I felt like a burden because of some medical things that were unrelated to my autism spectrum disorder. At times I was told, "If I didn't have to pray for ___ for you, I would have a house."
When I was small, my fixations really gave my mom problems. She didn't know why I got stuck on 1 topic. She would finally yell at me & I would go through my room & destroy stories/drawings of said fixation, but I would repeat the cycle over and over again. It wasn't until I was 12 when my aunt helped me channel my fixations into something useful or help me see them as staging grounds for learning / talking about other things. I think just hearing over & over ,"Why can't you ___ like normal kids." hurt a great deal.
What's helping me process all this is this blog here. The healing process from being told you're a burden does take a while, but finding & knowing other people that love you no matte what is the most powerful agent of healing from this.
11 Aug 2010, 5:12 pm
