This is among the self-absorbed junk I've read countless times from "martyr autism moms" or "autism warrior moms" or whatever you call yourselves now.
Autistics...children or otherwise...are not out here for you to get pity points for being a parent!
Being a parent is hard....of ANY child. If it was easy, we wouldn't have all the businesses catering to parenting, child-rearing, advice, and shared-moaning.
If you think being a parent of an autistic is hard, try reading your tripe above from your kid's point of view, and think "would I want this said about me?" And yes, your kid has an opinion, regardless of whether they can or want to share it with you.
I did not write this monograph to point out that parenting is hard, which it is regardless of autism. You are quite right there.
My child, by the way, would not get the feeling that prompted my vulnerability to share. Neither, it seems do you. I may pity myself, but I don't pity you (or my son, who is way the boss over me!).
I wrote to express my own personal feelings as a woman who is utterly fed up with the good press the auti-moms get for dealing with a disorder that always rains on my parade.
Besides, don't you hate autism, too? It sure makes you grumpy.
I am only interested in provoking people to think for themselves, and that's why I write. I believe that by listening VERY closely to others we learn much about ourselves. But I know that this is not a faculty readily available to those afflicted with autism.
My first posts were all to my sister, who reacts to my letters, exactly in the same tone as you do. From these you could tell that I am very much trying to understand how people with autism think, and how sad it makes me that this is not reciprocal.
The only war I have ever fought is against martyrs and warrior-moms! You and I may have more in common than you first read into me. Ultimately we both want to be heard and feel trapped inside our lonely little worlds.
Although I know reading me will not have come easy for you I am glad you took the trouble. I always hope my good intentions to eradicate autism from the human non- genepool work on a spiritual level. Call me cuckoo. By reading me you lend me energy to continue my quest for "awareness against autism". This requires me to work in "negative space" or a pre-manifest condition. It's like looking down from above, or a distant point in time. From this vantage point, there is nothing good about autism. I trust there is more to you than just autism, though.
I very much expected a reaction like yours to my post. Only I thought it would come from an autism warrior mum!
My writing style is infamously complex and overwhelming. My sister finds me abrasive and says I rant. Possibly, but I am not obtuse!
Your answer is still full of highly mistaken notions, but far more reasonable and coherent than your original posting. Perhaps tone provokes tone. I hope I am also more reasonable in my reply. Reading that others wish you extinct is beyond provocative, and I am not the rare one who can reason with such vitrol.
You want people like me to no longer exist. That's eugenics. We're not "afflicted with autism". We're affected by myopic views like yours that see us as less-than. Just because we don't show emotions like you do, or don't agree with you, does not mean we don't have feelings or can't.
If most of what you read wished that you and those like you would cease to exist, and claim that you cannot possibly understand the vitrolic venom behind such phrases...I think you would become "abrasive" as well. Perhaps you are above that, but you would be a rare one.
Where do I say I wish you cease to exist. I find that a shocking allegation. Almost slanderous! But I shall take it kindly with a grain of salt. I've heard it all before and it is pretty much water off a duck's back by now. But I am terribly sorry that my writing caused such vitriol in you. If you had read more closely I believe that would totally have been unnecessary. I suspect you are projecting a lot of frustration and misunderstanding onto me, which is quite alright by me. I am a hardened punching bag.
One thing I definitely do not do is: I do not confuse emotion with feeling. I am rare in that.
True, I wish you, my son, my father and my sister existed without autism. How in any way does this say: I wish you were all extinct? I believe we could all be born without autism and be happier for it. But that is not to say who you are does not deserve to be. Why not make the subtle distinction?
I just don't believe autism makes you special in a positive way. Who you are is not the disorder you have. It is why I say autism "afflicts" that part of you that isn't fully you. By that I mean, we all have a brain programme (and yours is coloured by autism) and we all have a soul-spirit. That soul-spirit would have also made you "I" without the autism. It still does! But it's a bit mangled by the autism, I find. You might not find so, but you have trouble conveying that then.
I think I would have liked you all better without the autism, especially when autism makes interaction impossible (for continued misunderstandings, as with my sister). How is that myopic? I have suffered over 45 years of being bullied by the autism that rules the mind of people I would love to love.
In some people, some of the time, the autism makes them so myopic they just can't see you at all. How to communicate then? Even if you would say something nice, they would take it the wrong way. I am happy to let them blame me for being unauti-friendly in my phrasing, but they can't blame me for not trying to love them with all my heart.
But you know why I really hate autism? My sister, especially, wishes she existed without autism. So much so, she actually doesn't want to exist, at all anymore. I have lost two adult acquaintances to autism (off a bridge). So I fight autism a bit on their behalf, too, as an undesirable condition to be born with. Where it doesn't handicap you, there is no issue. Or less so. My father doesn't want the label, but it makes it hard for me to understand why he never showed any love to me. What's wrong with me, was all I could ask myself, until I discovered autism runs in the family. Finally, I could forgive him his (never ending) vitriol, let go, and accept the parts he was able to give me without expecting more.
Fortunately, my son doesn't give a hoot about his autism, he finds life a blast and bulldozes on with his 101 projects at breakneck speed and never-ending days. I appreciate how you felt like "defending"him. But I think he is so sensitive on a spiritual level there is nothing I could ever say (in anger) that makes him doubt my love for him and dedication to his well-being (I only get angry when I fear or lament he is going to do something stupid to compromise himself - yep, call me the over-protective mom, next!).
If you are happy with your autism, no probs. Not that you sound very happy.... I don't think I can ever explain to you how I feel you and your autism, but that the two do not fuse into an indiscriminate auti-clod! I am too overflowing with emotion and yet far to precise (meticulous) in my semantics to be able to do that. My sister taught me that, and you echo it once the moreover.
We can always agree to disagree, you know. No need to get emotional, then. Very simple. Our ways part. You happy with your autism. Me still hating it.
In conclusion, if I may direct you to the real object of your hate: maybe, you dislike my spiritual tripe. You probably find it uncouth of me to tackle autism as a spiritual matter, while you have to live with it in a practical way, and find very little understanding, let alone sympathy for it. That is hard. Very hard. But maybe you can feel supported in knowing nobody at all ever understands me (and I don't even have a label to hang around my neck that allows me to jump the queue somewhere). Not saying you get benefits with autism... let's not start a new row!
" I always hope my good intentions to eradicate autism from the human non- genepool "
You try to separate our autism from us, as if it were a necklace or pair of shoes, or an extra limb one can just lop off and be done with.
Autism is not a part of us...it IS us....woven throughout our being. To hate autism is to hate the autistic. Down syndrome is woven through every cell in a person's body. To remove the gene is to fundamentally change who a person is...which is pretty much the same as no longer being that person. Autism is only different in that it's not so clear-cut easy to spot the origins.
I don't discount that being autistic can be challenging...but so is being the minority in any group of mixed-bag anything. I'm sorry if the challenges are too much for those you know. Trying to erase who they are and teaching them to hate a part of themselves is not productive nor kind. I know that not everyone sees their autism...or their race, gender, nationality, etc as a part of their entire selves...some divide themselves into partitions. But hating what cannot be changed, regardless of how you see yourself....is nonproductive, pointless, and damaging.