since I know I'm autistic, it's surprisingly easy to me.

Currently, to me it's usually what I want versus how my brain works. I love wild insane parties and spontaneous outgoing for example. I don't want to back up from what I want either, but that's ok, I have to live with it and try to wriggle my way through it as always.

I'm honestly surprised at how many of you believe that autism isn't a curse. Many of you make interesting arguments, such as Keith, who stated that "Others were never meant to have it because they never would be able to deal with it". Interesting take on it, but why would some be given it and others not? I find that bizarre, in the same token, do schizophrenic people have schizophrenia because they can handle it more than a neurotypical person? Is being slightly mentally handicapped some odd kind of blessing because we can endure more?

It seems the majority of you are acceptant of the idea that you're autistic, and although more than likely annoyed by it, you manage to live with it and accept it. Funny, I'm very much like all of you, in the sense that I realize I'm autistic and for the most part, I accept it. However, the thing that gets to me and infuriates me is knowing that I can't feel anger and confidence when I need it the most. I forget about it until I am confronted with either a negative thought/memory/action or an unfamiliar stimulus that instills fear and dread into me. Although I don't act crazy, I feel it inside, weakening me and make me feel physically weak. Consider it a male ego thing of wanting to be strong and courageous, I want to feel those things, and to be without them is to feel weak and powerless, to lack control. Perhaps it is the fact that I have OCD and autism that drives to these embittered allegations and conclusions.

As for your answer, aspiartist, I honestly sympathize with you. If it wasn't for the fact that I've seen people change their behavior and mannerisms because of their belief in Jesus/God, I would be very much like you, wondering why God is punishing me. Don't get me wrong, I have been angry at Him before because I feel that when I freaked out it was His fault because He supposedly gave me this curse. But I often forget something the Bible says "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” Psalms 34:17-20. Even God tempted Job, and although Job was not mentally ill, God knew Job wouldn’t curse His name because he believed in Him.

As for you Age1600, I admire your wisdom and your patience on this topic. You have stated that you have worked with many different types of kids with many kinds of disabilities. In fact, my mom has done just the same, dealing with many autistic children at the place of her work. The case with the kid with cerebral pausli, the kids who are catatonic schizophrenics, the 12 year old girl who is in a wheelchair 24/7, these are all remarkable stories and they do make oneself thankful for what they have in life. And here I am, ranting and raving about my own problems when compared to the people you mentioned, my problems seem so insignificant. It will always be beyond me how kids with such severe disabilities see so much good in this world. Perhaps it is because they haven’t been introduced to the ridicule and disapproval of their peer due to their handicap. Perhaps they’ve lead such a sheltered life that they don’t know what it is to be constantly aggravated by their disability. Why would a person be so happy despite such disabilities? The thing that aggravates me most is knowing that I’m almost entirely neurotypical, yet I know I can never the emotions of confidence and anger at my full disposal. I can live being alone, I can live not understanding people, but my emotions, or the lack of them at certain times, leaves me weak. Like I said, this is probably a combination of O.C.D and autism along with a male ego thing, but it annoys me so much.

Agreed. And it doesn't always affect a person in a purely negative way, either, it just makes life different. Most physically disabled people I know, me included, at most think of it as an inconvenience, but also find things we don't mind or even like about it.

Here is a quote from the late Harriet McBryde Johnson, a lawyer and disability rights activist who was severely physically disabled. She said once, also, that she did not want a cure, because it was down into her DNA, it was very much a part of who she was, even though of course nothing is all of who a person is. But anyway here's the quote, everything past this paragraph is quoted, not my words. It's from the book Too Late to Die Young: Nearly True Tales from a Life. I'm going to bold it because the tiny letters in the "quote" thing really bug me on this, just be aware it's not my words, it's hers:

My path is constrained but endlessly varied. I watch the sun move up in the morning sky and in and out of clouds, take in the changing light that constantly reinvents the cities classic, composed beauty. I feel the moist air roll over my just-washed skin, breathe in the odors of sea and flowering trees and restaurant grease. Some of the best mornings are the mornings when nothing happens, when there is no story but the continuing relationship of this old city with the ocean that roars just out of sight and with the living jungle that tentatively tolerates our existence here.

