Bully, The Autistic

Of the common invisible demographics, few are hated more than the undiagnosed, high-masking, female autistic. It occurred to X that her parents hadn’t intended to harm her, they intended to help, but lacking literacy of developmental disabilities, their parenting became misdirected into abuse. They hadn’t meant to, and intentions count for a lot, but they had done so and refused the recognition prerequisite to regret, so they weren’t sorry. Of the innumerable regular occasions she was punished for crying, they thought they were training a functional adult, not forming a dysfunctional one. When they refused her access to a bathroom, they thought they were teaching self control, not severing self-connection. When they told her to just deal with the bullying at home, church or school, they thought they were teaching self-sufficiency, not learned helplessness with simultaneous callous and hypersensitivity. When they called her a liar, or dramatic, they thought they were teaching honesty, not that truth and righteousness didn’t matter. Having been extensively misinformed on responsible parenting, to the point that no information at all would have found them much better prepared, they thought they were doing all that they could and reasonably should to give X all she needed to fly on her own some day, but they caged her to means she could perform but never actualize, a parrot who never had the freedom to fly, but enough to show a wingspan that looked like it could, beautiful feathers hiding the deformed muscles and bone structures beneath, not that they had the knowledge to recognize the deformity, even if they could see it. They had an extremely skewed sense of normal, even of themselves, so they didn’t see anything wrong with their baby that never stopped wailing, other than a manipulative tendency, which they grew ever desensitized to and impatient with as it persisted. Her brothers followed suit with childish cruelty, the whole family out to prove a confirmation bias loaded against her since well before she could ever conceive of such things. Lacking literacy in a great many things, they proved themselves “right” time and again, no matter how wrong they’d have to get to do it. Them against her, fallacy against fact, the world as she knew it was one in which she was always outnumbered, and that would always matter more than right and wrong, true and false. The dangers of democracy that denies the exceptions place in making the rule. So, insulted by her perception of abuse, they abandoned her, they never sought to understand or see anything any differently than the narratives they’d been touting for so long that they failed to see any narrative at all, and just called it reality.

She learned their ways and tried for survival to weave them into their own, but, never a match, they were inevitably rejected, for which she would be labeled as lazy, defiant, no good. “Scientists” blaming the sample before investigating their own hypothesis or methods will always find results to affirm themselves, but they will never be scientists, regardless of the titles they claim.

For X, Autism, like the ADHD she also would have qualified for if anyone had been paying the correct attention, was just a construct, a convenient definition created to pretend to make the complex seem easier to understand, and she didn’t actually care much to claim it, seeing most terms of the DSM as propaganda merely based on the truths they sought, in contradiction to their apparent efforts, to obscure. She sought variably to claim it anyways, being that every description she read had described her experience, and having experienced too much of the dangers of the world when it does not have the means of accurate categorization – anyone without proper identification in this world was an endangered species as far as she could tell. Even calling herself “she” while not really agreeing with how gender had been constructed was an attempt to qualify as something, some group, that might be protected in its qualification.

All children in this system are taught to mask, forced to conform to things unnatural to them, to their detriment in every way but viability to the sorting machine. It is evident in our schooling systems, in churches, in “child protection services”, in our history, in our homes, everywhere, hidden on blast. The difference with those deemed “ Autistic” is that this programming is rejected. To categorize anyone who rejects the programming of school and family life and the society it is intended to prime one for as “disabled” is highly political slander. In this way, when we point out inconsistencies around us, we can be blamed for this perception, as skewed from the engineered “norm”. We are not disabled by our way of being, we are disabled by a society which rejects us, while blaming us for rejecting it. If allowed and valued, we would naturally contribute to society, but society makes it untenable for us to contribute by setting standards that exclude, and even, antagonize us.

