personal post: autism

i was visiting family and extended family last week and it crystalized for me that both sides of my family are populated entirely by people with autism (mostly with subclinical presentations) and i happen to be the cousin of my generation who has the more obvious form and actually got diagnosed in childhood for it. i think we could all get along better if the rest of them started identifying the things that make them different from outsiders as the same things that we share (need for routines/rules, inability to recognize humor, "special interests" etc), but instead aunt a gets mad at uncle b because he's obsessed with cars and tells jokes with zero tone inflection whereas she needs 2 hours alone in the morning to do tai chi and record the rain gauge and temperature, and she hates being interrupted with his cryptic humor and car noises when its early morning weather focus time.

maybe the most annoying thing is that of course there's a crab bucket phenomenon where everyone picks on whoever is more down on their luck for not pulling themselves out by their bootstraps and learning to be unautistic already. never in those words, but the feeling is there. everyone thinks, well, i like my routines too, but i simply wouldn't have a meltdown when i was under stress and my routine got messed up because i'm better than that. or whatever. it makes for a weird situation where everyone is nice to me because they kinda get it, but they're also quite cruel because they're perplexed by how i just can't seem to quite stop being autistic the same way they did. 

but i get how they feel too. when i'm in public and a baby is crying, all i can think is, dude, i totally get it, this place sucks and it's overstimulating and my body hurts and i want to go home, and i would cry if i could get away with it too... but i also think, stupid baby, you'll learn that you have to ignore the pain eventually, and in the meantime you are making this worse for everyone and i hate you for it.

i just wish i could talk with my family about this without everyone shouting me down in denial. i want to shake them. YOU ARE AUTISTIC!! you would understand the things that you see as deficiencies so much better if you accepted this! but they all hate disabled people and the idea of being disabled too much to ever consider it.

well, joke's on them because they're all getting old, and nothing makes you disabled quite like time. my great uncle hit 89, and now people see something new in his behavior and call it dementia. in a way, he's finally seeing that we're the same. we always were the same, but he could hide it better. i see his exhaustion and irritation with how the world treats him and confusion with how he just can't make his body work right and i understand him back.

...

and my posture in group photos still looks more gormless than his does, so he should be grateful for all his experience in looking normal.