Skip to main content

Diver Analogy

I am a diver.  I go into the water as deep as I have the courage to go.  There are fish all around me.  They breathe through gills, but I need a breathing apparatus.  They swim unaided, but I need swinfins.  I'm nothing like a fish.  I'm from another world.  Underwater, I have to rely on special equipment to see, move, and stay alive.

But I don't trust my special equipment.  I feel like something important might be missing from my underwater diving toolkit.  I'm convinced that my accessories are unreliable.  I'm already disadvantaged because I'm the wrong kind of animal.  I'm an intruder.

But I can't return to land.  There's no boat anywhere.  There's no land either.  I'm not a misplaced man but a diminished fish.  The truth is blood in the water.

This is a very rough picture of what it's like for me living with an ASD.  It's not just socializing.  It's all of my life whenever it intersects with anyone else.  The reality is much more nuanced, but I still don't know how to express it well.  I'm trying to get better at expressing it.  But just imagine feeling like an amnesiac alien every moment of your life.  Maybe that's better than my diver analogy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Man Is Not Great: The Evolution of Anthropocentrism

Why do humans care whether their species is special? Why are they so invested in their specialness that they're uncomfortable with the idea that they aren't? Why is it a bitter pill to swallow that humans aren't uniquely important in the universe, that they aren't the intended end of evolution, and that their wondrous and diverse subjective experiences emerge from the same physical processes observable in "lower" animals? I think that the maladaptive human tendency to insist upon their specialness in the universe is an extension of an adaptive tendency to self-advocate in their tribes. Consider fear. The predisposition to turn around when you feel like something might be behind you is likely to save you when there really is something there. Most of the time, when you can't help but turn around on the dark basement steps, there's no threat. From an evolutionary perspective, it’s better to turn unnecessarily than to do nothing in a moment of danger. That...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Mystery of Friendship

Friendship looks good on paper.  People appear to enjoy their friendships and to want, or at least to expect, to have friends.  I don't have this experience.  I don't want friends. It took me a long time to understand that I have no desire for friendship.  As a child I thought I had to seek friendships because everyone around me wanted them.  It was part of trying to pass; I know that now but I didn't then.  I wasn't aware that other people didn't have to try to be like each other.  How could I have been?  I had no basis for comparison besides myself so I assumed everyone was like me.  I thought I was neurotypical and this was conducive to my feelings of inferiority.  I didn't know why I was so bad at being like everyone else.  It was because they were being themselves and I wasn't.  But I wouldn't realize that until long after my formative years were over. I was a very confused child.  I had few friendships and I wasn...
2 comments
Read more

George Versus Lennie

People seem to believe that you can't have cognitive deficits if you don't seem stupid. The image many carry in their minds of a person with cognitive problems is an image of someone whose internal dysfunction necessarily finds clear outward manifestation in unusual physical proportions, motor skills, vocal quality, and speech patterns. Less objectively, it's an image of a cartoon idiot: Lennie from Of Mice and Men as depicted in Looney Tun es .  This is a suboptimal situation.  My autism involves some cognitive impairment. Because I'm intelligent and articulate, even paraprofessionals have trouble remembering or, in fact, believing that I'm not as able to apply my intellect as ordinary people are. I'm smart, I'm not Lennie, but I'm not George either. The dichotomy between those characters is the only way many people can understand the difference between neurotypical people and people with cognitive or neurodevelopmental disabilities. If I'm n...
Post a Comment
Read more