Far Removed

I experienced a lot of rejection between the ages of 9 and 20.  I felt rejected by my peers, teachers, and family.  In many cases, it was made explicit that I was thought of as inferior.  This hurt and it was confusing.  I felt cast out by everyone.  It seemed as if there was something about me that made people reject me as a matter of course even before they spoke to me.  I became bitter.  I decided that if everyone rejected me then I would reject everyone.  "You can't fire me," I thought.  "I quit."  What I quit was hope for acceptance, and I quit it in small ways at first.  Now I have abandoned that hope entirely.  I remain bitter, and I feel alone. In the 90s, kids in Southern Indiana weren't thinking about autism.  If they had ever heard the word, they thought it referred to a child who couldn't speak and screamed a lot.  If you seemed weird but you could walk and talk and you didn't look deformed, then you wer...

Sometimes, people use the word "autistic" in a derogatory way.  This upsets me, but I'm not sure whether or not I should act to stop it when it happens. There's debate about whether or not autistic people have something wrong with them.  I don't feel that I have anything wrong with me.  As is the case with anyone, there are some things I can't do and some things that I need help doing.  It's just that many of these things are things that other people naturally do easily, such as reading faces or guessing what someone might be thinking.  There are lots of small limitations on the ways I can interact, and at times it feels like I find a new limitation every day, but I don't feel wrong .  I just feel different . Using the word "autistic" in a derogatory way isn't very nice.  We're not jokes or monsters.  But people say things that are not nice all the time and nothing is going to make them stop.  Even if we stop them from saying one hu...

Today I participated in a local author fair at the Jeffersonville Township Public Library.  Because of an oversight on their part, I only had two day to prepare.  I had no copies of any of my books to bring.  On my table, I had only the library's copy of The King's Eagle, some stickers of the Death Magick cover, and 15 sheets of paper with my info on them.   I was all alone at my table and no one I know came to see me.  Talking to strangers was very hard, especially when I tried to tell them what my books were about. I don't know whether I was interesting or not.  I tried to read people's faces and body language, but that isn't my forte.  I can't read subtle nonverbal cues at all, and I only know that because of what I've been told.  I don't know what I miss unless someone tells me, and even then I will almost certainly miss it again.  I did better than I expected with the socializing though, even without Klonopin. Faces are a mystery....

Today I went with my friend Jacob to watch Wrestlemania with a group of people.  I took half a Klonopin beforehand because that's all I had left of that medication.  Before Jacob arrived to pick me up and on the drive to Louisville's south end I was so nervous that I was sick to my stomach.  This is not the first such stomachache I've had recently: going out to do things that I don't normally do has been a whole lot more stressful for me of late.  But my anxiety subsided over the course of the night and I ended up having a pretty good time.  I was quiet and didn't interact with the group very much.  I sat in a metal folding chair for 6 hours because I was too afraid to take anyone's spot on the couch when they got up.  (Other people did that though.) I always dread having to socialize.  That dread has been evolving lately into something worse.  But when I do socialize it usually goes fine.  Even so, I don't desire to socialize.  ...