[diversity-talk] Excuse me, but this is so not okay

[Betsy Kolmus]

Hi all -

This is Betsy Kolmus, I'm an autism acceptance advocate and I have an
Aspergers diagnosis. I heard that there's been some discussion on this list
about traumatic brain injuries and autism, so I came over to see what was
going on.

Alyssa, I am so sorry to hear of your injury, and I hope that you recover
soon. I'm sure it hasn't been easy for you to cope with what's happened. If
you would like, I can try to help you get in touch with people who can
provide you with additional resources and support while you adjust to your
new daily reality.

That being said.

Saying that sustaining a brain injury is anything like living your entire
life from birth as an Autistic is flagrant, outrageous, trivializing
appropriation. I personally had the added pleasure of being undiagnosed for
the first 28 years of my life - fired from every job for not being able to
pick up on and play along with the unstated social rules in the office,
ostracized from every group of friends I could ever manage to overcome my
social anxiety and introversion and reach out to, mocked and tormented by
people who can't tolerate difference, struggling with anxiety, depression,
self-injurious behaviors, intrusive suicidal thoughts, echolalia,
compulsions, painful sensory processing issues...

Do you have any idea what it's like to have every single person in your
life tell you that you're brilliant, that you have incredible talents,
amazing potential, only to have that potential and that lively creativity
slowly beaten out of you by a series of fuckups that you can't understand
why you made?

Do you have any idea what it's like to be incredibly raw to sound and smell
and touch and emotion and forced, again and again, for years, to immerse
yourself in the pain because you need to "toughen up"? Do you have any idea
what it's like to not be able to feel your own body anymore because you've
become so withdrawn into your imagination that you're hardly there anymore?
Do you have any idea what it's like to come out of that concrete shell and
realize that there's a whole world out there, human connections, worthwhile
work, that you've been missing out on for decades?

So.

Stop equating a brain injury sustained in adulthood with the experience of
living your ENTIRE LIFE in a world that wasn't made for you.
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