Do you ever get lost in your thoughts? I do. I explained to a friend of mine once that I tend to live in my own mind and she agreed wholeheartedly. Whenever I come to an relevant moment, I attempt to perceive the path to the best outcome and end up going through scenario after scenario until the moment is long gone and my response ends up being unresponsiveness. That’s rarely the end of it though. After that, I often just sit and think about how the outcome would have changed if I said this or that. Sometimes it keeps me up at night.

In the midst of writing this I got sidetracked thinking of a joke I want to tell and I started rehearsing the scenario in my mind over and over. That’s something else I do. I want to be prepared if certain situations arise but my projections are rarely consistant with real life. Last night I wanted to make a blog post but I was thinking of all these things I wanted to say to this person that I didn’t get a chance to say that day. Sometimes I got interrupted or the topic came up when I was unprepared or the moment just wasn’t “right” to deliver my lines. As a result I was drowning myself in scenarios until I couldn’t focus on anything else. Needless to say I didn’t sleep well.

I thank God every day that my parents never had me tested for this or that disorder because I guarantee I would have failed. I don’t want to be labeled as a malfunction. My interests have led me to become friends with many people who were labeled like that, creative people who’s only crime was having an abundance of imagination. I had a friend who was put on medication because he was just too free-spirited to be from his parent’s venerable bloodline. I always resented those people for doing that to him. Another friend of mine, let’s call her Susan, was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and she makes it a point to learn about her symptoms. She likes to discuss it with me and tells me all these behaviors that confirm her diagnosis. Just as an example, she said she’s very sensitive to tactile stimulation, she just can’t get to sleep if she has kitty litter in her bed and I’m like, who could? Or that she has very high pain tolerance and that people like her either have very high or very low tolerance, that sounds so subjective to me.

These are just the opinions of someone who could easily be diagnosed with autism growing up among people that were. I grew a deep resentment of that label because of the time I spent with them. They were Susan and Randall and Jeff, to me they were themselves; nothing more, nothing less. I hated when people looked down on them and handled them like porcelain, pretending to be their friends because they were these poor pitiable kids. I think the problem isn’t that all these kids are sick, just that they’re individuals being held down by this whimsical idea of “normal.” No one seems willing to meet these kids on their terms and teach them to channel their unique view of the world into something incredible. One of Susan’s greatest heroes is Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of the worldwide phenomenon: Pokemon. He’s a prime example of someone who was able to take his perceived disability and turn it into the strength that it is.

At this point I feel like I could really start rambling at any second so I’ll close with this: Do I think there’s no such thing as learning disabilities? No, of course not. There are kids out there with problems that need all the care they can get. I just think the autism diagnosis has become overused and I worry that putting that kind of label on a child does more harm to their mind and sociability than good. They are themselves, we are all ourselves and that’s all we can ever be. God Bless.