Thursday, September 8, 2016

Why Can't You Be Normal?

Bear with me, this is going to get long (I have a brevity deficit).

Let me tell you a story. So there's this woman in a wheelchair. She's paralyzed from the waist down. She's trying to go shopping and there's a big crowd of people and she's in the way. One of the people in the crowd says to her, "you look perfectly fine to me. Stop pretending you need that wheelchair and get up and walk properly."

She explains politely that she can't; she's paralyzed.

"Oh no, you look just fine. That person over there, with no legs? Now she needs a wheelchair. You're just being lazy. You just need to try harder."

It so happens that our girl has crutches slung over the back of her wheelchair to help with little short "jaunts" (like from the chair to the bed) and she gets these down and tries to walk with them. For a moment, she does just fine, but soon she gets tired and falls down.

People in the crowd mock her; some of them call encouragement to her. A chorus of "you can do it, just try harder," and "stop acting like that, you know you can walk just fine, you just need to stop being so entitled." "You look fine to us. Get up and walk."

And with all this coming on her, she convinces herself that there's nothing really wrong with her, and she could walk if she just tries hard enough. It would certainly make her life easier in many ways, so part of her even wants to believe.

She tries and she tries. She tries every way she can think of. She takes all the suggestions they can give her. But still, she can't walk like they can. She can only drag her paralyzed legs along for a few steps with the crutches before she falls. The wheelchair works better but gets in everyone's way.
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Okay, by now I'm sure you've seen the point of the story, but let me ask you this: what do you think of the people in the crowd? Was it okay for them to tell her "you look fine, just try harder?" What about the ones that were genuinely trying to help, and be encouraging? Was that okay? Or is telling a paralyzed person that they aren't, that they can act perfectly normal if they want to -- is that wrong? Isn't that bullying?
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Autistic people are like the woman in the wheelchair. Our brains are _different_. No amount of "trying" is going to change that. Now, just like the woman in the wheelchair, we can use "crutches"--which would be learning social behavior by rote (like memorizing a multiplication table)--for a while, but it's exhausting to do and eventually, leaves us on the ground in a heap if we don't take a break.

Oh, and the other woman, the one with no legs at all? She's like a person with Down Syndrome; someone who has neurological differences that are physically visible to "normal" people. Nobody tells her that she just needs to try harder, because it's obvious to them that she is different. But people with autism most of the time look just like the "normal" (neurotypical) people do. So they, _you_, get judged as if you are a "normal" person.

NT people have this social behavior they expect everyone to conform to, but very rarely will you find anyone who does. They are just as hard on each other as they are on you. The problem is, you're not doing what you do because you're choosing to break the rules. You can't learn the rules the way they do. Your brain is simply different than theirs.

Please, be kind to yourself and let yourself stop believing that "you should know how to behave around people" and "there's no excuse." Imagine what you would think of someone telling that paralyzed girl "you should know how to walk" and "there's no excuse for acting like you need a wheelchair."

(I initially wrote this in response to someone who said (online) the two initial quotes in the last paragraph. Unless she tells me differently, her identity will remain anonymous. I just didn't want to take credit for the words that inspired me to write this.)

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