what's been missing all along: everyone else's empathy
i don't need to analyse my dreams. i know what they're about almost automatically. never had to interpret much at all. but twenty minutes ago an element finally became clear that's been ever present in a majority of them... as too the reason why.
like many, this was a dream of me crying and screaming at parents, family, people... about my suffering. the topic was my home. lost home. as in several dreams, two houses that were once mine, with each being taken away by neglect and disuse. in the dream, i was verbally assaulting tony about his passive-aggressive ways in which he saw to it that i did not get, and then could not keep, my own home. jace's home.
when i woke, thinking on all my emoting in the dream... and everyone's total DISinterest... everyone's lack of responsiveness... something became painfully, miserably clear:
my environment clearly lacks empathy amongst its majority of residents. i can talk, cry and scream till i'm silenced by force or wasting away, and no one has enough empathy to be moved toward changing anything. no one has empathy, so no one thinks there's reason to act. no one acts, so there's never a change. there's never a change, so my attempts to pull reactions from the beings i live among become more dramatic and despirate.
they're incapable of feeling for others. or, at least incapable of feeling for me. they lack a theory of mind. they lack empathy enough to be moved. to be outraged. to recognize me as a suffering member of their species.
i could rewrite this to make it more clear and easier to understand, but now that i have this concept firmly in my own mind... i know there's just no point in trying to do so.
this is how it always was. this is how it always will be. every attribute they proclaim is mine, has been projected upon me from their own defective selves. since i've willingly identified myself as autistic, it's been license for them to take away even more of my humanity, ignore more of my suffering, my despirate pleading... to write it off easier than ever before...
"he's just autistic, don't think much on him. he's just fucked up. it's not really important. certainly not as important as he tries to make it look."
"...not as important as he tries to make it look..." sums up the disrespect i've dealt with from almost every betraying friend, lover, family member, employer, co-worker, blog stalker... almost perfectly.
like many, this was a dream of me crying and screaming at parents, family, people... about my suffering. the topic was my home. lost home. as in several dreams, two houses that were once mine, with each being taken away by neglect and disuse. in the dream, i was verbally assaulting tony about his passive-aggressive ways in which he saw to it that i did not get, and then could not keep, my own home. jace's home.
when i woke, thinking on all my emoting in the dream... and everyone's total DISinterest... everyone's lack of responsiveness... something became painfully, miserably clear:
my environment clearly lacks empathy amongst its majority of residents. i can talk, cry and scream till i'm silenced by force or wasting away, and no one has enough empathy to be moved toward changing anything. no one has empathy, so no one thinks there's reason to act. no one acts, so there's never a change. there's never a change, so my attempts to pull reactions from the beings i live among become more dramatic and despirate.
they're incapable of feeling for others. or, at least incapable of feeling for me. they lack a theory of mind. they lack empathy enough to be moved. to be outraged. to recognize me as a suffering member of their species.
i could rewrite this to make it more clear and easier to understand, but now that i have this concept firmly in my own mind... i know there's just no point in trying to do so.
this is how it always was. this is how it always will be. every attribute they proclaim is mine, has been projected upon me from their own defective selves. since i've willingly identified myself as autistic, it's been license for them to take away even more of my humanity, ignore more of my suffering, my despirate pleading... to write it off easier than ever before...
"he's just autistic, don't think much on him. he's just fucked up. it's not really important. certainly not as important as he tries to make it look."
"...not as important as he tries to make it look..." sums up the disrespect i've dealt with from almost every betraying friend, lover, family member, employer, co-worker, blog stalker... almost perfectly.
Labels: abuse, asperger's syndrome, autism, brutality, exposure, humans, neuroracism, PTSD, racism, respect, shame, sociopathy, truth, wisdom, you have no rights
posted by dysamoria at
7:18 PM
5 Comments:
I do see people trying to be understanding and decent to you though. You've got 4 blog contributors. I've got no such thing. I looked back and there was jedimatt really trying to be nice to you, trying to empathize, reach out. That was a good guy. What happened to him anyway?
And I am. If you ever want to talk on the phone, let me know.
The reality is that the majority of people I'd guess have maybe a spouse that they're close to and that's it. Otherwise they may have friends that they do things with, but they mostly don't get too close... I don't know. I guess it varies a lot from person to person. But, just saying it's a problem of society in general.
The way things are structured stops us from empathizing, from being close to many others.
I have a tendency to focus on this aspect of life. Last week I remember Saturday night I was feeling depressed that I had spent the entire day pretty much just with my wife. And I felt like if I don't keep going after people very quickly it's like I don't even exist anymore in anyone's eyes. For all I've tried to be good, all I've thought, I might as well not even exist...
And what's silly about it in that case is I had just gone out and had a nice time with an old friend the evening before. I had forgot that that had only been yesterday, lol.
But still, the way our society is structured results in a lot of isolation.