It is apparent that the suppression against the unsupported undiagnosed receiving their diagnosis later in life is also political. The Country should wish to know just how many of us there are, how we were missed, how we came to be, how we can be integrated better, and what we mean. Why does it seem to seek to bury us instead? The connections between missing diagnosis and filling unmet needs, self-medicating, with illicit substances, should also be a point of inquiry to meet the screaming needs. Nobody seems more likely to find a proclivity to meth than kids with undiagnosed ADHD seeking any way possible to cope with how they are rejected from society, except perhaps those same kids who also develop CPTSD from that institutional rejection. Nobody seems for likely to depend on heroine than the undiagnosed and unsupported, hyper-sensitive Autistic, who is told their whole lives that they must exist differently if they wish to exist at all, a bar they never could meet, if they were ever meant to- except, again, those same kids who have developed CPTSD from how they have been neglected, abused, and rejected, and abused and neglected some more. By gatekeeping proper diagnosis and treatment but keeping drugs readily available, these neglected and reflected children grow into the folds of this statistical manipulation, where they can be framed as no good junkies and everyone who helped sweep them under that rug can feel vindicated in doing so – seeing the result they contributed to as inevitable and independent from their actions- confirmation bias. To be clear, she hadn’t wished for better, legal, drugs, sooner- just better understanding and treatment.

X reflected on all the times she was utterly confused by the trouble she found herself in, only to be later informed that she had broken a social contract that was apparently obvious to everyone but her, and assumed to be known to her as well, leaving her intentions under scathing inaccurate scrutiny time and again. Every time, she learned she was different, misunderstood as such, untrusted, assumed to be the worst. The more she tried to learn to be good under their terms the more suspicion she received, as they could see that she was *trying* to seem good, a task that need not be undertaken by the truly good, so the onlooker seemed to think. As far as X could tell, the metrics for truly being good, and being deemed to be truly good (insofar as she understood these terms, were remarkably different, and they changed between all the many demographics. Trying to meet the standards of all, she betrayed them all instead, as was decided by outsiders to be the true intention, betraying the actual true intention, yet again.

She recalled causing her favourite high school teacher to throw his papers across the classroom and storm out, leaving the entire class to stare and scold her for what she’d said, a hateful humiliation that made clear that she had done something so obviously wrong that it must have been intended. A friend who had recently graduated had told her that this teacher would not prepare her adequately for the final exams, and in the midst of exam preparation that she thought that this teacher was being very thorough about, she failed to see the harm of inquiry, perhaps thinking that to address this in front of the whole class could put the rumours to rest. She really was addressing the matter in good faith, but nobody outside of her unknown unique meaning making would see it this way, or wonder how she saw it when she asked, “ I was told you hadn’t prepared previous classes well for the exam, but you seem to be doing well, are you doing anything differently?”, they would just decide it was how it seemed to them – that she was just being a pretentious little shit trying to humiliate the teacher in a misguided vie for attention and hopeful camaraderie from others who disliked that teacher, whom she loved. She was earnestly trying to correct for conflicting information and experiences, but was rather blind as to how it would seem until it all came crashing down on her. She seemed to target that teacher, in so seeming to do, she seemed to vindicate a target upon herself. This phenomenon would ensue to a monstrous extent when she endeavoured to approach anyone accused of abuse in her little corner of the East Van music scene, and could explain much of how she had been pariahed and attacked by her own community…. In other words, martyred, though she understood she wasn’t allowed to say that of herself, especially not if it were true, lest it add to its own severity.

In truth, this teacher dedicated his entire life to others, class time to his students and the rest of his time to his sick wife. Teachers are, by the very means that define their positions, under appreciated, and X had accidentally added insult to injury. She didn’t mean to, but, she hurt his feelings, and that was valuable information, she was grateful that his response was obvious rather than hidden in how she was treated and graded moving forward. He did a lot for his students, and there she was, seeming to say it wasn’t enough, while actually meaning the opposite, and only asking because she trusted and thought highly enough of him to do so, otherwise she might have stuck to hidden speculation. Seems a decent chance that the graduate who complained about this teachers skills may just have been deflecting responsibility for his own failings. X’s position was that she wouldn’t be able to determine these things without inquiry, and in school, she had thought inquiry was supposed to be good, despite regular evidence of refutation. They apologized to each other and moved on the next day. Between them all was well, but the public display made a life of its own. She didn’t seek to stop searching for answers, but to find a way to do so that wouldn’t make people so mad at her all the time. Shortly after, in AP Math, she would be sent to the principals office and forced to miss the lesson for asking for its practical applications so she could integrate purpose into her learning. The teacher, seemingly without an answer, deemed X as seeking to insult the very lesson she sought to honour with deeper understanding. X had felt this teacher was being mean. Everyone was regularly misinterpreting each other’s meanings and motivations, and mistakenly responding, to the point that this would be an assured norm for anyone who did not comply with the other constructed ones.

