It's Time For an Alternative to "Fitting In"

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.......it's time for an alternative to fitting in
Yes it is. Don't mourn for us. We like the way we are. That's your problem not ours. Please excuse me but I don't like your attitude. If you can't see my uniqueness as a blessing then leave me the hell alone. You can treat me like I'm inferior and you can try to clean up the rough edges...but you can never force me to fit in. Because I'm not like you. Did it ever occur to you that I might like my edges rough? Even if it did, you wouldn't have believed it. You had already decided how I should be. You had no respect for my right to exist as I was made, as I was intended to be. It was always your way or the highway. Funny how things get all twisted around when you scream it at me.....no, it's not my way or the highway. It's..just...let me be...pleeeeeze. You can keep the highway. And you can keep your way too.

.......it's time for an alternative to fitting in
You take our normal self-esteem and trample on it and turn it into self-loathing. Why did you do that? Why do you hate us so much? From a few weeks after our birth you saw something you didn't like. You saw a child that wasn't "normal". And you have resented us ever since because we didn't fulfill your pitiful dreams. You proceeded to curse us and offer us up at the alter of your egoistic pride. Maybe the thing about cramming a square peg in a round hole needs to be revisited. Will you ever be held accountable for the damage you have done? Because you see us as a blight on society, you have used us as a scapegoat for your miserable life and you made damn sure we would pay the price. Oh yes we have. And then some.

.......it's time for an alternative to fitting in
Perhaps we are the mirror of all your failures and especially the failures of the social order you have so wanted to infect us with. Because we have resisted your infection, you call us dysfunctional. Pardon? What did you say? Please allow me to explain. It is your social order that doesn't make sense. Your social order is sick and causes you to be miserable. It is your social order that is the real "disorder" here. Don't scapegoat us for something we will have no part of--if we can help it. We didn't create it and we refused to perpetuate it. In truth, we are doing you a favor....that is, if you choose to stop believing your own lie...if you will allow yourself to wake up and see you are throwing stones at the wrong target.

.......it's time for an alternative to fitting in
It's time to take up our sword and shield and fight for our right to be who we are. We have a right to be proud of our unique abilities and perceptions and high energy. You won't let us be ourselves so what can we do with all that energy? We stim. But there is a lot we could do. We have something to say. And we have something positive to contribute if you will only allow us that chance..which we really do deserve. It is our birthright, you know. We have a right to stand up straight and defy your false pretenses, ranking games, and pack mentality. If we can just find where we placed our self-esteem. It seems to be missing...give me a minute...it must be around here somewhere....

.......it's time for an alternative to fitting in
I'm sick to death of socialized aspies. But in moments of calm and harmony, I can see they only crave acceptance. Ah...but what a price...is not selling your soul a rather high price? And for what? For the privilege of fitting in?...meh.

.......it's time for an alternative to fitting in
It breaks my heart. Autistics have their self-esteem beaten out of them by the time they're 16 and often long before that. If we happen to be on the low end of the spectrum, our self esteem is shredded way before we're in school. So the school system sees this psychologically mangled child, an emotional cripple, and proceeds to bloody and bruise that child even more..survival of the fittest and all that puke..so that by the time we graduate high school, we've been thoroughly trained in self-loathing. Plus we can barely walk [without stumbling] talk [without stimming], or function in any way even slightly resembling normal. We often can't see the point of living. Socialization is a concentration camp.

.......it's time for an alternative to fitting in
When the messenger tells us we are cool and that we can protect ourselves from harm if we only want to....well...what happens to the product of a concentration camp for 18 years?...we don't want to look at our dignity because it is gone. Stolen from us. ...What do we do? We shoot the messenger, of course.

.......it's time for an alternative to fitting in
How can all this poisonous socialization be reversed?

.......it's time for an alternative to fitting in

my cyber twin strikes again! Alba, you are seriously brave considering how many socialized aspies are probably circling around your post ready to pick the flesh off of it and gnaw on its bones.

i feel like a baby moose in Sarah Palin's front yard...the one where she stands and waves at Putin..way off in the distance..

Alba sees the truth of it. When everyone trys to make us like everyone, life is hell.

Getting away from that and becoming ourselves brings meaning to life, and becoming less like anyone else.

The Snowflakes of autism, each a culture of one.

The world sees autistics as all the same, autistics see each other as different as the world.

Those that do best seem to find an isolation they can live in, gain the time and space to apply the longer period of growing that is autism.

Then they do not fit in, having developed some skill beyond human norms, but are in demand and well rewarded.

Isolation is my normal state, I deal with the world when I have to, rarely, when I want to.

The few I enjoy knowing also live in some isolation, and while all snowflakes are different, no two alike, we do join well at the edges.

In relationships where my knowledge runs to my edge, contacting their's is like growing a larger brain. The same pattern of orderly information, the same mental process, and a great increase in knowledge for me. I am just beyond the edge for them.

The bulk of people seek to socialize and fit in with the masses. As they do this in Grammer School, it is not a very high level of social function, and has little to do with knowledge.

The autistic reject this group think, develop self, then seek other selves to connect with through shared knowledge at the edges. Both are forming a group brain, one has better developed neurons.

These better developed neurons can be harmed in the development process, they survive, but it could be better. Each has a single function to the group, so the better they grow, the better the final product.

Each snowflake is a single pattern of development, no two alike, and resistant to becoming anything else.

What seems to have worked best is'

being free to develop their singular pattern.

Having the time to find the best use of the pattern,

finding other developed patterns to extend their range through edge joining.

To the masses social networks are based on people, to the autistic things.

While life was no better in the past for the different, a lot of up survived anyhow. We may be damaged goods but the basic function works. Be yourself, find out what you are good at, find others to edge connect with.

Most of us have made a few edge connections, and they last. Larger groupings have been rare, only drawn together around projects, things, like the computer development phase.

It was the autistic group brain, but with only a narrow focus. The tech worked, but that other social group was brought in for management and marketing, and that produced the dotcom bust.

It is enough to show that a core of edge connected snowflakes is a powerful thing, and could have gone much farther if Acasia sp? from here, the tree neuron, had been in control of growth.

The autistic are rare, which I see as valuable. A different view of the universe, different social structure, and more useful than the few you hear about through art, science, economics. Autism here and there keeps the world running.

Not "Fitting in", but a place where we fit. It is coming, it is only a matter of linking awareness.

We have a good idea how we are different, what works best for us, the productive connections with others. While some can function or are recognized in the other world, they are not the whole, for the brain is filled with neurons that we have no idea of their function in the whole, just that they are needed and have a place.

We just need some empty space and a life support system and we can assemble the autistic brain.

It may be "The Blob" to start with, but function develops structure, it's organic!

Thankyou Inventor, that is a beautiful post.
<wipes tears from her eyes>

holy HELL, Inventor. That was an amazing post. A group brain is exactly what I am talking about as well. That's what I mean by an alternative to fitting in. Anything else is just fitting in.

shiny purple eyes

yeah! square pegs in square holes!

My psychiatrist told me that I'll never be able to fit in, and he's right. However, he also said that it's possible for me to live beside humanity/society, and calve out my own lot, and he's right again.

In a way, I'm far more independent than most people realize, it's just that most people don't follow the same sum as I do, just as I don't follow theirs. I'm not bound to draw protection and self-sufficiency from society and people, but I can ask them for help me if they can and they want to (hospital, for example).

I have a home, a job, and I only need to interact with society if I have to/want to.