embracing your autism?

Post Reply New Topic

I just spend the last 3 hours sitting cross legged, rocking, on the tailgate of my truck, headphones on, with a song I like set to repeat, drowning out the world, playing a game on my phone. The game has this "skill tree" you build out that basically involves clicking on same two spots on the screen over and over (that's not the whole game, just one part). I sat there through the sunset an continued in the dark. The time passed in a heartbeat and I feel so relaxed. I feel ... myself.

I'm aware of how it probably looked to anyone watching (what's wrong with that guy) but I was in a mood and I just didn't care ... I was content. I can't remember the last time I did anything to hurt anyone. I'm always gentle and giving with everyone. I had a neighborhood friend who has a big family and is always super busy and I know she struggles to make ends meet. I thought making dinner and putting some time back in her day, giving her an occasional break, was a meaningful gesture of friendship. It wasn't anything fancy. She told me they couldn't accept my gifts (food is a gift?) because they couldn't reciprocate. But I didn't do it with the expectation of any kind of return favor. Isn't that what neighbors do? I was just trying to be nice. I'm a big believer in "actions speak louder than words". But we aren't friends anymore (if we ever were, I'm not sure now). I wasn't quite like other people and she didn't trust me. I think people often see my giving nature and honesty as some kind of calculation instead of taking it at face value. Many of my adult neighbors don't like me. Would they like me better if I lied more and was less nice? I don't get people.

I'm left wondering why I ever bother to try and suppress my autistic traits. It doesn't seem to help and I feel a lot better when I embrace them. Hiding that much of myself is tiring. I feel like I'm approaching autistic burnout and I'm considering saying "eff it" and just being myself all the time. Then I might be the "really weird guy that's harmless" instead of the "there's something different, I don't trust him" guy. What do you guys think? How much effort do you make to appear normal? Do you hide your autism or embrace it?

I don't think I try all that hard to suppress it, and in general, I do think people tend to like my me and my quirks. That said, I do kind of feel like they like me the way one likes a child, not as a peer.

Although people do seem to generally like me, it never does seem to actually go so far as developing into friendship, although that may be as much be me pushing them away as them not wanting to get close to me.

Autism is the least of my crazy.

This topic reminds me of this quote:

I think that's healthy. And I know, sadly, that I'm not embracing mine well at all.

I know that if I did I would very likely have better mental/emotional health and it may even serve to help others understand me better. But in my life at the moment I seem to have this almost animalistic "survival instinct" to cover, mask, hide it.

There are a ton of problems in that, I know.

I embrace my autism and celebrate it every day.

I don't hide it anymore, If I need to stim, I stim. I try to be who I am and not be ashamed of who I am, and god knows I spent enough time doing that.

To a degree I embrace it. I like my nonconformity and deciding aesthetics and right and wrong for myself. I'm glad I try to do things really well and the way I use my nerdy side to achieve things that most folks can't get right. I like being honest. I like being fascinated by seemingly indifferent things.

But equally, I don't like taking those things too far, and I also hate my executive disfunction and the way I can't keep up with a rapidly-changing or complicated social situation. I hate my anxiety (that seems to come with the turf for most Aspies). I wish I wasn't so reclusive and averse to approaching people. I detest my sensory issues. I wish my body was less clumsy. I wish my hyper-focus didn't blind me to the big picture so much. Sometimes I wish I didn't find social masks so useful for self-protection, because I don't like using them.

Overall I'd rather not lose my traits. It's tempting, but I wouldn't be me any more.

How can I embrace something when I can't even give it a hug?

It depends on what you mean by "embracing my autism". If somebody had a magic wand and could "cure" my autism, I'm going to have to admit I'd take that opportunity and ask them to "cure" me. I hope that doesn't make me a bad person or make anybody think less of me. It's just that autism has presented challenges in my life, and my life was already challenging enough.

With that said, I won't deny that my autism doesn't come with its perks. I have a very vivid imagination and I also write extremely well (not my handwriting, which is terrible). I'm putting together a science fiction novel which I'll probably make into a series, but I'll be focusing on that more once I finish physical therapy school. But the novel has some really cool stuff in it that I know people will think is pretty imaginative. Actually, I would give examples except I don't want to give away my ideas (LOL).

In one on one situations, I can read people pretty well and know if they are trying to take advantage of me or not. 20 years ago I couldn't do that, but autistics can, through a ton of practice and trial and error, learn to actually do things like read somebody and their expressions even better than most NTs could do.

I can also do a lot of math that almost every NT would need to get a calculator for. Nothing too complicated, but I'm extremely good with percentages, adding, subtracting, and multiplication/division even with relatively large numbers. Just don't think I'm Will Hunting or something, this is fairly basic math that doesn't involve equations.

There's a lot of other stuff I can do as well just from learning how to do it. My theory is that the autistic brain is always working, and focuses on different things than the NT mind. We are exercising that left part of our brain which is very linear and analytical and by doing that we actually acquire abilities as we go along.

So yeah, if you consider me enjoying some of the benefits of being autistic and enhancing those abilities, I guess you could say that I'm embracing my autism and have come to appreciate some of the perks that go along with it. I figure things could be worse and I could have something like cerebral palsy where there's pretty much no upside. That's one of the weird things about autism, it usually comes with some cool benefits that make NT people stop say, "Hey, how'd you do that?"

I embrace it----I let my freak flag fly ('cept, when working)----I don't care what anyone thinks of me.....