If you could have chosen before you were born....
14 Jun 2013, 2:25 am
My answer is not there. I would have chosen not to be born. At least not to my parents, with my dad being a drunk who beat my mother all the time and sometimes my brothers and me, and my mother who was constantly working, trusted the church with teaching me and thus taught me *nothing*, and had no time to even notice and pursue understanding of just how unusual I was -- i.e., *why* did I always play alone in my room? She won't even go out of her way to read about ASDs now that I'm an adult and have discovered that I most likely have one, and she's not even married to that as*hole anymore.
So, in short, I would rather not have been born at all.
16 Jun 2013, 6:47 am
redrobin62 wrote:
I'd have chosen to be normal - NT. Who wants to be an outcast that can't keep a relationship or even start one? Who wants to have a life watching everyone they know in life getting careers, houses, a spouse and kids? Who wants to be the one that avoids social situations every chance they get? Company party? With me? I don't think so.
This is the point. Being this way brings significant handicaps, Who would want to suffer if it could be avoided.
And yet. And yet.
This is an existential question. What are we? What makes up "me"? Is there some irreducable essence of me within it all,that would have a commonality whether AS or NT?. Would I be greatly different if I didn't have AS? Would I like myself....would I know?
There are things about me that I would remove at the drop of a hat: the clumsiness,the social ineptness,the cluelessness when trying to read other people. I'd love if humanity wasn't such a mystery to me. I would love to have a wife and family, to have found love,to have advanced further in my job. If being NT meant I could have these things,then so be it, I'd take it. But there are things I like about myself. I'd like to keep my artistic talent,my special interests that bring me so much pleasure, the intense emotion that art and music bring me, my logical way of thinking,my strong ethical viewpoint,the insights into things like gender,orientation and nationality that being different has granted me. I value my "unique perspective" that allows me to think things that,astonishlingly, people in general often don't seem to be able to conceive,to be ahead of everybody else at times. I even like the way I dress,although my inability to find clothes I like is frustrating. I would not want to give these things up.
This would be a terrible choice. It would feel surrendering part of yourself, for in reality we can't remove the parts that don't work. People come as a totality.
In the end,what I'd like is:to be what I am,but to have known about it all along, all the better to prepare and adapt,for knowledge is half the battle.
