Right Planet

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I recently turned 55 and have been counting my blessings. One of which is being autistic. Being internally grounded and shutting out the world has helped me survive what would have sunk many a neurotypical. (abandoned, sent to another country, adopted and abused) Because nothing really could touch that core me that autism manages to protect. I love everything about this except society expecting me to be like them.

Post diagnosis I went from elation to sadness -- yayy it's not my fault(!) and then grieving all I've missed out that will never be mine. This hit a head when trying to date - it seemed everyone I knew or dated wanted me to get on their meditation wagon. I would tell them I don't need it but nobody would believe me. I would tell them my whole life is a meditation, but nobody would believe me. I never felt lonelier. All around me stressed out people talking about seeking peace all the time. Disparaging my inability to visualize. Seeking to empty their minds and dismissive that I could have an empty mind without having to buy a yoga mat and set an alarm to sit in a corner for 20 minutes a day. Or envious that I didn't have to go through all those machinations. Or critical because I had no "practice." You get the picture. So much work they go through to be where I live.

This week, though, I happened upon this video and it just validated my world. I wanted to share it with my autistic community, who of course sees everything through an autistic lens.

We are not from a Wrong Planet, folks. We are from the Right Planet in a mad world. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/RhMEKiIb86I

Thanks for sharing the video - that's actually one of my very favorite songs. My synesthesia takes me on an incredible journey with hearing it. And it's hard to imagine a more vivid way of portraying being isolated from the external world than this video. As you mention, I sometimes feel a deep loss at not being able to experience what most people value so much - prosopagnosia even denies me being able to really see my own face in the mirror. But I live in a different world that's full of meaning and value in its own right. I've reflected before about my autism being a part of my deliverance from a life that would have crushed most neurotypical folks: it kept me grounded through a childhood brain trauma that permanently affected me neurologically and gave me seizures for a time, through prolonged abuse that left me with both complex PTSD and dissociative identity disorder, and through a bunch of extremely close calls with death. And I was still able to grind on and on and excel academically and professionally. NTs seem to radically underestimate the mental differences between them and autistics. I'm not sure exactly what meditation does for NTs. I practiced Siddha Yoga meditation and did chanting meditation at the Self-Realization Fellowship and did hatha yoga, etc. and it wasn't so much that it emptied my mind (inside I'm a non-verbal pattern thinker), but it sort of helped set landmarks in my mind that I could return to. Being autistic, at the various yoga centers I would see people practicing for social reasons or for self-image, which in hindsight is ironic.

"We are not from a Wrong Planet, folks. We are from the Right Planet in a mad world." is what I've been trying and struggling to say for a long time.

I interpreted this in a literal sense in a way. The natural/physical world is the truth. The human world is not. We run from reality in an attempt to live in a structured one.

For decades, I floated through dangers unaware, but I never felt inspired by that song. Instead, I saw all effort at maintaining mental stability being at the expense of important awareness. What will that singer do the next time she wants a milkshake? How did I wind up living in my car? Now, I try to consider everything, but moderate the worry.