Published on 12, July, 2020
By the time I was 13 years old I knew that I would forever be alone--- no spouse, no "girlfriends," no hope for romance, and no hope for love. This was obvious because I knew I was the only orange monkey in the monkey cage, and I was brutalized because I was (and am) "strange."
If I were capable of feeling hate I would write "I hate being autistic."
I do, however, utterly detest being autistic: autism has robbed me of my life. Autism took from me the chance of finding a woman who found me worthy of standing by her side, as two equal partners. What autism left for me in exchange was 61 years of a loneliness so suffocating, so ravenous, so crushing of spirit that I longed for death --- only my brother's compassion stayed my hand.
I loathe my inability speak nouns and pronouns when I am talking with people face to face: the Anomic Aphasia kicks in and I struggle to say the names of objects (that includes humans) , nor the names of places. My mind knows the word but I cannot speak it: try having a successful job interview when the evaluator believes you are on drugs--- I sound like I am choking because I am.
I abhor my inability to remember something that I heard mere seconds ago.
I deplore the way I rock side to side when I sit; rock on my feet side to side when standing in line at the grocery store; spinning on my heals to release some of the anxiety I collect when I am among the humans.
A few days ago (Monday June 14, 2021) my councilor (via telephone) told me that I "still have around twenty years left; there is still time to find love." I shivered with dread. I do not want to live another twenty years with painful eyes because I am required to look at people's eyes (it is agony for me). Twenty more years of strangers insisting that I must "shake hands." Twenty more years of strangers calling me by my first name--- as if we were already intimate.
Twenty more years of being macerated in the vicious jaws of loneliness.
It is a wonder that I have not been driven insane. Yet.
This breaks my heart to read David. And I can see myself writing something similar in another 30 or 40 years.
It does feel like everything is more difficult for us. I have put so much effort into appearing normal in order to obtain the most basic of things that come easily to others. But relationships is the final mountain that I don't know if I will ever be able to conquer. And sometimes I don't know if I even want to, because it's me that's the problem. I'm the one that's not normal. I wish I could be like everyone else.
Alas, I grieve for you. You must be utterly exhausted trying to "be normal:" but that is, I have found, a path to mental illness. One cannot be what one is not (ask any homosexual who tried to "be heterosexual:" it maims the sense of self, and the sense of self-respect.
It is difficult and painful to be inflamed with desire for someone, burning with passion and adore just to be around that person, and keeping the craving secret, unspoken, and unexpressed--- suppressing and hiding one's feelings because one knows not have any idea how to express them in ways that are considered appropriate.
I can confirm that it is indeed utterly exhausting Shy David. It becomes debilitating when combined with Autistic masking—though I'm still not certain AM is substantively different from Homosexual masking, but is simply an extra layer of masquerade. At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, homosexuals and autistics alike drop the charade and fully experience the gift of neuro and sexual diversity, both of which put us firmly on the outside of the big circus tent. And being outsiders, the scales fall from our eyes and we get to watch all the clowns inside the circus juggling, spinning plates, and firing water cannons at each other. It may not seem it at times, but autism is a blessing. Nor might homosexuality and any other trait that the masses see as 'not normal'. But I would say they are blessings, ones that prevent us from being just another insane person in an already insane society, where conformity, cruelty and ignorance are the three most frequently worshipped deities