It’s a cliché, that somebody notices an Autistic child or younger person and that’s how the parents find out it’s in the family, that one or both of them are Autistic too, that’s what happened to me, with some wrinkles, the younger person was an adult, and the family communication has not been great.
On a personal level, it answers everything, my being Autistic, or nearly everything, explains much about my life that no amount of reading and learning from the neurotypical world has been able to. Personal matters aside, the concept of neurotype answers a lot about the world too.
So I had one child that seemed like me, and they’re one of us and now I know I am, and they tell me they all are, my ex also, and I admit my ex requires some sort of explanation, and there are a lot of reasons to think they’re Autistic, in fact it’s possible that the only person on Earth who could possibly think they aren’t is me. Apparently, though, Autistics do Allistic stuff all the time as a part of their masking, so despite I may feel ostracized and hated on for my differences as though my ex and kids were neurotypical, it can always be that one’s haters are masking Autists, so who knows.
I guess it’s true that their family seemed . . . stridently white and normal, like they tried too hard, maybe. It always seemed phony and a little desperate, I suppose it could have been masking – but either way, real or feigned, it’s neurotypicality hating me either in person or by remote control. It seems a distinction without a difference from this side of the DEP.
We’ll pause here for the ‘illness,’ stuff this is supposed to be about:
But looking back on my life with this new understanding, I see now that I spent my first nearly ten years in meltdown, with the other kids pushing me over into it if I wasn’t already, but there’s more, I had my own stress driving me to meltdown, health problems and pain – that I have finally processed and verbally confirmed with a sibling to be the result of the most famous toxic drug in history, the morning sickness pill, Thalidomide.
There was a gut deformity, which they described to me back then as an “umbilical hernia,” but which was later revealed to have been extra parts. Seems the umbilicus was a live piece of bowel and was not atrophying and wouldn’t heal, didn’t stop bleeding, or presumably, hurting, and after a month of life there was an abdominal surgery. I can’t say my bowel troubles are due to the drug, or the surgery, but they exist, and I think they’re on the Thalidomide baby list of problems.
I don’t know why they didn’t tell me, why it wasn’t part of the conversation with me forever, why no-one ever said, “you know you’re a Thalidomide baby, right?” It surely wasn’t a secret during my early life when I was an always crying pain the ass, couldn’t have been. I can see why there was never an assessment or an Autism diagnosis though – they already knew what was wrong with me, I guess. Not sure about the secret, or the knowledge of it even, maybe, because we missed the class action suits. Gawd, Mom could’ve used some money, I was a full time job and I wasn’t the only kid. Well, I guess there was no money until decades later? Still, of course, still.
Plus Gawd knows I could have had my health troubles tested for and diagnosed, I bet some of it could have been more treatable. My GP watched my goiter grow and heard me complain and never guessed hyperthyroid, I didn’t learn it until he retired. If I had known I was a victim, it would have been on my “watch for,” list.
So I haven’t seen anything to suggest all Thalidomide victims share a neurotype, that there is one, I mean I don’t think either Tylenol or Thalidomide “create a neurotype,” so I’m still just Autistic in the head and a Thalidomide baby in my gut, my thyroid, and my little AA fingers. My feet are small too. I can’t say that all the appendages were affected, it’s possible that my un-poisoned destiny included a larger member, but apparently I’m within the “normal,” range, and I don’t have to tell you how well within, ha.
Generally, as it would seem with the severely affected, the effect is increased further from the core, my legs get shorter all the way down, and my torso belongs on some fellow of average height. Pure, dumb guess about how it works, just from looking at myself and knowing about the limbless folks and extrapolating – I don’t know that.
A quick investigoogling says there are no documented second generation problems for the children of the Thalidomide babies, this is good news, but I’m not sure how new or good this information is. A paper trashed “Lamarckism,” that doesn’t sound very new. Also, to my mind, the man is having his comeuppance, to say his function doesn’t exist is to say evolution doesn’t exist, basically.
He got trashed by people who had only learned of evolution yesterday, and mostly, people still aren’t really processing it today, see my last many blogs.
Never mind that for now, so far so good, my kids are probably not suffering from Thalidomide – but I’m going to keep looking, and let them know, pending new data.
There is one statistic that is interesting and problematic – they say some thirty percent! – of Thalidomide kids show up Autistic, this is bothersome, I still don’t see how poisoning causes neurotypes. I have to tell myself that the framing of neurotypes is backwards to explain it, that poisons do not create anything, but some of them perhaps damage Allism, is the proper context and the point. Hmm.
In my framing, the Thalidomide damage to my Allism . . . looks heritable, since I have Autistic kids? I mean, my father may have been, my ex may be . . . so my case can’t mean anything, but if 30% lose their Allism through Thalidomide poisoning, and that loss remains, the “Autism,” is heritable? It’s all rather complex.
