Published on 12, July, 2020
I feel like the world is constantly trying to force us to be as "normal" as possible. By this I mean, being like everyone else and not being different, not being our autistic selves.
So I thought this would be a nice space for us to say some of things that make us different from NT people and to be proud of them.
I'll start
I like listening to 1970's Eastern European pop and modern German Schlager music rather than whatever is in the charts
I'm starting to develop my own fashion sense rather than trying to be cool and love wearing football shirts from around the world and vintage 1970's clothes
I have a photographic memory for cricket scores
I use a basic LG keypad phone instead of a smartphone and I avoid most modern tech ( I have a smartphone I keep in a drawer and hardly use just for booking into things etc)
I love ducks and geese and swans and see them as my friends
I have over 200 cuddly animals in a big Ikea unit
I am facinated by Eastern European history especially the former East Germany
I see the world very differently from how most people seem to and I like it that way
I have no interest in social media
I love being autistic and see it as a blessing rather than a disability
Please share your stuff below if you would like to
Taking a slightly different approach to this topic, I'll just go directly to the 'why' (minus a personal list of specific ways I go against the grain, though it's heartening and interesting to see those lists already given above) and express it as an irreducible bottom line: Striving to be 'normal' is "surrendering our personal freedoms to meet the verdicts of strangers." (Alain de Botton). This would be true of anyone, but doubly so for the autistic I think. A square peg will never fit a round hole without significant pain. The motivation to suffer an unending contraction of one's 'corners' like that in unbearable total orthodox conformity would be ... what? In a word, shame. Its opposite?: pride. In the end, some degreee of pride in being (to varying degrees) atypical - marching unapologetically to the beat of one's own drum - is the only true sanity for us. We can only try our best with that. 'Normality' will still make us feel some discomfort under its gaze, but let's resolve to make that as little as possible.
Shardovan said:Striving to be 'normal' is "surrendering our personal freedoms to meet the verdicts of strangers.
I love this. It is so true