How is it possible that nondisabled people tend to feel sorry for me? It still takes me by surprise. Peter Singer couldn’t imagine a disabled child enjoying a day at the beach and he’s hardly alone. The widespread assumption that disability means suffering feeds a fear of difference and a social order that doesn’t know what to do with us if it can’t make us fit its idea of normal. When we seek what we need to live good lives as we are, we come against that wall. Why bother? the thinking runs; all they can do is suffer. When nondisabled people start learning about disability, what seems most startling, most difficult to accept, is the possibility of pleasure.

For decades, little noticed by the larger world, the disability rights movement has been mobilizing people from the back rooms and back wards, along with more privileged people like me, to speak plainly about our needs. We make demands. We litigate. Run for office. Seize the streets. Sit through the meetings. Mark up the drafts. That kind of work has changed the world and we need to continue to do it.

But we need to do something else besides, something that may be difficult but is, I think, vital. We need to confront the life-killing stereotype that says we’re all about suffering. We need to bear witness to our pleasures.

I’m talking in part about the pleasures we share with nondisabled people. For me, those include social engagement of all kinds: swapping stories, arguing hard, getting and giving a listening ear. A challenging professional life. Going to movies, concerts, and exhibits. Wearing a new pair of earrings. Savoring the afternoon hit of Dove dark chocolate. I enjoy those pleasures the same way nondisabled people do. There’s no impairment; disability makes no difference.

But I’m also talking about those pleasures that are peculiarly our own, that are so bound up with our disabilities that we wouldn’t experience them, or wouldn’t experience them the same way, without our disabilities. I’m talking about pleasures that might seem a bit odd.

Let me give some examples.

John Hockenberry rolls across the Brooklyn Bridge self-propelled in a manual wheelchair. As he describes it, it’s a high no one but a hotshot para can really know.

A nation within a nation, of Deaf people, capitalizes its name to demand recognition as a language group, equal to any other in dignity and ferocious beauty.

Barry Corbet, a hotshot para now falling apart, is stuck in bed for several weeks with a pressure sore. As he lives with one marvelous view, he says life doesn’t go away; where would it go? he says life has never been richer or more juicy.

In an essay on smell, Helen Keller wrote that she could never warm up to another person who did not have a distinct and recognizable body odor.

After decades of torment, Professor John Nash recognizes his delusions for what they are and lets voices and visions and mathematical creativity cohabit in a mind unlike any the world has ever known.

My friend Kermit, a quad on a budget, goes out to lobby the legislature and finds a coffee under way. He can’t grasp with his hands so he makes a legislator feed him a donut. The last lobbyist out removes his clip-on tie.

At a summer camp, a mentally ret*d boy badgers a girl in a wheelchair to teach him to play checkers. He knows he’s slow and she’s bored, but he won’t give up. Then something clicks and her explanations make sense at last and he sees the patterns and wins the game. For the smart girl in the chair — for me — it’s a humorous, humbling lesson. For the slow boy, there’s joy in pushing his intellectual limits. The peculiar pleasure is unique to each of us, but it’s also shared; the sharing makes a bridge across our differences.

Throughout my life, the nondisabled world has told me my pleasures must be only mental, never physical. Thinking to help me, it has said my body is unimportant. I respectfully disagree. For me, the body — imperfect, impermanent, falling apart — is all there is. Through this body that needs the help of hands and machines to move, that is wired to sense and perceive, comes all pleasure, all life. My brain is only one among many body parts, all of which work through one another and cooperate as best they can.

Some people, disabled and otherwise, conceptualize a self distinct and apart from the body. I may at one time have done so. I’m not sure. I know it is somehow possible for me to talk about me and my body as though separate, even though my mind and heart say we are one. At this stage in my life, my body constantly makes its presence known as needed, telling me with an urgent pain to deal with a wrinkle under my seat belt, or reminding me with a tremble or ache or flutter of its desire for food or rest or some other pleasure. Now the body I live in doesn’t only affect me. It is me.

The nondisabled world tells disabled people generally that our lot is unavoidably tragic, and if we’re smiling, we’re smiling through tears and despite suffering. In the face of these powerful social forces, I believe that living our strange and different lives, however we choose and manage to live them, is a contribution to the struggle. Living our lives openly and without shame is a revolutionary act.

