If you've made up a good life with your autism...

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...Do you ever find yourself defending it from people who say that it's not as good, or that it's weird, ETC.

I've got a pretty good life even with all of my disabilities. I walk differently, I talk differently (sometimes with difficulty), I do alot of things differently.
However, it seems like if I'm not being this sad little emo 'I WANT TO BE LYK EVR1 ELSEE!! !! !!!1!1!' about it then I'm either lying or crazy.

I'm starting to think that maybe it's my main enemy in life having her mind blown every time I get a better mark in a subject then her. Especially in art. She get's good marks, but I get all the ones for originality. And because of this, I've got to defend absolutly everything I like because she just can't grasp the Idea that I've made my own way and I've got no real desire to be like her.

Of course, she does have some influence over the rest of the school. (Pretty sure she got a bunch of people to trash/hide this sculpture I made because everyone else was doing pigs and I was doing an alien/ monster thing with three legs and feathers.

Why must you defend your life?

Answer and discuss.

Um, a useful word for this type of situation is "hater". Your frenemy is a hater. People that expect you to be sad...they, too are afflicted with a form of hating. Maybe a less severe form of it. Avoid them if you can, it can't possibly be good for you. If you can't avoid them, just repeat the mantra "hater, hater hater" when they say something like this to you. At least you recognize it for what it is.

It sounds like your family is probably really supportive. I'll be looking forward to hearing about them so that I can be supportive like this toward my child (and possibly future children).

I had some good times to because i used to have friends alot (but not for long it whas about 3 years i had friends then it became 0)
Altough my life whas pretty hard those 3 years they where my best years because i had lots of friends or atleast any,but no i think
that autism completely destroyd my life and is killing me inside peace by peace untill i give up...

I am different in many ways but I realize that I am fortunate as well. There are many good things about me, some bad. Oh well. I am beginning to realize how important viewing myself as a strong person and thinking of myself in terms of that is.
I can make it through anything. I am also fine with who I am.

I'd say we're a supportive family. Possibly because we all agree that the ASD might just be the result of a mix of my mum and dad's personality traits that have kind of smashed together, LOL. My dad's very concrete, literal, and he talks about things for hours that my mum isn't really into. My mum's this shy person who used to flap her hands when she was younger. Plus we've got possible aspies on both sides of the family so, even before my brother and i were diagnosed they'd say 'YOU'RE ALOT LIKE YOUR UNCLE!'.

I like being me.

This may seem off-topic, but it's actually quite relevant. If there were an actual book of rules to best live by, I'm sure that in the top ten would be "don't use the word 'hater'". It is the stupidest word in common use and makes the user sound stupid by inference. Obviously a 'hater' is someone who hates, but since we all hate various things (finding mould on your bread, roadwork, censorship, etc.) the word has no meaning. However the real problem is that labelling anyone you have a problem with as a 'hater' is the archetype of hypocrisy: it's using a false and meaningless generalisation against someone who uses false and meaningless generalisations. But the stupidity doesn't stop there; by labelling someone a hater, this is supposed to negate any negative comments they make with the illogic of "they're just a hater, all they're doing is hating". The elegance of this kind of ignorance is so flawless that it can be applied to any situation, even when you're at fault: someone yells at you for running a red light, hater, you get thrown out of a movie for talking, haters, you're part of a racial minority and resort to a life of crime to make ends meet, it's the haters who ruined it all for you.

Back in this place we call reality people don't have the 'hater gene' and therefore when they're giving you problems it's usually because of another problem, i.e. this situation is jealousy.

So no, a useful word for this type of person is not 'hater'. It's an idiotic word that should be stripped from anyone's vocabulary and anyone repeating the mantra "hater, hater, hater" should forgo their permission to speak.

Hater.

*********

No, seriously, to defend my point...the word itself, all linguistic elitism aside, has a very specific contextual meaning, as do most words taken from African-American slang. A "hater" is not only someone who hates, obviously everyone hates, but also someone who acts to belittle or question the validity of someone else's achievements due to jealousy or ego-based comparison.

I was trying to be helpful. The above post has done nothing to help anyone, merely criticised a post because of your distaste for and/or misunderstanding of a certain word. Perhaps you should forgo your permission to speak, at least until you question your motivations for doing so.

