April 2nd
World Autism Awareness/Acceptance Day
Coincidentally, it is this time of the year in 2022 that I learned about my neurodivergence and got my official diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, a year later in 2023. Although this knowledge had led me to cultivate immense self-compassion and grace, the journey towards it, for lack of better words, was brutal. I had gone through phases where I was called “high functioning” by some, brainwashed into “autism” by others, or ignored as it would cause great inconvenience to them and many other things as well. By the end of it all, what remains is a weak body and mind, the ones that helped me to power through life with constant adversities as friends, the ones that cried out for help, in vain, for years before the final collapse. I was not planning on posting anything. Then got reminded of these broken words I scribbled towards the end of 2023. I am gently putting it out here and wishing that nobody else had to go through this.
Typical firstborn weakling,
First line of my psychiatric case history!
For someone who has been called strong throughout life, this was an insult!
It shattered me and I wanted to become one with the earth.
When you grow up on your own,
Without any sort of nurturing,
And you only have yourself to rely on,
You end up believing you are strong and you don’t need anyone.
Even those in your life see you like that.
Little did we know that it’s the connectedness that matters
And in the world of psychiatry, you are pathologized for your differences
They don’t see your life as an act of survival
They only want to put a label on you and your personality
A lifetime of barely making it to the next day,
Taking responsibility for adults who could have done better,
Never having dreams or ambitions, survival is more than one can manage
You hang on by a delicate thread which could be broken any day
Indeed, it’s a curse no one has to go through.
A weakling, nonetheless!
So the next time the psychiatrist passed the case history to me carelessly,
I simply carried it, not even taking a peek!
It didn’t matter to me what they thought.
They barely see me as a human
They don’t care if I am dead or alive
They care only about writing a prescription
By half-listening to my half-remembered, unprocessed emotions
What a strange place to heal oneself??
