Life through My Eyes
Introduction
I live in your world, not by choice nor to any real benefit on my part. I've always been here, but I will never understand it. Your world is an utter mystery that slowly unfolds around me. The closest I can get to anywhere that makes some sense is within my own mind. And even there I don't excel.
Twice now my mind has so spectacularly failed me and nobody has any answers or ideas. I need my mind back while there's still something left of me to save. I don't know how much longer I can fight and continually lose. Everything seems pointless and utterly absurd.
I don't expect you to understand. How could you? You are of this world and all of your being is perfectly attuned to this place. To you walking, talking, thinking all occur without any effort or exertion from within. You understand others and they understand you without any confusion or misinterpretation. You walk naturally without a second thought. Your mind applies all the knowledge that you have acquired in this life with only slight effort.
Do you dare to explore my world? Or do you assume that I am lying to you about everything? It's fine. Many people assume. Many people pick up on the subtle cues just how different I am and do their best to exploit me in one form or another. A few people have been caring, especially when they realized a certain diagnosis was evident in me, but they didn't bother to share their observations with me. Not sure why they simply assumed that I already knew about it.
I ask you again: do you dare to explore my world? It's a different place than where you live. It operates on a different set of rules. The path between two points isn't always straightforward as you are used to. Sometimes chasms exist with no solution to connect these seemingly nearby points. It will probably confound you.
Do you dare to open your mind up to an experience so vastly different from your own? To a place that doesn't always translate to the world as you experience it? To an experience that you cannot fully grasp in your lifetime as there are no corollaries for you to compare things to. And analogies don't quite span the chasms in understanding.
If you insist that everyone is the same, If you insist that everyone with this condition experiences that, If you will not give me the benefit of the doubt, then please stop reading now and get everyone to hate me. That's most of my life experience. Why should I expect you to be different? My experiences are different from what most people go through. My experiences are different than others’ experiences whom I have communicated with that have similar diagnoses. And it's not just a couple tiny differences. Even among people that are supposed to be similar to me, I am an outcast among them as well.
Do you dare to explore a different world within the one you live in? Do you dare to look through my eyes, to hear through my ears, to touch through my hands, to smell through my nose, to taste through my tongue, to become baffled at things that you take for granted even at a very young age, to experience things so differently that you wonder how we can both be from the same species? Are you brave enough to enter?