autism awareness

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nothings worse than feeling different from everybody else not “functioning” like everybody else and not knowing why.

[NotJim]

I hear you. It's hard sometimes. I hope you can feel better soon. We are the people we are, and there's nothing wrong with that. The world is often pre-disposed to categorising everything and saying "if you're like this, you belong with these" or "if you like this, you're part of this group". But really, I think the human race is far too beautifully nuanced and complex to sort into generalisations like "group a", "group b" and "group c"; neurologically different, normal, etc. (whatever normal actually is...!) It can be lonely, frustrating and isolating when it seems everyone else is different to us, and that we're not functioning the way they do. But for every flaw we see in how we operate, there are a hundred positive points, good things about us, that we miss.

And sometimes we might not know why we do the things we do, or be able to figure out the reasons straight away. The answers might come over time. The important thing is to be gentle with ourselves and try not to slip into self-judgment. Our autism is just the way our brains operate, and that doesn't mean they're operating the wrong way. It's your unique way of processing the world we live in.

Retrospect is often a great teacher, and sometimes we might not know the reasons for things right now, but will one day look back, see it from a different, older perspective and then it will make sense. We grow and become more self aware over time, and that'll include how we understand our autistic minds too. Again, just because we function differently doesn't mean we're functioning wrong.

I hope in the mean time you can take it easy on yourself, don't let the so-and-so's get you down