It was interesting how often lines normal of organized crime were becoming normalized in regular society. “Just do what you’re told and don’t ask questions.” , was a big one. One can see its effects in every construct across the nation, from parliament to the trailer park.

The bullying would never end so long as she went on asking questions, incapable of detecting and correcting for these inconsistencies between truth and appearances in time. Her life had been proof of that, and a part of that proof was the mass refusal of anyone to look at that proof with any interest beyond cherry picking what they liked to prove their own original contention – that she was bad and deserving of all the bad things that had befallen her, which had been set in motion since before she could speak. In this way the onlooker could sleep at night, believing their interpretations which they relied upon to be good, and the system they adhered to, to be good enough. If her intentions were truly good, if she were truly being as misunderstood and mistreated as she claimed, then the other active participants, whose own intentions had likely been mostly good, would be confronted with themselves as accidental abusers, misguided into cruelty, and this would damage a fragile identity to the extent of a concern for survival, something she would never be worth risking to them.

Though X loved people and desired desperately to belong, she always seemed to fail as long as she was trying to be herself, a thing she had to actively try to do, through miles of trauma incited against her for just that. She could only fit as long as she conformed, an oxymoron, as that was never her that they accepted, but the various versions of herself she had been forced to learn to perform for false acceptance. In this way, all the relationships she formed were reliant on her performance, and as soon as she broke character, hoping that eventually she could curry enough value to be trusted to be who she truly was, those people felt betrayed and abandoned her.

There was little wonder left for her as to how she had lost the gumption to try for most social situations, and came to regret most of those attempts, as with age she came to outgrow the masks and resent the expectation of them a great deal. She resented being forced to hide regardless of the fact that her intentions were always good. By hiding in her home she felt more free than the ways she’d been pressured to hide in plain sight. Dissociation at the rate expected of her came at a cost that would force her into permanent debt if she continued. She could feel the brain damage with every passing monologue she felt forced to smile and nod through, unallowed to share anything she thought, her thoughts moved further away from her body.

She recalled recently thinking she had found a potential friend, usually a rather heartbreaking occurrence, but she tried with naive hope believing that if she entered guarded, she would push everyone away. She felt a panic attack coming on and it was making her head spin while people continued to talk at her, unaware. She tried to tell them that she needed a minute to sit on the ground, and one of the girls went on to explain how she knew exactly what it was like, blah, blah, blah. X had heard this many times and had found in her case that it was almost always untrue. If they understood they would stop standing over her and explaining her to herself without inquiry. If they understood they would just give her space to regulate, and maybe a glass of water. If they understood, they would not ensue to scream at her and demand that she leave immediately when she sat helplessly on the floor without access to executive function but to say, “please, you don’t understand.”, “please, stop yelling at me.”, “please, I’ll go, but I physically cannot while you are yelling at me.”, and she wept. No, they barely even understood their own thoughts at this moment, as they did not understand their interpretation of X in this moment to be just their own thoughts, based loosely on the undetermined reality before them. In their thoughts, X got exactly what was coming to her, for being such a bitch, so they seemed to think. The potential friend who introduced her, believing herself to be betrayed by X’s performance, or lack thereof, claimed, “I tried to bring you into my inner circle, I can’t believe you would do this.” She claimed that X and the aggressor were more alike than she realized. “We’re not. If we were, she would not have yelled at me for having a panic attack, such a thing would not have occurred as an option at all, let alone be chosen.” This was deemed as it usually was, that X wanted to use a veil of specialness and being misunderstood to exonerate her decidedly selfish and harmful behaviour. Nobody ever seemed to consider if this might in fact be appropriate, if they might in fact be enacting ableism against someone they wrongfully deemed an imposter. X was left alone, as ever, in her ever isolating reality, the only one who could ever truly know her own meaning an intentions and meanings to such an extent, ignored and outnumbered by popularized outside interpretations against people of her kind that boasted false literacy more convincing than the genuine articles could ever be in such a set up.