As to the autism label: yes this will cause people to dismiss you. Labels do this. Especially when related to so called mental disorders. I'd like to think though that we all have different strengths and weaknesses and the different obstacles we overcome would hopefully help give us unique strengths that the rest of us in turn can benefit from.
That's what I'd like to think anyway.
i only have one somewhat active contributor to this blog. VictoryGrey. blogavoidant... is blog avoidant. bittergirl has her own life that consumes her time (though she wrote something for me to post a few days ago, and i asked her to sit on it a while because i thought she was too harsh on herself). Intransitivus hasn't posted anything in a while on any blog. out of over 600 posts, 600+ are me.
as for the few nice commentators... yes, there have been some. i have no idea what happened to jedimatt. maybe i was too off putting. remember those emails i still owe you a response on? i see how i can be off putting. most usually someone comes along when i've closed up my reception doors and am just sick of it all. bad timing.
i think you're right about society and people in general only having one or two people they get close to most of the time, but that's not empathy. empathy is a different thing. human beings have such trouble with it that small groups have to amass strength to get things like "handicapped access" laws put in place and the political influence to make it viewed as "wrong" or "bad" to be rude and cruel to people who are disabled. people wont do this on their own. on their own, they will take advantage, ridicule, or just marginalize/ignore. they have to be forced. that's a problem.
your description of forgetting your good evening with an old friend... that's human. you forgot it because it was unusual (as in not very often) right? also, you seem to have a similar need to me (and many people): you want to matter in the greater scheme of things. i think most people want to matter in the greater scheme of things and they either find ways to matter (like i had found, for a short time, in my job) or they reduce their expectations (as i had with that job: help people in small amounts, one at a time, instead of saving the world)... or they become utterly depressed and self hating. frankly, the fact that you have such a nice relationship with your wife... that would be enough to last out the rest of MY life... after what i've been through...
experiences adjust our needs, wants and memories. not in equal amounts. when we can't have the world, we aim lower (literally, not symbolically). when we feel like we can have NOTHING, we dispair.
note that i am in no way telling you that you should be happy enough with what you have. not at all. it's all up to you and not my right to judge what is enough for anyone. i simply mean that i admire what you DO have, especially ater what i have been through, and after learning about some of what YOU have been through.
it was a topic of conversation between VictoryGrey and i how marvelous and incredible it is that you have come out of your employment situation (the horribly ending one) as healthy and as well as you have. marvelously well, it seems.
what is too much for one person is not enough for another. the problem is in recognizing and accepting/accommodating that fact. people don't largely consider these things nor feel obliged to accommodate anyone other than themselves. it is "obligation" that makes it happen. law, social pressure, peer pressure, etc.
am i making any points of relevant topics or just rambling? i'm stuck awake again. not sure what amount of sanity i have in that. i'm ok for the moment, though.
mental disorders:
largely a false term. until the mind is fused with the brain, in medical science and healthcare, the divide will remain and will handicap healthcare.
labels:
yes.
but at the same time... we need them in order to organize our actions, don't we? "Handicapped Parking Only" for example...
Yes, practically/pragmatically speaking we need labels. But they're annoying. Even with writing, having to worry about what genre, etc. Is it literature or "just" sci-fi/fantasy? Or with music, how something should be classified. If you want to do either commercially it better fit neatly in some classification...
Empathy goes along with being close. People don't bother to attempt to empathize because they've got no reason to get close. We're just millions plopped down together living our lives in shiny metal boxes and darkened rooms in front of bad TV shows.
...I see that one friend maybe 4 times a year. I've known him since I was maybe 5 years old. I suppose in ways we're pretty close but at the same time outside of school he's never read a book in his life. He's a devout christian... there's a lot of things I just don't talk about him with. He's got a very good heart though.
I probably manage to do stuff with people other than my wife 2 or 3 times a month. In reality just with people's work schedules and stuff, such is life. And these people... none I'm very close to though. It's just dinner and relatively light talk. Trying to get back into playing tennis with one or two people.
It just falls woefully short of my idealistic and utopianistic expectations.
Life can be looked at in two ways... as a stressful thing where we just be happy with very little or while thinking about the fact we're all going to die soon and aren't really doing anything all that interesting between now and death. For shorthand I call it the chop chop versus the tick tock. I think about the tick tock a lot and it makes me want to just go do something crazy.
Until at least the middle of July not so much though as I've got a really big chop chop looming...
Really though I've got things pretty good. You mentioned issues with sex with a past gf for example. I've just taken that for granted. I actually assumed I must just be really good at sex, lol. Actually come to think of it I had some gf's in the past (thankfully not for long) who made everything so difficult, including sex, thanks to just not communicating.
It's amazing how difficult some people can make things, then with someone else things seem so easy, in terms of relationships.
You seem perfectly sane. Don't worry if you might be rambling. I don't even know.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home