Again, speculative, never mind, the community will see this as a betrayal, but that statistic isn’t mine and I did not say anything “causes Autism,” I said maybe things hurt Allism – if you have ever read me, you know I see “normal folks,” as the whole problem, and if something harms Allism – please, take it. Tylenol, not Thalidomide, Good Lord.
I mean if your Allism were all that gets harmed, of course.
Then, fill your boots, LOL. OK, fine, it’s a gonzo science blog after all, let’s do this.
Honestly – the statistic is probably garbage and those thirty percent are something, but not necessarily Autistic. I’m remembering the supposed rodent studies and Tylenol – “Autism-like symptoms,” which were simply passivity and/or stupidity, and the “appearance of Autism,” is probably meaningless. I still like my theory, but it is quite possible that this statistic regarding Thalidomide is bogus and no support for it – and the same with Tylenol, of course, those studies I’m already convinced are bogus and no support for my framing, because they are no support for anything.
I suppose all I can really say about it is that the Allists have their framing ready, Autistics are broken, so something is causing them and it should be stopped – unjustifiably, I think, at least contextual only – broken for what? Do we know the Purpose of Humanity, so that we know when it is being impeded?
I’m guessing that the Thalidomide scrutiny launched the Tylenol theory, got the idea out there about chemical cause for ‘retardation,’ which included Autism back then, but . . . hey, this was always their less conscious framing perhaps, something is hurting my Allism? (It’s the “strength,” remember, something is hurting their fighting readiness, is the point for them. It’s an existential thought.)
It’s what they are trying to say, but Allism isn’t allowed to be a thing, it’s supposed to be everybody, Human Nature, donchaknow – so now it’s the “Humans,” vs the “divergent,” which means the “pathologized,” instead of just the differences between types, something is harming “Humanity,” not just Allism. It is fantastically frustrating, attempting to speak across neurotypes, I almost understand the Allistics resorting to force about it, reason across the gulf seems impossible, but call it intuition if you must, call it prognostication – but from my side and my neurology, the opposite framing is more intuitive, that Allistics are problematic, so something is causing them and it should be stopped. I mean, functional for what? Do we know the Purpose of Humanity, so that we know how to achieve it?
Just saying, it seems like the Allists think the purpose is fighting, and they think that this is what “Humans,” think, not just Allists, that is to say, they don’t think they think it, they just think it’s the way it is. This is why that no matter what happens, it all seems beyond their ability to stop it, it’s not their mindset, something that could change, it’s “the way it is,” something that cannot. Hmm. Seems like a bit of detail I usually fail to find, that. It’s OK, isn’t it?
IF – only if, I am not convinced it’s even possible let alone has ever occurred, but IF – if you could take a child with no family history of anything but Allism and poison them in vitro in such a way as to produce an Autistic child – do we really claim this level of science, that we have “created,” an Autistic mind? Or would it be a million times more likely that your poison simply derailed the creation of an Allistic one, leaving behind an evolved and pre-existing OG neurotype? Do we think our crude poisons can create entire neurologies, or do we think those already existed and the poison killed something else, as poisons do?
Ha, what this sounds like, where this bit goes – that we think sometimes we can accidentally poison the brain slug that drives us to conflict and war, the warrior neurology as a brain parasite. Again, not saying this has ever happened that we “made” anybody Autistic. I’m only saying if we ever did, I couldn’t assume we broke that person, it would make more sense to me that broke the Allistic process only, and that the Autistic that results is an intact, pre-existing form that is a complete human being.
Again, if and only if any of the statistics regarding higher incidence rates of “Autism,” due to drugs are real and true does any of this logic matter – and even then it only matters to me inasmuch as it makes the case for Allism as a neurotype and a problem and not as the Gold Standard of Humanity.
I do think something created all of the neurologies, of course, but also of course I don’t think it is something as simple a s a poison that creates Allism, it is a very complex combination of things including all the complexity of biological evolution and much human behaviour besides, complete with biological deceptions – but a poison is defined as a simple answer for the complexities of life, isn’t it. It can probably work this way around, some poison or other can probably destroy particular neurologies, why not? At least it looks that way to my neurology.
I’m starting to think it sounds like “Awakenings,” like when I shone briefly in school and eventually fledged, that must have looked like a damned miracle. And I don’t remember those early tough years very well, like it happened to someone else. I think Autistic meltdown maybe explains that memory loss? What happens in trauma stays n trauma or something. My whole unhatched life I worried it was trauma I was blocking out, but there has been damned little corroboration about any trauma that the Allistic world would recognize, it’s all been fog of war stuff, sort of unknowable, the rumour of trauma only. Overload and meltdown makes far better sense.
The memories haven’t suddenly appeared, but at least that empty space has some context now.
This, as usual, is not going according to plan and where I wanted to go next is not where this leads, so I’m going to stop here and sit with this for a bit and post this in the science blog, worry about the personal stuff another day.
Good luck out there.
Jeff Nov. 9th., 2023
Abuse with an Excuse 