Autism? Do you consider it a curse?

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sometimes i do...but then sometimes i look at the trash and trainwrecks on tv and feel somewhat superior to them...and think "oh thank god i'll never be like that"...it swings around wildly though...

i guess the lasting residue is positive because i'm pretty sure if i wasn't on the spectrum i wouldn't have become obsessed with music...and probably would have never taken up so many instruments...coz apparently NT kids hate practicing...just something i heard x

I have mixed feelings about it, in some ways it is a curse because of all the reasons the original poster stated. I feel alienated from people most of the time, sometimes I don't mind that, it feels safer to be in my own little world. Sometimes however, it's lonely having AS. I just posted in my blog about how lonely I have been feeling lately, sigh*.

it is IMO a curse to lose what can never be regained, to be powerless when u unwillingly put in the dark all the people who love you and trust you. to never know the ways of other, to be completely alone in an invisible prison

I didn't read what she said in that manner.

It seemed to me to be more like saying, "If there's more people like you in a certain respect than unlike you, and/or the people like you in that respect tend to be more powerful than those unlike you in that respect, then you don't have to think about modifying what you do for those less common and/or less powerful." Where powerful/not-powerful, common/uncommon, is not a value judgment or an us/them thing, just a fact about the situation. All people of course having elements of both, no matter who they are, so it can't be an us/them thing, it's an us/us thing.

But anyway, I think what she was saying is they don't have to regard the situation as an us/them thing. They don't have to notice there even is a situation. If they did notice, that'd quite possibly solve half the problem, which is that they don't normally have to notice these things or change what they do in response to them.

It's sort of like in America, a lot of people here, because we're a very dominant country and because there's a lot of us, a lot of people here take for granted that people in other places will frequently have a better command of English than we do of their language, and so not take the trouble to learn another language. There's no malice, there's often not even any conscious awareness of the situation. But the situation still exists. Meanwhile, if a person speaks a very uncommon language, the likelihood is they will be bilingual at least and possibly multilingual if they want to communicate with anyone outside their language/country of origin. Again, not an us/them thing, just an almost inevitable result of the situation, and being aware of what the situation is tends to help things, rather than hinder them.

I almost wonder if you focused on a keyword that triggered an idea of us/them thinking rather than the person you replied to actually engaging in it, because I didn't see any in there, and certainly saw no implication that NTs see it that way (and some implication in fact that NTs don't even notice the situation because they don't have to). And none of this is absolute or universal for either "NTs" or Americans. It's just that if you don't have to do something, often you do it less than if you have to.

Last edited by anbuend on 19 Aug 2008, 3:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If you'd think more often with your head than not, you might be alright. Otherwise it just sounds like morbid insanity to me.

Thank you, my autism is a disability as well, it reminds me of that everyday hahah but like you said it doesnt leave me crippled!



Heylo,
The young girl whos 12 i told you about knows very well of her disability, i watch her struggle, suffer beyond imagination, i watch as her family doesnt come to visit and how she always points to the picture of her family then does the sign for where, and when we say their not coming watch her just want to die due to that. How is she still happy? She doesn't give up because of disabilities holding her, doesnt give up trying to communicate even though she has no way of ever speaking, she doesnt give up wanting a family even though her family doesnt want her, she doesnt give up thats my point. She doesnt let something so hard stop her. She also carries a cross around her neck and i asked her one day, do you believe in god, and she smiled and shook her head yes, now somebody whos family rejects them, who never has a stable home because she bounced from hospital to hospital, who has no way of ever speaking or ever living on her own needs 247 supervision and assistance, still not completely potty trained, but is so cognitively aware that knows of all of whats going on around her yet still believes in god and is happy to be alive. That right there tells me how strong of a character she is, that right there tells me that you can even be happy despite what life is handed to her how hard it is or how not fair it is, shes still smiling, giggling loving life!

Oh and I dont think i ever met an schizophrenic kid, have met elder ppl with that but not children. So when somebody says autism is a curse, i think how, their are so many worse things, worse disorders, worse handicaps/disabilites that make autism look like a cloud in a sky. What about the disease where children are born and their bodys grow too fast for them, where their 6 years old with 70year old heart, severe diabetes, severe arthritis, skin falling off their body, their lungs deteriorating, but their brain is of a 6 year old? I met a couple kids like that, i just wanted to hug the kid and say im sorry, but this one little boy would jus wanna go on the swings he didnt care if he was near death due his body already going on him, he just loved being outside enjoying the day, its like wow here is a kid whos really suffering, and you see that suffering yet hes just going on like its any other day, like its raining gold or something. It really opens your eyes. Anyways thats my 2 cents on that.


anbuend, thanks for clearing that up hehe.



p.s. if i offended anybody yet again, i apologize now

I don't think NTs think about it any more than a fish thinks about water. They are so used to it they don't need to consciously consider it.