Monday, March 17, 2014

Stop combating me, start helping me make it better for the children of today

I'm denied help, even if the help is even available. I want to work, but jobs aren't open to dealing with someone like me. I struggle along, my senses giving me false data, but the therapy to help me learn how to deal with this false data through adaptive tech, learning other methods, and training my body, is denied by insurance repetitively.

Bus drivers tell me how I can't be disabled when I use my disability pass, no matter how much my symptoms are actually affecting me. In public, people scream at me, telling me how I'm lying for trying to cope, instead of something as simple as taking a seat on the bus when it would give me a migraine. In multiple, completely different, scenarios, I'm told speech is the only way to deal with things, even when that's completely wrong.

I'm screamed at, not allowed to get things done, denied help, being taught that I'm innately wrong, and told that it's for my own good.

You're not combating autism and you're not doing a thing to make it better for me. You're part of this. You're part of this society, who says that its for my own good to get denied the help to actually learn how to live as an autistic person rather than be stuck as a burden while screaming about how worthless we are because we're burdens. Autistic people shouldn't exist? Right? That's what combating autism is? Telling us how we shouldn't exist?

Stop it. Stop combating me. Stop combating all of us. Fix it. Help us. We deserve help. We're other people here who are being pushed around and abused at an absurd rate, which I'm not even comfortable looking up anymore, because its so high, because what autistic therapy is frequency compliancy training, along with the rest of the world training us that we're worthless and need to follow them. Because we're not good enough how we are.

Instead of putting less than 2.5% of the funding into research on services. Actually pay attention to services. Actually pay attention how to help us live as autistic people. Because that's who we are. That's how we live. We won't swap to being neurotypical. Going through and figuring out how do we live as autistic people, through things like occupational therapy, things like AAC apps, and things like PCAs are what we're needing. Not stim suppression. Help us.

Help us figure out employment and if we want it higher education. It's not necessary for us to be worth it, but really, it'd be better for everyone else too, then, because we can be great employees. We're just stuck without employment, even when we want it.

Help us learn how to say no. And help us have people listen.

Help us have society listen.

Help us say that combating autism isn't getting rid of it. It's helping us live. Without attacks every day.

Stop combating me. Start combating the attacks. And instead, make it so that the world the autistic children currently live in isn't such that it will be such a hostile place when they grow up. Instead, its not somewhere where they struggle every day in order to get through the day because of everyone and everything around them. Make it better for them. Because if we work on this, it will be better for them.

Isn't that what combating autism is about? Making the world better for the autistic children of today?

Monday, March 3, 2014

The empty mind

The empty mind of overload overtakes, causing thoughts to run and hide. One after another things I want to say or do get lost; things I need to do get forgotten. The empty mind overtakes.

What would it be like, to be able to put thoughts down on paper? What thoughts are these that I am struggling to pull together? I know they're there. I know I have ideas I want to share. Instead, they're lost, again, as the only thing I hear is louder and louder noises, and the only things I remember are the fact that there is supposed to be thoughts.

What would it be like if I didn't forget what I was doing, because the empty mind has said that its not there. That there's only fog, and blank, and noise? How much more of what I want to do would get done? How much faster would I be able to do?

What would it be like, if instead of struggling through a fog to complete things that I know how to do, because of headaches and pain, hearing everything around me, and things feeling wrong on my skin, if the fog just lifted? What would it be like to not be alone in a fog, with the rest of the world out there, separated, and needing effort just to interact.

What would it be like?

Instead, the empty mind overtakes once more, thoughts are lost, things left undone, and another struggle to communicate commences.