52 Weeks of One True Yes and One True No

Join me in a year of unmasking, and find a more authentic you 🥳 🤷 🥰 🤔

Intermittently in my life, I feel myself waking up. A new burst of inspiration and understanding comes, and I feel ALIIIIVEEEEE. I see the world around me and inhabit my body better, stop living so completely in my head.

This has happened recently. Perhaps because of the extended time of permitted self-isolation. A friend sent me this article about autism as being like natural enlightenment and I found myself vibrating with joy and inspiration for the first time in a while.

Please read the piece, by Kelsey Jean Marie and let me know what you think.

It’s a fascinating take on autism, and it rings true to me. Probably because I want it to. Hello, confirmation bias, my good friend. I hate thinking of myself as ‘disordered’ aka ASD. (Boooo. ASC is a bit better.)

Maybe this is some major white Messiah complex b.s. of wanting to be a superhero rather than disabled, but I can’t help it. Parts of the article speak to me.

My ability to tune into the wonder of the natural world has often drawn comment from people. People have declared my capacity for empathy special or unusual. Over the top, actually. It’s genuinely been a problem. I’ve given some people many more chances than they deserved. I seem to be able to see the best in people, to the extent that it can leave me vulnerable to abuse.

I am forgiving to a fault. I just feel so sorry for people if they seem to be in pain. I can’t help it. Do you relate?

I’ve always veered between feeling like a bit of a dimwit and feeling slightly Jesus-esque, because of this capacity for forgiveness. (In my early twenties I kicked around the idea of starting my own religion — true story.)

But Kelsey approaches this part of some autistic people’s experience in an entirely different way, and I find that incredibly exciting.

What if this natural enlightenment is something I can cultivate? How much more constructive might that be than the endless hiding/masking project that I’ve wasted so much time on thus far?