**edited for spelling, diction, grammar and specificity of intent**

Last edited by patternist on 12 Oct 2008, 12:06 pm, edited 6 times in total.

My answer is, Yes.
My family is forever pestering me to meet people, go places, do something (else).
My life, as it is, is calming. Peaceful.
My children are intelligent, well-mannered, happy, and healthy.
As I've said before, eccentricity is not (necessarily) a bad thing. If you've created a life for yourself, in which you find peace and moments of happiness (without harming other people), you've created something beautiful, imo.

Reads like hate-speak to me.

I 110% disagree. There are haters in this world. Those the have the predilection to hate on something, ANYTHING, just for the sake of hating. In my tiny, little insignificant world a person is either with me or against me. And if that person is against me then they are a hater. I like my world Black and White like that.

I don't try to defend my lifestyle because they wouldn't understand. Most people pity me because I don't have a husband and kids, a home and a modern car and good connections. Telling them I have a very rich inner life, fulfilling interests, lots of freedom from society's constraints, and an ability to enjoy the small things in life would be useless. They consider all those a waste of a life.

I have friends and a job. What more could I want?

I really have made quite an interesting life for myself.
I have a small group of strange and eccentric friends.
I have a small name for myself in the local art and music community..
I helped run for a few years one of the most unique venues in the country...
I am kinda sorta in a capule seperated from the neurotypical world
I might get occasionally judged for not being able to keep hous and for having too much stuff, but I reckon i should concider myself pretty lucky

People seem to think that if you can't do things as well as they can, you must automatically be mourning that fact constantly. Big freakin deal, in my opinion. There's always someone better at things than I am, even if in the area of social skills it's 99% of the population.

And, like you pointed out, you get better grades than your friend does. Maybe it's because her mental resources are more spread out; she uses them for socializing and talking fluently and whatnot, and yours are all bunched up in your strengths. I don't see why a generalist like her is any better off than a specialist like you, or why she can't see that you've got as much cause (i.e., essentially none) to pity her for having worse grades, as she does to pity you for your disability. Who said we all had to be cookie-cutter, assembly-line, all-the-same human beings anyway?

The only people that I've felt to defend my life or lifestyle to are those who believe that I've somehow received an unfair advantage over them because I'm perceived as "White."

The colour of my skin has nothing to do with it. I got to where I am by staying in school, graduating, paying my own way through college, and using my hard-earned skills to make a living for myself an my family while staying out of jail, staying off drugs, staying away from alcohol and tobacco, and serving my country in its armed forces.

As a result, I'm a well-respected member of my community, with a wife, three sons, a home, and all the other acoutrements of the American Dream, and I got that way without exploiting anyone else, receiving governmental handouts, or being a gang member.

I've earned my living on my own, and I don't owe any favours to anyone.

Deal with it.

Damn, that first paragraph was so thoughtful and eloquent, then you went and ruined it with the second paragraph. Linguistic elitism would be me criticising someone's use of 'whom' when they should have used 'who', my criticism is the hypocrisy of the illogical concept of a 'hater'. It is a term uniformly used as a copout to retorting to an illogical argument with a valid argument. If someone is being bigoted, jealous, bullying, call them on it. But retreating into this shield of ignorance, where any negative comment or criticism is taken as 'hating' does not help. Since you're obviously adverse to linguistic elitism, how about some deductive logic:

A hater is someone who practises hating.
Hating is something done by a hater.
Therefore... — we have a circular (and thus meaningless) argument.

As for your remarks that I'm not being helpful, steering someone from bad advice with good is something I consider helpful. In this case it is pointing out that the person the original poster is having a problem with could quite easily be jealous of her artistic creativity, and recognising this is the only way to solve the problem (regardless of whether that means calling her on being jealous or just ignoring it). What is not helpful is to advise someone to avoid the person and call them a 'hater', this is tantamount to saying "don't worry about him, he's just a n****r." Hopefully this analogy is not lost on you.

As for "permission to speak" that was a sarcastic remark considering my mention that I hated censorship. I guess I can't expect miracles.

Last edited by music_for_airports on 12 Oct 2008, 8:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.