The world runs on forgiveness.

We just have trouble framing it that way, because we don't enter the day with the intent to do harm or the intent to feel harm. We enter the day with intent to do good and reach for goodness.

We build ourselves up strong to support each other. Even forgiveness, when improperly timed, could be detrimental.

We're taught powerful concepts in our schooling, but what's missing is the ability to determine and become more comfortable with the unknown of how we feel about things. Being my version of autistic, I am marginally classified as disabled, but I'm also seen as a privileged individual because of my skin color. Having the ability to prevent myself from being scared, is probably one of the more critical aspects to how I live every day. I'm constantly pushed out of my comfort zone. Unable to stop, not because I can't or don't want to. Because the momentum of living at the apex of what we encounter as your peak existence as a species requires us to keep moving forward.

The only thing missing to include autistics like me, are words to help up strong with our nuerotypical peers who want, but don't know how to support us.

I long for the days were I can properly show remorse for the trials I've had to endure from the impossible expectations projected upon me by my nuerotypical peers. I do see they struggle too, but they struggle differently than I, than us.

I have determined that for mental health to be properly addressed, we need to be coached and lead by those of us that align to our nuerotypes. Autistic leader to autistic leader and nuerotypical leader to nuerotypical leader.

Our language has evolved to include minorities and subjugated communities, but it hasn't yet been adapted to our unique nuerodivergent types.

For example, someone who is a fantastic boss might regard me as a lost cause because I understand him. However, because he is far removed from my day to day. I cannot adequately validate his emotional state as an employee, as a leader, a mentor.

Instead, time and time again, I have gotten used to bosses who have paid no attention to me and I've developed the ability to govern myself and create value. However, because this fantastic boss thinks and speaks in neurocolonialisms, I cannot connect with him. As his attempts to connect with me are, at least by me, interpreted as sincerity, but also contain an element of passive aggressive communication.

Be more like me, or I'll drop you.

To which my response is, unapologetically autistic.

Regardless of how I presented myself over the past 10 years, people have constantly put me down every time I tried to take a step up. Reminding me of how I don't fit into their world view and not showing a capacity that their world view is capable to expand.

It turns out that when people were putting me down, they were attempting to optimize my approach. They identified that I was struggling, at least to them, and due to my non-verbalism, I didn't have adequate communication skills to accept genuinely helpful commentary.

You see, my non-verbalism was caused by a negative feedback loop from my childhood. I would say something, and a response returned was generally uncomfortable. My mind became used to those feedback patterns and I felt as if I couldn't break out of them.

An internal dialogue emerged, "look for patterns." Pretty vague for one of my thought patterns. In retrospect, this might have been something someone said to me and I had completely forgotten. As I read more, I realized that it was probably derived from how Sigmund Freud attempted to describe psychical processes in ones mind. Me being a software engineer, I adhered to a series of while loops as a valid abstraction for a number of years.

The reality is, thought is, well. Indefinable. Only when you make conscious effort to access thought, can you make something distinctly understandable of it.

This is what separates autistic from nuerotypical types. The way we transform thought into conscious-abstraction is distinctly different. The way we collect information is also different.

Naturally, this would marginalize me, because my autistic peers were not part of the same double blind study I was and couldn't benefit from it like I had. This naturally separated me from my brothers and sisters of the autistic community and thrust me into a nuerotypical-dominated playhouse.

It wasn't fun.

I was either left entirely alone or bullied into panic attacks. Either way, self imposed isolation was the only recourse I would have for decades.

The the group of behavior scientists which decided to enlighten my family with their findings, published in peer reviewed in academia, inadvertently created an adversarial environment for my mother to exist within. Not only in our local community, but also in our church community, elementary and middle school community, and even within our extended family. In every environment my mother existed within, she had trouble finding allies to validate, empower, understand, nor even be nice to her.

She too is autistic, and dreadfully unaware of it. Also part of the boomer generation, which had a different vernacular. Millennials would be the first generation to openly highlight, be shamed into, and combat the pitfalls of nuerocolonialism.

The stories my siblings told me over the years about each one of the communities we belonged to would turn on our mother, our family. My mother would be forced to live her life, desperate to make it to the next day, because the only person she could rely on would be her own mother who was also uncertain about her own daughter's capability as a mother, or her husband who had his own issues with parental abuse.

Not exactly a warm environment, for any of us.

Still, my mother prevailed. Like many others marginalized by a community, regardless of the demographic. She found herself interested in Energy Work. Her first endeavor was to study Reiki, and how that went for her, you'll have to ask her. What I noticed, was that my father was skeptical, but he didn't say anything to negate it. I later concluded that he might have accepted it because he didn't know much about it. At least, not enough to determine if it was beneficial or not. By this point, she was already a licensed message therapist and had a steady source of clients. She quickly moved on from Reiki, into Arch, and eventually Bowen. The people she would practice one would be family members and friends willing to volunteer for a free session.

The benefits were immediately noticeable. Every person who engaged with her as a recipient of her healing practice would come out of it with something that could only be described as a placebo effect. It would last for days, sometimes weeks, or months. Some people walked away with a better ability to walk or play with their kids while others would report a reduction in chronic pain.

For me, my mother immediately noticed that my general anxiety level dropped to nothing. At the time, I was a non-verbal, so I heard the words, but I didn't know which emotion anxiety was. All I felt was calm, which was a relief. She would then go in to perform Bowen Protocols on me for years.

