Abscissa – Autism and Techno Blog

Hello and greeting again. Going to preface this blog by saying I hope yhis could be oneof the most important blogs I’ll ever write. Maybe the first, true, genuine attempt at addressing autism awareness.

And I have generally being taking the wrong approach for sometime now. It was wednesday night and I was really beginning to put the pieces together and understand some things.

A moment of clarity and relief. Finally I’m getting back on the right track. It is a physical glitch in the physical brain. While there is certainly scope for understanding how it affects me mentally, not enough was done to understand how it affects me neurologically.

Fun fact, while I was typing the word “understand”, my subconscious brain actually typed the word “uncertain”.

That’s the sort of thing that fascinates me. If I’ll be honest, I’m just not that into the physical side of it. That’s part of who I am.

Fun fact, while typing “who I am”, my subconscious brain typed the words “who am I?”

But the point I was trying to make is that, controversial as it is to talk about these days, my brain is defective, yes. It’s not just different, no.

It doesn’t make feel bad to say that. If anything, it now finally allows me to uncover the truth. You wouldn’t believe just how much hurt and pain was released.

I had one of the best dreams I’ve ever had that night. Then I woke next morning, overslept and struggled to get through the next couple of days.

I feel compelled to introduce the concept of Mirror Neurons into the world. A controversial scientific debate in of itself. Associated with both Autism and Sleep Paralysis demons.

Thought to be the neurology of the social interpersonal space. A key idea behind empathy.

Ah, that massively controversial topic. Do autistic children lack empathy? Well I think everyone has got empathy completely wrong. Empathy is not a function of morality.

Not in the neurological sense anyway. No empathy creates social cohesion by allowing humans to mirror each others behaviour.

You know the word “Autism” has the aut- prefix. They say autistic children simply don’t or can’t mirror the behaviours of the people around them.

I can. I just can’t stop. Can’t actually translate it into action. Stuck in a never ending cycle of mental simulation.

Yes, simulation, or Embodied Simulation as it is currently known as. You know, when I was young and my schoolfriends were outside playing football, I was inside simulating football tournaments.

I wonder if any one who knows me can see that I’ve spent whole life trapped in my own mind, might they wonder if my brain is simply unable to convert simulation into action.

Unable to convert the idea of being a person into actually becoming a person. Unable to convert intention into action. Unable to process other people. Unable to process myself.

To further expand the concept, I can elaborate on what it means to struggle with eye contact. Do you know what happens when you look into someones eyes? The brain links the eyes with the action to form a concept of intention.

Do you know what happens when I look into someones eyes? There is no action to map onto, hence there is only intention. Pure intention. Every unprocessed intention, every unactioned possibility, every capacity for unfiltered anarchy.

That idea of having no filter should be something we all know about by now.

Of course there is a spectrum to discuss here, I know there are people who struggle to filter sensual data as well, seems related to me.

We are all different of course but it feels like such a meaningless statement. I would like, just once, for someone to say they understand and respect my disability. But then again I’ve never been able to communicate what I never really understood or accepted about myself.

So yes, empathy is a two way street. I only hope that by talking about stuff like this, people are able to empathise with me.

My experiences of late have lead me to believe society at large is actively failing to respect autistic people by shying away from the difficult conversations, blindly declaring themselves liberal heroes while telling us to just be ourselves.

I tried doing that and it’s fucking intolerable. I needed help and everytime I asked, no one could help me. Had to figure it all by myself as usual.

I was and probably still am trapped in a prison of my own mind. I need people to drag me out of it. Honestly, the loss of the closest friends, the people I chose to spend my life with, nearly killed me, drove me to brink of psychosis.

Not because I’m a bad person, a loser, a needy, greedy scumbag. But because I have a neurological developmental disability.

It doesn’t matter what caused it. It doesn’t matter why.

It only matters what I can do to deal with it. Heal from it? Live with it? Dare I say fix it? Controversy,  controversy, controversy.

I dont know if it can be fixed, if I’m being honest I might want it fixed now but what the hell would that actually mean?

It could just be a glitch that might fix itself if I somehow manage to fire the one special synapse that finally connects. Unlikely though.

Most controversial of all would be the notion that there is no such thing as Autism at all. It does look quite a lot like a trauma response. More of a physical brain trauma perhaps than a psychological one.

I don’t associate with any such childhood trauma, I think I’ve always been the way I am. The mental health issues weren’t there when I was very young. They came later, probably when people began to expect things from me that I couldn’t deliver.

Only then did I ask myself, “Is there something wrong with me?” The answer was yes. But not knowing exactly what, obsessively searching answers for 30 odd years, that was torture.

And so I begin to piece it together again, like the jigsaw puzzles I apparently did over and over again as an infant. Here it is, this is what’s wrong with me. This is my disability.

Perhaps now I can tell you about it. Or perhaps I still can’t talk about it because I’m not 100% certain. Perhaps I’ll never be able to talk about it, perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps I’ll keep descending further away from reality, further and further into the same prison of uncertainty.

Perhaps talking about it is useless anyway because I can’t remember the last time anything I said actually changed anything.

Ah yes, always mirroring others for the sake of social cohesion only to be trapped in the mirror, forever.

What point does the mirror break? When there’s no one to mirror, what the fuck happens then?

Then, the only thing left to see is my own demonic eyes staring back at me. And OMG, that is the most horrifying thing of all.

Being diagnosed with Autism changed nothing. And why would it, honestly? My mind doesn’t affect anything outside my mind.

Reality is not an illusion to me. It changes me but I cannot change it. The interpersonal space that defines social interaction is a place I have no power in and it continues to destroy me, time and time again.

On that cheery note, I’ll call it a day for now. Probably will need a part 2. Writing this has been hard. No emotional release or relief. It’s  work and it’s tiring. Headache-inducing in fact.

But it needs to be said. It needs to be done. Can I ever let myself go or will I be trapped forever?

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