Just a note, also, although it might be a seemingly small detail, it's worth noting. Age1600 didn't say catatonic schizophrenic, she said catatonic. Catatonia refers to a movement disorder that can be caused by a lot of different things, it was originally a term used by neurologists, not psychiatrists, because it is not at its root psychiatric in nature. (It also doesn't refer only to being unable to move, that's only one possible manifestation. Many of the others -- echolalia, echopraxia, motor planning/voluntary-movement difficulties -- strongly resemble autistic attributes, among other things. I am diagnosed secondarily with a form of catatonia-like/parkinson-like movement disorder (it has no specific name so it goes by many), because these things, possibly just aspects of being autistic/physical reactions to overload, have increased rather than decreased with time. The association of catatonia with schizophrenia exists at least in part because the man who invented schizophrenia believed catatonia to be caused by the same thing that caused hallucinations and delusions in other people, and "disorganized behavior" in others. He was probably wrong. The diagnosis of catatonic schizophrenia has steadily declined over the years, and my guess as to why, is that diagnosis of catatonia as caused by the various physical causes that normally cause it -- some forms of encephalitis, for example -- have gone up, and so have diagnoses of specific conditions that look like it at first glance.) Age1600 seemed to be talking about people who, due to extremely severe brain damage, are unable to move voluntarily at all, but have small amounts of involuntary movement.

As far as God goes, I find the bible story very interesting where Moses didn't want to do what God wanted because he was not a good public speaker, and God told him basically, "I made blind people blind, and deaf people deaf, for a reason. And I'm telling you to do this, not someone else. You have a brother who can speak well, he can help you out, I gave you a brother, too. So no more excuses." Basically -- very paraphrased on my part. Seeming to mean, that disability is a part of life, and that cooperation and interdependence are how it is to be dealt with.

Autistic Malcontent, in response I identify with your difficulties expressing anger, in particular, and other feelings etc., as well, and yes it does leave one feeling weak or inadequate when an appropriate response is lacking. I think you misunderstood what I said about God. I don't experience bad behaviors and then blame god for it. It was something entirely different I was referring to but I do understand what you're saying, otherwise Thanks for your thoughtful reply. It's very hard and it can be incredibly frustrating all the way around when actions and reactions don't operate the way they're supposed to, or the way they do for the rest of the NT world.

I don't consider being autistic a curse. I like it a lot. I don't have many deleterious symptoms apart from my social awkwardness (I'm learning). I enjoy my obsessions and I enjoy having very sharp senses.

In short If someone offered me a cure to my autism, I would refuse. I'm proud to be autistic.

What about a one-week cure ?
You know - a kind of holiday in NT-land, just to see what it's like ?

No. I would probably not be as "intelligent" if I was an NT. My time alone helps me to think more and read more than social people. I do like to exchange views on the net but in real life people talk about mostly boring crap.

Yeah, there was a lot of pressure when I could pass better, to pass better, and every moment I slipped up, people jumped all over me as if the reverse was going on. (As if, when I slipped up, I was actually doing something deliberately, whereas, it was when I didn't slip up, that I was doing something deliberately.)

Although now... I can't pass at all even for a little bit unless someone has a very odd set of assumptions. (For instance, sees me in a wheelchair, and assumes all my autistic oddities are the product of something purely physical, then that 'passes' me as non-autistic even though I don't pass as non-disabled. Then of course I get in trouble when it becomes obvious I've got major cognitive things going on.)

And, there are still some people, who decide that if I tried hard enough, I could look 'normal'. Well, no, I can't. Sometimes when I want to look 'normal' just to get away from these people's incessant criticism, I end up almost screaming from the frustration that I can't do what they want and therefore can't get away from the criticism.

I used to be more able to give people like that what they wanted, and thereby escape the attention of being singled out as 'bad'. (But then too often I'd be singled out as 'good', which was just as unpleasant. I hated being singled out at all, still usually do.) Now, even when I want to escape that awful feeling, I can't, there's no way out, some people will continue to hate me on the basis that in my 'natural' state I don't look like them. I can just hide it a lot less now than I used to be able to.

I don't mean to be all self-pitying here, I don't normally feel like this, it's just that when it does happen, it totally freaks me out. Probably all the more because it reminds me of being in institutions where in the isolation room, they would tie you down, and then they would, while you had no way at all of getting away from them, get in your face, make eye contact (pull your eyelids up if you shut them, laugh at you if you try to stare 'through' them), and say and do as many awful things as they could get away with. The sense of helplessness and terror is very similar, as well as the sense of being the center of attention in a way you can't escape from, and it being very abusive attention at that (although positive attention still feels bad and inescapable like this to a degree, negative is worse in most ways).

