Letter #2: The Absurd - A little piece of hell, just for you.

Younger me, unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do to help you avoid what’s coming.

But at least I can give you an explanation of why you’re in what seems like hell on earth.

I know I would have liked to know the reasons.

It would be better if you were dead... Something autistic people hear more often than you think.

Throughout your life, many people have told you and will tell you, in one way or another, that you’d be better off dead. Enough times to have lost count.

You should kill yourself for everyone’s sake (including yours). That’s the general message.

At some point, you even received instructions on how to properly tie a noose to hang yourself. Of course, you never asked for that information. But you got it anyway.

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem: suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy." ~ Albert Camus

Here are some statistics:

• 2 out of 3 autistic adults think about suicide.
• 1 out of 3 autistic adults attempt suicide.
• Autistic people are 1~2% of the world population, but 11% of all suicides are autistic people.
• Autistic children are 28 times more likely to attempt or commit suicide than neurotypical children.
• In the 86 days before the first covid lockdown and up to 56 days after, 25% of young people who died by suicide were autistic or had ADHD.

These numbers are from a study by Autistica in the UK. But you’ve seen studies with even more worrying numbers elsewhere.

Suicide is, in fact, more common among us than you think. Go to any online autistic community and look at the group guidelines. I bet the $7 I have in my wallet that in the list you’ll find: "Help prevent suicide".

"It would have been better if you hadn’t been born."
~ Some kid in kindergarten when you were about 4 years old.

"I look forward to the day you die and don’t come to school anymore."
~ A. S., classmate in elementary and high school.

Instructions for tying a hanging noose.
~ An anonymous message on a folded sheet in your notebook.

Hate messages and death threats.
~ Too many to count. From elementary school to the present.

Honestly, I’m tired of having to list all the times you were told you should be dead. But the message is clear.

This idea and its many variants are not new. If anything, they’re quite old-fashioned. Straight out of the Nazi neighborhood. Good old Adolf (or someone among his ranks) noticed the traits of autistic people. In the midst of a war, I imagine that the poor social skills of these people were more easily perceived as a sign of weakness, of something undesirable. Even more so with those extremist ideals of a pure race.

Presenting: The Aktion T4 program. A (not so) new initiative in the early 1900s to apply euthanasia or forced sterilization to groups of undesirable people, including autistic people. Thousands of children and adults were sterilized or killed under the pretext of "Mercy". Just for being different.

Let’s go a little further back in time, to the Spanish Inquisition of the 15th century. An organization established to free humanity from heretics and non-believers. Burning witches and torturing the possessed.

Now, let’s think about some autistic traits:

• Social awkwardness,
• Impaired communication,
• Tendency to talk to oneself (as practice for possible social interactions),
• Eccentric interests pursued obsessively,
• Sensory sensitivities, with a tendency to suffer from overstimulation and have mental meltdowns,
• Repetitive behaviors and movements,
• Tendency to get too angry if "something" is out of place where it should be,
• Extreme difficulty with eye contact...

It seems to me that’s more than enough to confuse autistic people with witches and the possessed.

History shows the world has not been kind to us.

Now, you might think I’m exaggerating. Surely autistic traits aren’t so bad that people think you’re crazy.

Please, take a moment to think of someone crazy: On the street, making a scene and running away from a loud sound as if the sound physically hurt them. Think about the reaction of the people around. Think about the last time you heard someone speak highly of a crazy person. Think about the last time you knew someone was happy to have to deal with a crazy individual. Think for a second about how society treats crazy people. And finally, think about this question: Where does society put crazy people?

Away from them, where they can’t see them.

A crazy person, or in other (more appropriate) words, a person with schizophrenia.

Nowadays, we have the term Autism Spectrum Disorder to describe us. Before, we had the term Asperger’s Syndrome. But, before that?

Childhood schizophrenia. Early schizophrenia, for adults.

Records of autistic people living and dying in psychiatric institutions for schizophrenia are not hard to find.

For a long time, psychiatrists misdiagnosed autism as schizophrenia. It turns out there’s a lot of overlap in the "externally observed behaviors" between autism and schizophrenia. Recognizing and differentiating between the two requires training and specific knowledge on the subject.

You yourself had a lot of visits to the child psychiatrist. And you were never diagnosed with autism during your childhood, only ADHD.

And here’s the slight problem for us: most people (children or adults) don’t have this training or knowledge. So, naturally, most people decide you’re crazy. You’re not. But that doesn’t matter. They’ve decided for you that you are. And therefore, you shouldn’t be near them.

Times change but, unfortunately, our predisposition to abuse does not.

Over time, you’ll slowly learn to kill your true self and lie to yourself and everyone else about who you are. Then, they’ll stop labeling you as crazy. That will be the price to pay for "having the right" not to be alone. Not to be humiliated. Not to be abused. Not to suffer.

I remember that happiness of having done it "right". Of having acted like someone "normal". Of not ending up in the same situations of constant abuse and humiliation.

Now, the memory of that "happiness" only makes me feel the deepest indignation. It’s confirmation that your true self, the one without a mask, is someone who will be marginalized, abused, and humiliated.

Despite everything, things are better than before. People no longer kill us out of mercy, now, they just suggest we do it ourselves. In general, the autistic population is marginalized, humiliated, abused, misunderstood, and, if those statistics mean anything, driven to suicide by society. You know this very well from a young age.

You live in a place made for everyone but you, with rules designed to make you fail. Where everyone around you has the advantage over you.

However, during World War II, a certain doctor named Hans Asperger thought differently. He saw something in the autistic children he studied that was different from inability to live. He tried to understand the autistic mind. He was fascinated by it.

Despite the accusations and controversies surrounding his participation in the Nazi regime. After reading his extensive research on autistic children, I’ve come to the conclusion that he truly cared about the children he studied. He cared about autistic people. He did the best he could to help us, given his circumstances. He was a good person for us. (For anyone else reading this, feel free to reach your own conclusion on this matter).

His work laid the foundation for autism research. Although it was mostly ignored until the late 20th century.

I want you to know this, younger me. Even in those days there was someone who cared about us.

In the present, that’s still true.

And fortunately, both for you and for me, back then and even now, there are people who care about us. Not many people, but more than enough for you.

Even if we’re in hell, you won’t end up alone.

Let that be a light of hope for you.