chavisory's post-it notes

The worst part about enduring autism as an adult is that you fail to meet basic “social norms.” You don’t “fit in.” You never “get ahead.” Your life becomes wasteful and unproductive. You may have dreams, but you’ll never fulfill them because of the unusual, ineffable autistic reasons that “society” fails to understand. Don’t expect to get married or have children, either, because you either won’t care or you’ll never find someone who shares the affection you may have for them.

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(via aznpollypocket)

What the hell is this?  Please tell me it’s a parody.  It’s certainly not reality.

(via draggle)

…I feel sick.

(via shimmercat)

It’s nonsense.  So many people are living proof this is nonsense, myself included, regardless of looking like I was en route to this in my younger adult years.  (Those years played a crucial connecting role in what will become family legend!)  ”Wasteful and unproductive” are arbitrary words, anyway.  

(via draggle)

*****

But I’m sure that there are people out there who really feel this way about their lives.  Or who have been made to feel this way about their lives.  And that makes me sad beyond belief.

And I just want to shake them and hug them and say:

Social norms are arbitrary and meaningless.  Let go of social expectations that have nothing whatsoever to do with your value as a person.  What do you care about?  What do you love?  Follow that; it will not lead you wrong.  What are your dreams for yourself, not somebody else’s shattered dreams for you?  Because those didn’t ever have anything to do with you.  ‘Fitting in’ and ‘getting ahead,’ who the fucking hell made these the standards of a life worth living?  We were not put here to live normal lives, to take for granted all the things that other people take for granted.  We are here to have, as you put it so well, in fact, unusual, ineffable, autistic lives, and that has nothing to do with living up to arbitrary ‘social norms’ set up for us by someone else, who knows nothing about who we are and what we are.  That’s a game in which we’ve been set up to lose.  That’s not a game we can play.  Throw the ball down, turn your back, and walk away from that field.  You’ve got better things to do with your time.

Then figure out what the thing inside you is that will not let you go, even if you’ve tried.  What does it love?  What does it cherish?  What will it not give up on?  Trust it, and do not let go of that thing.  And you will not fail.

And I don’t know that if you do that, you’ll achieve any of the standard measures of standardized success that society puts into our heads.  If you’ll find a partner, get married, have children, have a job, a house, whatever, if you’ll even be happy, I can’t know.  But I do know that you will not have an unproductive, wasteful, or wasted life.

Our society raised us with a set of false maps.  It’s not our fault, and it’s not wrong to want those things, to be lonely, to be frustrated, to be sad that things don’t work the same way for us.  But they don’t.  We can have true maps now, but we have to make them for ourselves, and for each other, and not keep trying to follow the maps that were not written for us.  That’s the only thing we can really fail at.

(via draggle)

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

—Rainer Maria Rilke (via kenyatta)

(via teachingliteracy)