vickygleitz wrote:
I believe I am a better person because of being autistic. I am not a lemming. I have extremely well developed sense of fairness. I am not shallow and I am happy that I have extreme empathy and compassion. These things I attribute to being autistic. it is difficult for me to think of a gift as a disease.
Cancer took away my breasts, aged me 20 years in i year, made me much more aware of the inside of a toilet bowl than I thought was possible. Cancer makes me tired and my body hurt all of the time. I will never consider it a gift, but I do know it is a disease.
I agree that is a gift..and that is completely the way I experienced autism before I got sick..
But here's the thing that's just one experience of Autism...
There are many people on the spectrum per the full DSM diagnostic features of the full spectrum that include individuals with little empathy and little compassion either experienced or demonstrated for others...
Well my friend per the actual definition of disease..that does fit well within that criteria...
Human beings simply must have human empathy to succeed as social animals interdependently..
It is a horrible way to live without compassion or empathy..
And OH yah..i know this too well as my illnesses took ALL that away from me...
I was most definitely and technically emotionally diseased at that point...
And after 5 years I recently experienced my first laugh of which there was previously no memory of how that could even feel as it had been so long since i experienced that..
Well this is truly the world that some autistic people live..and it ain't no party and it most definitely IS an emotional disease..
And yah..in someways even communicable as anyone who lives with a dead person inside..can get some deadness from them too..
By simply being around them and taking care of them 24/7...
But ya can ask my wife all about it...she as so many other people who take care of autistic people with this real emotional disease..knows well what IT IS LIKE to be in those trenches....
For a person who does experience extreme empathy and compassion as I did for decades before i got sick..it is literally impossible to understand what life is like completely without it..
And yah... my experience of both ways of life..definitely lends some real life compassion..for those other individuals who still experience life like I did..for what my marriage counselor calls the DEAD ZONE inDEED..and oh yeah...truly one of the awfullest diseases..known to mankind..the numbness of the heart and soul that can be.....
02 Dec 2013, 11:13 pm
