It made me think for the first time in my life about suicide, in Minecraft (of course). I was 9 or maybe 10 years old, I was in fifth grade, and even by this point, I had already had many revelations of how I was broken, or defective, compared to my peers. But then when I was in fifth grade, I got my formal diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome. Just from the name alone, and the idea that I was afflicted with something with such a ridiculous name, filled me with despair, and I knew it was over.
But it was in this moment that I first understood, exactly, how my peers saw me: they saw me as a genetic freak. A walking accident. A diseased orphan wandering through their midst, begging for crumbs. I can't describe how that made me feel. It was a complicated feeling, like a confirmation of me being a disease, a tidal wave of despair as I realize my defect has caused me to be a social outcast, forever surrendered to purgatory for the crime of being different. And then there was the existential threat: the idea that my mind was different from everyone else's, and that was bad, but in what way? I never could say. But it haunted me, and made my skin crawl, to think about how my brain is defective and making me defective in ways that I cannot even know. You don't know the kind of existential horror and dread that realization brings on unless you, too, have received a formal diagnosis of asperger's. SyndromeMy mind went racing to piece the clues the together, to figure out why I was broken, and what made me different.
Actually, I think that was the start of me trying to learn more about my illness and use that knowledge to try to normalize myself, and make myself accepted among my peers. But that's a whole other life story, not meant for this thread.
But it was in this moment that I first understood, exactly, how my peers saw me: they saw me as a genetic freak. A walking accident. A diseased orphan wandering through their midst, begging for crumbs. I can't describe how that made me feel. It was a complicated feeling, like a confirmation of me being a disease, a tidal wave of despair as I realize my defect has caused me to be a social outcast, forever surrendered to purgatory for the crime of being different. And then there was the existential threat: the idea that my mind was different from everyone else's, and that was bad, but in what way? I never could say. But it haunted me, and made my skin crawl, to think about how my brain is defective and making me defective in ways that I cannot even know. You don't know the kind of existential horror and dread that realization brings on unless you, too, have received a formal diagnosis of asperger's. SyndromeMy mind went racing to piece the clues the together, to figure out why I was broken, and what made me different.
Actually, I think that was the start of me trying to learn more about my illness and use that knowledge to try to normalize myself, and make myself accepted among my peers. But that's a whole other life story, not meant for this thread.
