Autism (part 4) and the long losses

While I have had very few lasting friendships, each of those few have filled me with joy and comfort. Over these years a few friends drifted away, which happens to everyone. Those few, those precious, and so fulfilling friendships I have known have nearly all been cut short by bittersweet reality. My dear friend Bill from high school, the one who introduced me to a certain camp and my first camp counselor job, died from Crones disease. It happened quietly after one of his years long disappearing acts. I only found out much later. His brother, Jim, committed suicide right before our high school graduation. My friend, William Helmbacher kept me going and gave me hope in my early college years was brutally murdered in his hometown just after a final visit to see my first son. My dear friend Dave who gave so much to this world died last month, a victim of cancer, leaving behind his loving wife and two children. Dave had been so instrumental to the birth of Camp Erehwon from its inception that he was included in my dedication of my second book. He never had a chance to read it and see his name in the front.

So why now do I write these things? I write them not out of any sense of sadness or pity-searching. We all, without exception, experience loss. We have to put that loss in a proper light and be grateful for the gift of self that is real friendship. As an autistic I have verry little chance of making new friendships. I am simply not wired to be acceptable to people. I have seen writings on mind blindness, and on the uncanny valley effect, and executive function failure and they are all quite true. Making friends is simply not possible when you reach a point in your life where masking is too hard and takes too much effort to allow for deep social interaction. Masking is the one thing that robs me of who I am. It is taxing mentally, emotionally, and physically. After trying for years just to fit in, just to be like everyone else, pretending that everything is okay and normal you come to the realization that all that work and pain changes nothing. As an autistic you are considered a freak, even if you really aren't. You are invisible even in public. You are alone, no matter who you are with. No matter how much you want to belong and be liked you won't be.

So much data is out there, especially with the advent of social media, and much of that data is skewed to extremes. We have doctors and psychologists who steadfastly deny that autism exists. We have politicians who think that we are diseased or disordered, and that condition is curable if we dump the right amount of money on the right research. On the other end we have the NT's (neurotypical persons) who try to be encouraging by claiming that autistics have superpowers, or are gifted, or are genius savants. No matter what side of the fence you are on, we autistics are disabled in relation to the NT world. Yes, some of us have a hyperfocus that allows us to become masters of certain things that interest us or draw our boundless curiosity, but that focus comes at a painful price. There are times when we stim, we burn out, we have meltdowns in some cases, and all the while we are keenly aware of people talking about us and our scariness or oddness. Some of us can't even function without support. Yeah, nice superpower there. Then we have the "professionals" who think that we are lying or defective. Like animals that should be culled or studied. Perhaps, as in years past, forced into a controlled mold of being used as tools to an end. Defective people are expendable under this notion. Again, what did we do to deserve this?

We were born. That is what confounds polite society. Not only were we born, but we survived. We survived the bullying. The torture. The exclusion and ostracization. We lived into adulthood just to continue being bullied and ostracized. Even with our generally reduced lifespans, we somehow continue to vex the world at large. I would like to think that is one of my favorite "superpowers." I am hated or treated apathetically as an invisible non-person, and I have the Nerve to keep living! And live I do. I love sunrises and playing with my children. I love reading and spending time with my beautiful wife of more than 30 years. I live deeply in spite of a world that says I shouldn't even be. I will keep going, because God has a plan for me, for them, for us. Anyone who says that there isn't a God will also tell you that they have never read the first five points of St. Thomas Aquinas in Suma Theologica. It's okay that they won't and can't. It proves the point I am trying to make. Many NT's want to baby us helpless autistics, the others believe we are liars, or simply bad mutants. Neither will take the time to study, to read, to educate themselves about us superpowered monsters. Seriously, I'm okay with that. Ooooooh! Meteor shower up north during our family camping trip! Awesome!