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I'm happy with who I am.

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HighLlama
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15 Sep 2019, 2:48 am

Magna wrote:
I'll preface the following by saying that I'm not anti-NT. It's a fact: There are wonderful NT people in the world as well as wonderful NT people that I know and have known personally. I'm married to one such NT person.

That being said, I don't recall having ever had a desire to be NT.
Even before I knew the difference between NT and ND and before I was diagnosed with autism as an adult, when I was a child I did NOT have a desire to be like everyone else.

"They" were the kids that didn't understand me, that laughed at me, bullied me, etc. They were the teenagers that were superficial, overly emotional, illogical and stuck up. They're the adults that think things that don't interest me are important. They're the adults that make rules and laws in never ending ways to try to seemingly control as many aspects of my life as possible when I'm not hurting another soul and am perfectly fine living my own life. Their priorities are not the same as my priorities. I could go on and on and on.

Also, I have always enjoyed interacting with people that are like me. As a child, they were the other outcasts, 'geeks', rejects and misfits. They were creative. They had empathy for me and I had empathy for them based on our similar maltreatment. They looked at the world in a different way than most people did just as I'd always done.

In short, I don't recall ever have a burning desire to be someone else, to be 'normal', to be NT. I don't look down on NT people because there are too many I've met that are great and because I don't consider myself to be superior; however, I feel I'm also free to say that I don't want to be one and that I can be free to feel good about being ND.


Well said :)



aquafelix
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15 Sep 2019, 5:44 am

mau_tie wrote:
Having had a very recent diagnosis, and having never even considered that I might have autism prior to seven months ago, I've gone through a roller-coaster of self-contentment and self-loathing over the past few months. Self-loathing has been engrained in me for 36+ years... how could it not? Without knowing any words to describe it, I was an autistic trying to be a neurotypical, and I was trying desperately, because there were very few people in the world (and even those people were inconsistent) who would accept me for the person I really am. I was a really bad neurotypical, though. Haha, no wonder!

It gives me comfort to know that I'm a great autistic, but now I'm reframing my life. I look back at the past, and those instances--flashbacks from my CPSTD are less about internalizing the blame all on my own and more about realizing that the way I was treated is what caused my trauma. This makes me not only angry but deeply sad. I'm being hit with flashbacks today and waves of profound sadness. Looking back, I wish I had processed the way people treated me very differently, but then, I didn't have the right software for that, did I?

Another day--yesterday, tomorrow--I might feel greater autistic pride. Any day, I love my brain, and even when it bombards me with painful, vivid memories, I wouldn't trade it for the world. Nonetheless, I just want that pride more days. I guess this sort of thing takes time, though... any advice on how everyone got there?

Does it help to have autistic friends, and if so, where the heck do I find them?


mau_tie, You summed up my last 6 months since my diagnosis so perfectly, I could have written your post myself



kraftiekortie
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15 Sep 2019, 5:48 am

I was diagnosed back around 1964. I had lots of time to sort this thing out.



renaeden
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15 Sep 2019, 6:17 am

In 2020 I will have known about autism for 15 years. I've had a long time to get used to it. I'm not there completely but I'm close.

Also, I have a few health issues troubling me so I have those to worry about. :?



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15 Sep 2019, 6:34 am

ToughDiamond wrote:
Joe90 wrote:
All this talk on PPR about the far right getting power makes me think that everyone who loves their autism will be changing their minds.

What is PPR?


The Politics, Philosophy and Religion subforum, of course.

I usually avoid that awful corner of this site for sanity reasons, but WP has been so dead lately that I've been bored and started roaming around in PPR. Now I can't stop freaking out about what I read there. I just wish someone with knowledge on the subject would PM me and explain about the far right in a reassuring way. I still don't understand it even after searching it on Google.

OK, I will not derail the thread any further, as it's not fair on the OP.


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kraftiekortie
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15 Sep 2019, 7:06 am

I don’t meet too many actual “far right” people in real life. In fact, I really don’t meet them at all.

I don’t believe most of the Conservatives in PPR are “far right,” nor the Liberals (in an American sense) “far left.”



magz
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15 Sep 2019, 9:06 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
I don’t meet too many actual “far right” people in real life. In fact, I really don’t meet them at all.

I don’t believe most of the Conservatives in PPR are “far right,” nor the Liberals (in an American sense) “far left.”

Yup.
But some liberals call any conservatives "far right" and some conservatives call any liberals "commies" (or whatever is used now).
There is some general social mechanics that encourages people to view the world as if they surrounded by dangerous enemies. It's called siege mentality.


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ToughDiamond
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15 Sep 2019, 10:51 am

The UK Liberal Party are known to be strongly against socialism, so it always amuses me when I hear Americans assuming their Liberals to be practically communist, and conclude that they need a bit of recalibration in their grasp of the left-right spectrum.

Thanks for explaining what PPR meant, Joe90. I've looked very briefly at that forum maybe twice in the last few years, and had naturally forgotten all about it, and couldn't be expected to work it out from the bare initials, so there was no "of course" about it. I Googled it but the hits I got there weren't helpful at all.

I'll do my utmost to stop being off topic now.



MaxE
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15 Sep 2019, 1:49 pm

I am happy with who I am, because I am proud of what I have accomplished. I struggled with many things throughout my career, but now at 67 I am excelling at a profession that is dominated by people young enough to be my children (at least) and am actually thought good at it. One reason this came about was because, early on, I got the message that I was thoroughly unsuited for management, so I had to scramble to maintain and expand my technical skills. I also never lost the youthful enthusiasm needed to do that. I also gradually learned more about interpersonal dynamics which has made things go more smoothly for me, even though I finally got the hang of some things within the last 10 years which I suppose most people master in their 20s or 30s.

I am also proud of having made a go of marriage despite many rough spots, and I have no regrets regarding my performance as a parent, even though I didn't necessarily do everything "by the book". It probably helped that I managed to hold off getting married until age 33, and before then managed to have enough previous partners that by the time I got married, I was truly ready to settle down. My biggest regrets in life probably have to do with things I did in some of my earlier relationships.


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