Yanno -

[kyburg]

There is a couple of things I won't do to myself. One, which I hadn't even thought about it, was referring to myself as a diagnosis. "I'm this, I'm that, I have blah, I'm - whatever."

I refer to myself in the "label" terms only when it's shorthand for when I have to explain How I Know What I Know in a hurry.

I'm a nurse's daughter, a diabetic's widow. I'm a young widow. I'm the leading edge of GenX (Sis is the Boomer...I'm not). I'm a geek, a wirehead, a nerd. Oh, well.

But I've never explained myself in terms of "having" something - to explain why or how something came together. Heaven knows, I've had clinical depression a time or two. But I never explained my behavior away based on it and blew it off.

If I had depression, I treated it. I sure as hell don't let it define me. If I am stressed, I look to what is bothering me. If I am angry, I can point to the source of it. If someone socks me in the face, there is nothing out there to justify it.

Not this, not that, not the other.

Every action with an equal and opposite reaction. No more, no less. I don't file any of it under "it's my fault because I'm blonde."

I don't understand how anyone could do that to themselves. I can screw up - hell, everyone has a 12% error rate. "I was human, and that's how I made the mistake."

Wrong only when you don't learn something from it.

Comments

[elfwench.livejournal.com]

With something like Asperger's it's hard not to use it as a definitive, though, because - as you said - it would take too long to explain why I am the way I am elsewise. I do not use it as an excuse, but rather an explanation. I accept responsibility for my behavior and am constantly working on it, but the label serves to let people know what reasonable expectations would be for me. The most I ask of people is (1) a little more patience and understanding and (2) that if I say or do something in a way that they find rude or hurtful, please understand that I probably don't mean it that way and ask me how I meant it rather than assuming and jumping down my throat. (It irks the heck out of me when people do not do #2, and then when they blow up and I say, "______ is how I meant it, not the way you took it," they then say, "No you didn't, I know that you really meant it the way it seemed.") I don't think either is too much to ask when I am indeed putting forth my best effort - especially since I think that's just a good idea for communication period, even for the neurologically typical.

Unfortunately, I do know too many people who do use Asperger's and other diagnoses such as clinical depression, bipolar disorder, or -most especially - borderline personality disorder as their blanket excuse and expect the world/society/friends to give them special dispensation and to make way for them because they are neurologically and/or psychologically different and "can't help it". Now, admitting more difficulty I can understand, but using it as a license for behaving however the spirit moves you without even attempting any regard to other's feelings is another. So I sympathize with your point of view, too.