People were invariably insulted by the notion that they could be misunderstanding X, like any attempt to make them understand was a manipulation intended against their understanding. In this way, they would never understand. Anyone who rejected this program was getting harder to find, just as she was, a systemic intention and statistical inevitability under the current rule.

X understood late in life that she had been misunderstanding others about as much as she had been misunderstood, seeing them through her own lens, as they had done with her. However, being subject to regular rejection, she doubted herself more often than she was sure of herself, especially after her exodus and persecution, and she still somehow felt more righteous in this than she often thought others should feel of their fallacious certainty. The trouble with having been abused and manipulated in her formative years, to the result of priming her for this trend to continue, was that her perceptions, which might have been good with reasonable means of calibration, were *interfered with* by regular false readings from the other machines, whatever their perception or intention. Now she was stuck with the gunk of relational and institutional trauma on her sensors, and she felt often that she was left better off guessing, wondering, inquiring, rather than deciding. It seemed that true certainty had been monopolized by the rich and morally depraved, who were themselves so skewed that they would never get anything but what they sought and subsequently saw, which was at least as twisted as they had to become to achieve their stations.

When X saw the best in others, that’s what they showed her. When she feared them, the world was a nightmare. Seeing that they all contained as many multitudes, invoked by how they were regarded, as sides of her could be invoked by how others regarded her, she waded her perceptions and the world they came from with caution, while cautious not to be too cautious, for what her caution of invocations might itself invoke. Seeking objective reality through an endless sea of chosen or coerced delusions was a journey which may never find a destination as long as her course continued truing, without the lazy resignation of a false reality as more comfortable than the search for it’s truth, in an era that ironically labeled itself as beyond such a trifling endeavour, “post-truth”. A human proclivity which she had been so abused by that she sought to keep herself separate, with great difficulty, a thing she may have only been able to attain by falling for.

“Just Google it.”

It seemed that one of the only things she could come close to knowing was herself, and it was in this knowing that she could know when others were wrong, when they told her things about herself that she could know truly to be untrue, though once enough people tell you horrible things about yourself, you might just come to believe it, despite what you know. X sought, though deprived the means of developing of forming a solid identity (a thing she was uncertain was actually good, preferring flexibility over stability, though she dreamed of attaining both), a true North, to become her own compass, her own standard for calibration, based on the only thing she could know better than any authority she had mistrusted in the past, herself. It was only through correcting her sense of herself and what damage had been done to her, that she could ever hope to know anyone else anything close to correctly, as objective from the means by which she saw them, by seeking to understand what those means were, and correcting for them as well. She confused herself by simply seeking to define her course, and found travelling it to be no less convoluted, with so little reference to rely on but an ever morpheous self. In this way she was arrested without a strong pole to true her course.

This, it seemed, was a featured glitch of the program she had been born into. Where nobody sees you, you are constantly consumed by having to respond to what they see in your place, and trying to adjust appearances to match nebulous acceptability, one never really has the time or capacity to know themselves beyond how they seem, not outside of a private inner world that goes septic without the means to breath, let alone to fight to be known by people determined to prove the opposite. If you are constantly perceived and treated as the opposite of yourself, it will infect how you see everything and everyone else, which will further infect how you seem and exist, puss pushing the two ever further from each other, one, deep under the surface and out of sight, the other, so protruding and grotesque that nearly nobody sees past it. Worse yet, is to live in a society where the aforementioned is a major function, but everyone says that you shouldn’t care what others think. The cognitive dissonance between our thoughts, words and actions is everywhere you turn, and also seems to be a primary tenet of the program, as, it seems, is anything which is allowed or encouraged to be so prevalent in this mechanical society.

An automated system, a disorder which has been designed, albeit not by the cells who enforce it.