My school work improved and my ability to focus came back. Around the time I was learning how to play soccer, and even I noticed I played better. I wanted to play more competitively, but well. Circumstances.

Over the years, my mother had built a support structure for her and her family in the most unlikely of places. The alternative healing community, a local community that prefers to remain hidden because to much attention would change the way they are able to do their work.

From within the communities we were ostracized from, she had two friends that were able to transcend the negative commentary and she was able to develop deep an fulfilling friendships that even her children would benefit from.

Not me.

As I start practicing Energy Work on my own, I quickly came up against a limiting factor. People just don't accept it, and are skeptical. Therefore having a conversation about it, an unproven pseudo science, would be futile and peg me as someone who doesn't know what their talking about. For the following two reasons, first, I never received official training. I only know what I felt and and I practiced while in isolation. Secondly, my life is harder than any one alternative healer would be able to tolerate.

I was shoved into a nuerotypical playhouse against my knowledge and will. I turned to my alternative healing foundation as a sense of self preservation. The last resort I had, before seriously contemplating suicide.

The ramifications of suicide would have been gargantuan because of the life I was forced into. These nuerotypicals were trying to interpret my behavior, randomly at best, and try to provide me with the best kind of future. Themselves, feeling indebted to me, for such a devastating mistake early on in my childhood. They would constantly get involved and make alterations to my life. Often when I would just become comfortable or appropriately acclimate to a new environment.

The moment I felt safe. Things would change, again, again, again, and again. This would go on for decades.

The emergence of my emotions within a community would always be the deciding factor. As community after community tried to get along with me, they'd be coached into accepting me. Eventually, like any human, I would start letting out what I felt. Sometimes as empathy or resentment. Of the sort, can be interpreted in multiple ways depending on the polarity of the relationship that knocked my feels.

Contentment, happiness, sorrow, sadness, hope, pride, fear, anger, amusement, disgust.

Sometimes they'd trigger me intentionally.

In a natural environment, where I would attach to my peers in a healthy manor. I would be able to safely examine these feelings from beginning to end. However, because of the artificial apparatus, the moment I would exhibit an emotion. I would be moved to another person or to another group, sometimes as soon as the next day.

This is how my non-verbalism became ADHD.

Yellow cake was a stupid fucking test. In that same test. I also noticed that the scientists attempted to empower me. As much as it hurt me, at that time, to be cut away from people I grow immensely fond of. I decided to focus on the silver lining, that there was someone looking out for me.

That was the canary in the coal mine that made this all possible. That made it possible for me to feel comfortable to get to this stage, to tell you what it's like, for someone like me, someone like us(yet to be defined).

Having a sense of comfort is critical.

A valid question would be, why would I wait for so long to start talking about this?

The answer is two fold. First, I had to be certain that my empirical observations lined up with reality. The second reason is, if I started highlighting these faults, before having the scientists feel assured, that we're on the right path. Nothing of what I would say here, would hold any merit because I would be just be another person complaining about a machine I didn't understand.

I chose to collaborate rather than openly criticize, because together we'll be able to figure this out, but separated, it would be hard to replicate a result, such as mine. All be it a very painful experience; my hope is that the pain isn't as bad for the next person because my feedback will help improve it for others caught up in a similar nuerotypical playhouse, like I was.

Regardless of good intentions, the challenge you gave me was still within my grasp to come back from. The problem was, that I had already attempted to do this several times before and was cut down. The only thing that's changed, is that I allowed you to cut me down, so I can tell you that it hurts.

Now we have a foundation. Let's build.

The scientists just didn't know it was hurting me until after they saw the result of it sometimes. They even started to justify and rationalize the results, in an attempt to, I guessing here, make themselves feel better. After all, so far removed, how can they really know how I really felt if all my relationships they've engineered were imperfect for me? It's not okay, but it'll be okay. I can forgive them for these mistakes.

Psychology is an active science that requires constant refinement. The landscape is largely dominated by nuerocolonialism because that is the paradigm it requires. Good vs bad, based on a humans perspective, is open to fallibility while an omnipotent entity, we would have to waste our time questioning fallibility.

I've learned from software engineering that at some point in time, we have to ship a feature even if we don't think it's ready. The same is true for psychology, when a theory is complete enough, it must be tested and the only way to test psychology is to disperse peer reviewed content into the mainstream and see how the mainstream reacts.

This is why Autism Speaks is bottom of the barrel, but at the same time, remains strong a strong influence. It made a mistake, but because we argued with that mistake, we now know not to make that same mistake again.

We learn from our mistakes, or we're doomed to repeat our mistakes. Autism Speaks, SAGE, and other journals are learning from their mistakes. Maybe slower than we'd like, but they're making the effort. I applaud their effort.

Hate to say it, but the narrative they put fourth is very constructive. However, also very demeaning. ABA is a hit or miss therapy, as the method is cold and devoid of emotions. So when I say, if our children are going to be inundated with academic expectations, enforced by the parents. Figure out a way for the parents to do it right, with warmer emotions. Don't just share the information and try to clean up your mess a decade or two later.

Three fucking decades of my god damn life; and all I was, was an autistic child.

I forgive you.

If you've a struggling autistic individual, I recommend reaching out to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network.