So this is a follow up blogpost to my previous post “What If An Autistic Person Wants A Cure.”
In it I talked about how for some autistic people, they may feel that their autism causes only disadvantages, and no advantages, so they may wish that there was a way for them to not be autistic anymore. But I’m going to talk about something that may be hard to understand at first. That is, if it could be conclusively demonstrated that my autism had only disadvantages, and not a single advantage, I still wouldn’t want a cure.
Maybe I can use drumming as an analogy. I really enjoy playing the drums, but my drum ability is not where I would like it to be. Most of the drums on my recordings I can’t play live, because my arms and legs get so tired that I have to record the drum part piece by piece. I often have to strategize on how I’ll play a drum part that will come to another drummer with great ease. In other words, I’m not this guy:
That’s Neil Peart from Rush, my absolute favourite drummer ever. (Sadly he died in 2020. 2020 has the distinction of being one of the worst years ever without even including the pandemic!) If I could master just one of the the things he does here, I would be extremely happy. His snare work is absolutely amazing, I’m currently working on a recording where the snare is a million times simpler than this, and it’s still too complicated for me. Even the act of moving between two drums that are far away from each other without missing a beat is amazing. And on top of all that he’s amazing at double kick pedalling, in my opinion one of the hardest things in drumming! I’ll stop there, because I could go on and on and on, about how the simplest thing he does here is completely beyond my ability. So it’s a simple matter then, if a magical potion was created that gave me the same drum ability as Neil Peart, I would surely drink the potion?
No.
“What do you mean no, have you lost your mind?!” Alright calm down extremely angry person, and also I’m alarmed that you somehow have the ability to contribute to this blogpost, but that’s my answer. If there was a potion I could drink that would give me Neil Peart’s drumming ability, I would not drink it. But why? Because Neil Peart was a brilliant drummer, because he was Neil Peart, and I have my abilities and lack there of, because I am who I am. This isn’t to say I can’t practice and get better at the drums, but if I was to magically gain Neil Peart’s drumming ability, I would no longer be me.
His drumming ability is because of the life he lived, and the way his brain was wired. What else is a person other than the way their brain is wired and the life they have lived? His drumming is a result of his unique personality, so in order to have his drumming ability, I would have to be an exact clone of Neil Peart. So to becoming as good as Neil, it would essentially be the erasure of my personality.
You could even say this if you were to somehow argue, “What if you were as technically proficient as Neil Peart but your drumming still reflected your own personality?” I’m not sure what this would even look like, but to have that kind of ability we are talking about practicing for hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, well you get the point. I love music, but I’m not willing to practice even six hours a day. If my personality is changed so radically that I’m willing and able to practice six hours a day, I have already changed so drastically that I’m basically not me anymore.
So you could say I am disadvantaged when it comes to drums. I won’t get into whether my for want of a better word, creative drumming ability is at a disadvantage, because that’s very, very subjective. But it’s probably fair to say that my technical drumming ability is all disadvantage, with no advantage. And I wouldn’t change it. Give me a potion that gives me the ability of Neil Peart, or Matt Cameron, or Dave Growl, and I’ll have to say no. I am who I am, and they are who they are, and that’s perfectly fine.
So the same goes for my autism. If you could conclusively prove that my autism is 100% disadvantage, 0% advantage, I would still say no. Because of my need for sameness (and even this we can debate whether it’s autism or some other issue), I’ll never be able to spend significant time exploring Iceland like I really want to. But if I was cured of my autism, the stranger who would then take my place might not even be interested in exploring Iceland, so what would have been gained? So there is no, “if only I wasn’t autistic I could do this, that, or the other thing.” No, as soon as I’m not autistic, a completely different person has taken my place.
Before I didn’t like this scene from Doctor Who because it’s depiction of regeneration contradicted previous depictions of it. (I wholeheartedly apologize to the autistic community for being a walking stereotype.):
In this scene, the Doctor and Wilfred Mott (incidentally, RIP Bernard Cribbins, friggin’ legend!) are discussing what it is like to regenerate. The Doctor says, “Everything I am dies, some new man goes sauntering away.” I love the scene now, because it perfectly illustrates what a “cure” for autism would mean for me. I don’t care if neurotypical Colm is the best drummer, singer, bassist and guitarist in the world. I don’t care if neurotypical Colm can travel the world without crippling travel anxiety. I don’t care if neurotypical Colm has a list of accomplishments to his name that would make anyone envious. Because there is only autistic Colm, neurotypical Colm is just a stranger who looks like me, and that is all there is to it.
Ponderings Of An Autist 