How I Feel

Imagine all the possibility that lays before you when you're young and how excited you are about the fact that there's all these things that you can be when you grow up. Compare this to the possibilities that are presented by the various forms of speculative fiction. You certainly get excited about the idea of being a wizard, a Jedi, a Starfleet officer, or a superhero, but that excitement is not like the excitement of possibility of having a job you love, a social life that is dynamic and enjoyable, or a spouse who is charming and loving. The difference between the two types of possibilities is obvious. With enough work and luck, you can land that dream job or find that companion, but no amount of work and luck will allow you to become a fantastical hero of any description.  Now I face a life where the ambitions of most human beings on the planet are as impossible for me as the exploits of fantastical heroes are for them. In this way, I exist as a member of society just as much as I exist as a resident of Middle Earth. Although I can perceive and enjoy human society, I can never really be a part of it beyond some superficial level. Here, I will do my best to explain my feelings about having arrived at that terminus. This will be difficult, as autistics are not terribly in tune with emotion. Bear with me.

The first thing to understand is that acceptance, both internal and external, has been the hardest part. As I wrote about in a previous article, many people have trouble accepting my unemployable nature and my inability to maintain a romantic relationship. Well, damn, don't you think I have a lot of trouble accepting it too? This is my life we're talking about here. Sure, it's nice having a disposable income that allows for diversions and being relatively young enough to live it up, but there's more to life than mindless hedonism. Money cannot buy happiness, because happiness isn't gained by the acquisition of goods and services. What it can do is buy security and the ability to enhance and maintain happiness that was there at the core from the start. Many opinions exist as to what makes for that core of happiness. My feeling is that happiness is formed by one's ability to be useful to others, especially to those about whom one cares most. Without a job or a family of my own, I have to make my own usefulness day by day and where I can get it.

A person bound to a wheelchair does not make happiness conditional upon walking again. A blind person does not make happiness conditional upon seeing again. They can't because, although medical breakthroughs might make it possible one day, the likelihood of living with their disability for the rest of their live is simply too high. So it is with my disability. I have autism and it has always been leading me to face the life of a man necessarily limited by it. Finally accepting what that would mean is one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, but reality is forced upon me so clearly that I can no longer cling to the dream of a normal life. All of my friends and family with their normal lives look beautiful to me. Exciting careers, beautiful families, and often both, color their adult lives and I am not always successful at fighting back the tears of, yes, happiness, but also envy and regret, that sometimes come when I think of them. They have grown up and are living the lives we all want for our loved ones. As much as I want to, I cannot be part of their world. So I'll stand here on life's sidelines, always ready to cheer on, raise a toast to good cheer and prosperity, and helping out however I can whenever I can. Across the spectrum of autism lie those who function better than me, about the same as me, and far worse than me. For those as badly afflicted as me or worse, we like your world and we wish from the deepest wellspring of yearning that we could be part of it, but we can't. Just try and be as happy as you can as you lead the life we cannot.

-Frank