It’s hard to put in exact words, but I recently realized I never experienced “proper” feelings of anger and hatredin my life, or I experience them in a very different way than most.
I could be wrong, but I’ve heard that autistic people could have different ways to experience emotions, and I wonder had anyone else felt the same. So I decided to ask about it here.
I first discovered this when talking with an online friend, who says righteous anger is her main drive of creativity. She said anger feels exciting and motivating, like an adrenaline rush fills her with energy. I was completely baffled by that——don’t get me wrong, I’m a very emotionally volatile person. It’s just I encountered the type of scenarios when I feel offended/unjust, what caused me to protest and scream and cry is more like a visceral call of pain akin to being stabbed by the flesh rather than something thrilling. When I look back, I will categorize this feeling as “hurtful” instead of “anger”.
It seemed like I either feel happy or sad, or scared, but the closest thing to anger is frustration, which is not directed at a specific source. You could say I’m more frustrated with myself that anything externally.
And later I found that despite being deeply affected with injustices in the world, encountered quite a few bullies throughout my life, I never really hated anyone. Instead, I feel deeply saddened for what the harm they done to me and other people.
Thus, the concept of revenge sounds completely alien to me. Once my mom asked me whether I will want to kill a person who just killed my best friend or family, I said no. I will sink into deep depression because of loss of the victims, and will use all my might to stop the perpetrator to do any harm again. If this means I must kill that killer, I will do it for practical reason, but not because “killing them will make me feel good”.
In my real life, after being collectively trolled and death-threatened by a former fandom group(for calling out their bullying behaviors to others, which I done radically), many are fazed by why I still willing to appreciate the art they did, and hoping they could have a good life after whatever trauma or misunderstanding that caused their destructive behaviors are gone. I’m always aware what they did was horrendous, needing to to be exposed, condemned and stopped, but the feelings I associated with them are trauma and sadness, that they’ve hurt me, and are still hurting other people, but not hate.
I’ve been called a saint because of this hateless mindset , I don’t like being called this way: not just because I don’t like to be elevated on a pedestal in general(though being considered kind definitely boost my poor self-esteem), but also because this mindset is more troubling than most realized: I face injustices in the world in the same way.
My empathetic level towards other people are painfully overwhelming, whenever I see news reports of atrocities(murdering/discriminative policies.etc.) happening, I immediately imagine myself in the victim’s place, freeze in place having daymares to the point of dissociation, this goes double if I experienced similar type of trauma before.
I want to tear myself out to help these people, but are despaired by cannot reach any of them. Other people will say they are furious at whoever causing these problems, thus the reason to retweet, curse and protest, but I don’t feel these at all.
Irrationally, all the angers surrounding will seem like directed towards me——I will never feel the same anger as other people, and will never feel joy condemning anyone or anything. Unless there’s a certain way I could help those who are harmed(which 99% times are not) the sadness I felt is immobilizing, and at the same time I blamed myself for being a coward for not willing to fight. Whenever someone says “you should be shamed if you are not angry at [insert social issue]” I feel deeply excluded.
Being a Chinese citizen studying abroad in the US, I feel the same pressure in both countries. After experienced multiple meltdowns by consuming news and protesting during Covid, I just blocked anyone who retweet these social issues, because I will not be able to function at all if this keeps going.
Because of this lack of righteous anger and hatred, I often feel social justice and protests are not for me, despite deeply care about making the society a better place.
As an aspiring illustration and animation artist, I always think my art is responsible to expose and tear down unjust systems, to push for better. Yet, I’m struggling to use my work as an “attack” on anything. I prefer stories where villains are being redeemed rather than beaten, or with no villains at all, where mutual understanding could save the day. I love writing mundane underdog characters in marginalized communities, but all I want is to give them a happy ending after some personal struggles.
But such visions seem too fluffy in the cold reality we lived in——the atrocities are just too great that any soft-heartedness feels like a denial of gravity of the situation. The victims will never be liberated if my characters never get angry, thus the only option is despair——but after seeing so many despair in the real world, the last thing I want is giving my characters the same.
This is the reason I always create narratives in fantastic realms, focus on conflicts that are largely personal instead of political. I never felt someone like me is deserved to tell “realistic” stories, but at the same time I feel an overwhelming guilt for being so escapist. When I don’t have the gut to retweet real social problems, I can’t even use my art as a weapon——I’m not a weapon-wielding person at all.
Please help. This may look trivial, but all these makes me feel like a horrible person, it’s taking a massive toll on my mental health and no one around me seemed to understand at all.
29 Sep 2024, 4:20 am
