... continued...
Dear Sister,
You know I am as great an antagonist of patchwork pharmaceuticals as you are. My reasons probably differ from yours. Mine are full of zeal to heal this world spiritually, yours are teeming with fear of the unknown. Naturally, we both shudder equally at the invariably never-ending knock-on side-effects, and the road of no (easy) return if you ever decide to come back off them.
In addition, I deplore the lacking sense of responsibility in your psychiatrist. It devestated me to discover that your psychiatrist not only let you decide whether or not to go on medication after but a few sessions, but also left it up to you to choose which of the three might suit you best! Her list and information was barely helpful (terribly incomplete and sponsored). Firstly, it was a grave error to mail me by mistake with this confidential information (but I guess your guiding spirits made her, because I gave her an earful on your behalf). Secondly, how come she doesn’t know it is practically cruel to leave someone with autism, who, as we all know, is quickly swamped by options, up to their own devices.
If autism were simply considered autism (like third and first trimesters of pregnancy are equally if differently about being pregnant) then I think we could begin to consider your type of autism not only as serious and a real handicap but also come to the point when we recognise high-functioning autism is the most serious type, precisely for being the most invisible, stealthy and the most soul destroying for those around the one directly affected. The bale of that confounded high IQ score that mitigates the autism by social standards will be the undoing of us all, yet!
I can imagine how it went, though, with your health professionals. You reached out expecting the worst, felt you got the worst and declared yourself worse off. You spread your own bed by upholding your snarling and snippy attitude. Then again, aren’t such folk trained to penetrate through that? Then again, we live in a very free country: what could any of them possibly do to you as long as you declared yourself sane and mentally responsible. They had to let you go as a morose eccentric, back to normal, full of resentment that nobody can help you.
You say people appreciate your upfrontness but I think you scare the bejesus out of anyone who is not a blockhead. People tend to say nice things out of fear, you know, sometimes emphatically, just to cover themselves in case their truth should unexpectedly slip out in the heat of the moment. But what a contradiction. To hear you say how you consider you honesty valued blew me down, for you mainly believe everybody laughs at you or is offended by you. What are you really trying to say. Possibly, that I am not as honest as I make myself out to be. Kapow! Another blow to me. Truth and honesty is my life-theme. Is there anything left of me? I crumbled after our meeting into a heap of sand. But like a Little Prince I arose back from it. Who are you to understand anything about me. So be it, that I am the most misunderstood of us all in this family. I’m not an adolescent, so I can handle that.
. . . to be continued . . .