And I'm saying all this just to let people know that the pressure does not always let up when you're more obviously different. It just takes different forms. And the escape route of passing is not there anymore if it ever was. I know it's its own form of torture, and not a true escape as much as a shifting of what kind of pressure. I still remember the terror of realizing I couldn't sustain it forever once I'd finally figured out how -- managed for about a year before stuff started breaking down over the next three or four, and by that time, never passed anymore, never passed since. I don't want to downplay it. I just want to say, it doesn't entirely go away.

Another form of pressure, is the one where people think that you, as you really are without any effort to blend in (and if you can't pass, then as you really are and look no matter how much effort you put in), are utterly disgusting. The stuff about you that's associated irrevocably with the people who go up to you and say things like "retaaaaaaahd", that seems to make people talk about you like you're not even there, treat you like a thing, I once used the term 'moldy vomit' to describe what some people see us as, it carries the right disgust factor. The stuff that's associated with the most total and utter dehumanization people can muster, where they see you as not even a person, but rather, a human-shaped thing with the core human attributes removed.

I think it's fear of that that keeps some people passing or trying to pass, but the fear doesn't go away once you realize that you don't and can never pass.

Of course when passing it's different, as I said before. If you're successfully passing (which may be because of environment and people's expectations more than anything else, not always about what you look like) then people's response to you will be, to be fine with you most of the time. To take the 'passed' self you seem to be (to them), as the 'real person', even though it takes all your effort to look like that. And then, when you stop working so hard for just a moment... that's when they hit you full on with the disgust, tell you "Why are you acting like that?" as if it's then that you are putting in the effort (when it's really a dropping of effort), and in general see you as totally inverted from who you really are. The false appearance, they take as the reality, and the reality, they take as the false appearance. Either way, it's obvious they'd hate you if they knew who you were, and in a sense, do hate you already because the thing they 'like' about you is just an act, if they like anything at all.

When you can't pass, though, and people start piling on the disgust, and you want to leave, there's nowhere to go. You are, in the words of Erving Goffman, 'discredited', rather than (as 'passing' people are) 'discreditable'. (From his book Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. When he says 'discredit', he means in the eyes of a society that see the stigmatized group as a bad thing -- a person is 'discredited' in his definition, when they are known to be a member of the stigmatized group.)

But when you can't pass, you can still get judgments like "you're just not trying hard enough."

And this is true even if what you have is a definite and totally obvious physical disability. There's a book called The Me in the Mirror by Connie Panzarino. She had a condition (I can't remember the new name, old name was amyotonia) that meant that her brain could send out movement signals but her muscles would barely obey them if they would obey at all. The condition also apparently frequently creates high intelligence (as it's normally defined), and possibly related to that a really good memory, because she can remember in detail back to infancy. What she was told, from the moment that she went into a physical therapist's office as a baby, was that she could walk if she really wanted to. Even though they knew she couldn't. They thought that doing that to her, would encourage her to try her best to move.

She ended up having long imaginative conversations with her reflection. Her reflection would tell her that she could walk if she really wanted to. When she was sent to a camp for disabled children, she believed that she, unlike everyone else there, had a secret: She could walk. She just chose not to. She even set a goal for herself, that on her fifteenth birthday she would get up and walk. To prove that she could. When her fifteenth birthday came and went and she still couldn't walk, she realized she had been very wrong about herself.

And she is someone who had never passed, not even for a little while, because she couldn't ever move very much at all. And yet she was subjected to the same pressures as if she could really move but just didn't want to enough. In reality, it took all of her strength to operate the joystick on a motorized wheelchair (and nobody thought she could even do that), and towards the end of her life she got so worn out she could not breathe on her own.

And of course, disabled people in general are subject to a good deal of this kind of scrutiny, because people believe that we get a lot of advantages in life or something. It's not true. It's even laughable if you know our actual situation in society, which is that most people think it's normal for us to be in nursing homes and other institutions, and they think that's natural and right and okay. But people think that we get all these 'special privileges'.

And the result of all that, is constant, intense scrutiny. My friend talked about watching a TV program where they were trying to show when disability applicants were 'fake' or something, and they showed with a hidden camera where a wheelchair user wiggled her toes. Well, even many paraplegic people can do that! And many wheelchair users can walk some distance, some of the time. (Every wheelchair user in my building can walk, except the amputees, and this is not some kind of hidden fact, it's acknowledged that we have stamina or pain-related conditions that prevent doing it all the time.)

