This is how I was Created.

A little over a month ago I came across a website called "Wrong Planet" which pushes the idea that autism is not something to be cured, it is something to be accepted. The autism IS the person, and that person needs to be embraced, not cured. They propose that to take away the autism would be to take away the person. At first I thought "wow, what a concept... the idea that who I am is OK." I have been fighting against every aspect of myself for as long as I can remember. I have NEVER felt that I am an ok person, that I am acceptable and worthy of embrace. I have instead embraced the idea that I am not ok, not acceptable as I am, and spent a very long time fully convinced that people who show any kindness to me are doing me a favor, and should be thanked. I don't really remember if I've ever felt like a person was befriending me bc they actually enjoyed my company. Maybe to believe that now would still be a fallacy, maybe people are just "ministering" to me. But until I read that website, there was no alternative in my thinking.

After I read it, though, I decided, yes. This is the way I would like to live. I would like to be fully accepted, quirks and all. I would like to stop playing roles, forcing expressions, participating in menial tasks that make me feel foolish, I would like to be me and for that to be ok. I have been frustrated with God for a very long time for creating me this way, and I have told him so. I told him I didn't understand why he made me to be such a failure. Why he put me amongst a species that is 55% gesture,37% tone, and only 8% language, but made me 99% language and expected me to function amongst them successfully. He has been showing me that He did NOT create me to be a failure. He created me for a purpose, and a good purpose that will bring glory to Him, and what could be better than that? I don't know why he made me autistic, but maybe that man made label that gives my entire person hood some kind of negative connotation should not be so. I *like* that he created me with a visual memory such that I learned to read music very young, and I can play 3 different instruments, I can remember almost anything I read, ( I used to have a perfect photographic memory until some rly bad seizures set me back a little.) I *like* the ability he has given me to create art with music and digital animation. I like that he has created me with the ability to WRITE, and use it to his glory. I like the view He has given me on his planet, and although I can be a bit hypersensitive, I would not trade this. The scary things may hit hard, but the beauty every where is just as equally wonderful.. I would not ever want to dull down my senses and experience less of his creation, I could go on and on about this topic but I don't want to stray too far from my purpose in writing this. It is for these things I give him glory and praise him for creating me this way.

It is harder to give glory to God though, for the difficulties autism puts on my ability to interact with other people. God commands me to be in fellowship with other believers. It is hard to feel in fellowship with a group of people, though, when I am say, sitting in a room with them andthey are all laughing at something someone said, and I understand everything, the definitions of all the words that the person spoke, I just don't understand why that is FUNNY, and I know that it's this literal brain God has given me, and THAT can really make you feel alone in a crowd, as well as completely lost and disconnected, stuck rehashing what they said and trying to "get it", and in the mean time, the conversation moves on..... and in my head I think, "How do I interject? What can I say to be involved in this conversation and not feel like a third wheel?"

Not to say I am ALWAYS this worried about it, I have days where I am secure enough in myself that it doesn't bother me when I don't get the jokes, or that I don't know what to say, and I am content to just listen to people talk with each other, and observe their interactions without feeling lost and disconnected. I suppose that its just the recent self evaluation and attempts at changing the light on how I view my self, that has me holding a magnifying glass to all my behaviours and obsessing over them. Maybe once I get a little of this out of my system, and find a healthy balance in my life for the ideas presented on wrongplanet, I can go back to my little perch on the highwire observing and learning, and that being the vantage point that I am once again content with.