But people are always looking for some sign that we're not really disabled. (Most of us, in fact, are. Very few people would subject themselves to this kind of day-to-day prejudice voluntarily. But the moment people find one person, or even think they do, it reinforces their stereotypes, because most stereotypes work like that, same reason I once found a whole section of a white supremacy forum (yes, some people display their hate that openly) dedicated to stereotyping black people as stupid, lazy, etc. and coming up with "real examples" to reinforce their stereotyping.) So that is one form of scrutiny that all of us, no matter how seemingly obvious, are subjected to.

In addition to that, there are other things that can be said about those of us who don't pass:

That we lack confidence.

That we are lazy and just not trying, if we tried we could do better.

That if we did something once in a while, then we can do it every time it's needed.

That we're self-pitying and need as one person put it, a swift kick from the nearest non-disabled person to put us back in line.

Many of us also internalize all of these things, too, and then turn them against other disabled people. Which does the work of prejudiced people for them, and also can be intentionally manipulative (like "I fit the good stereotypes, you fit the bad stereotypes", among people able to fling them around at will -- sort of like the classist thing of "We're good country folk, they're white trash."). Or when some people who were able to do something by trying very hard, tell some people who can't do it no matter how hard they try, "You're just not trying, look at me, I can do it."

All of which leads into the stereotype of "overcoming disability," "supercrip" stuff -- that problems related to disability are somehow an individual challenge to overcome, rather than something that can be addressed with, for instance, a society accessible to more people. (So a wheelchair user will learn to go all the way up the steps in their wheelchair and say "See, I don't need a ramp," while ignoring the fact that not all wheelchair users are strong or mobile enough to do what they just did, therefore they're advocating in a way, shutting those people out. Or someone else will walk in torturous pain because they think they would be "giving in" if they used a wheelchair. Etc.)

Anyway, all of which is to say, it can be pretty harrowing the stuff you get targeted with when it is obvious you're out of the ordinary. The interesting thing being that I often see people who can pass, and people who cannot pass, each saying the other one has it easier. I think it's a "grass is always greener" situation, and I wouldn't say it either way, having experienced both for lengthy enough time periods to see the good and bad in both of them.

Last edited by anbuend on 19 Aug 2008, 1:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

But your sensibilities would be changed, so you wouldn't find the same things boring.

Aren't you even slightly curious ?

Or are you concerned that it might make your ASD seem like a curse ?

I'm indifferent to "NT for a day," maybe I'd be interested, maybe I wouldn't. It's to me the same as any other neurotype, from "dyslexic to a day" to "stroke for a day" etc. Would I be interested? Not sure. Maybe, but not with some burning desire to have a totally different brain configuration.

I think autism brings good things and bad things both, but that they are intertwined. I think society makes us accentuate the bad things, and that there are other ways a society could be set up that would make "NT people" accentuate the bad things because they would always be running up against things they would fail because of their neurology, but that other people did mostly not fail. (Most human beings fail at flapping their arms and flying, but very few are miserable about it.) I think it's just as okay to feel good about being autistic as to feel good about being NT -- as long as you don't put other people down in doing either of those. As long as it's "good" but not "better".

I do have a lot of what many people would consider the really negative things about being autistic, but I don't think I'm cursed, unless every neurological type on the planet is a curse.

(Since every one has its low points, its dangerous points, even its potentially fatal points. If you die because you as an autistic person didn't understand something non-autistic people would often understand, people blame autism, but if you die because you as a non-autistic person didn't notice something autistic people would often notice, then it's just a "normal" death, an "accident", an "understandable overlooking," etc. People never consider neurotypicality dangerous or fatal because of that, even though it's an attribute of neurotypical perception that leads to those dangers and problems. So I think that to have some areas of understanding and perception not there, that could lead to awful or tragic accidents, is normal, not something to be singled out as a horrible curse of one kind of person. The world is not a safe place, for anyone, and things happen, bad things, all the time. Many of which could, unbeknownst to the people they happen to, be prevented by being a different neurological type, but that would bring different dangers, not less, etc.)

So my belief that it is not a curse is not based on being "better off" than some other person (I'm by most standards "worse off" than many people I've met who believe it's a curse, although I don't think "better off" and "worse off" are as easily measured as most people do). It's based on a different way of looking at the world that does not see human variation as a tragic event, but a normal part of life, even when the variation is extreme or inconvenient in some contexts.

I am not curious at all. I'm very familiar with NT behaviour. I read their books, play their games, watch their movies and talk to them every day.

Why would my ASD be a curse? I am intelligent, well-behaved and I will be successful in the near future. I have a university degree if that is an indication of "success".

I can learn to communicate better but so can most NTs.