On the OTHER hand, this has given me an icon idea...

[conuly]

Conuly:

The aspie with

Femaleness
Intelligence
Humor
Literacy

Except... weird thing... I'm not thinking up more nice words for myself. Wow. Now I feel bad :(

Still, this could beat out "obviously incredibly high functioning" for righteous amusement value.

Comments

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

This sort of reminds me of one particular session of group therapy I was in, for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Where we discussed that we had to at least mentally stop rating our abuse by how far it went. That you shouldn't feel like you were better off because you only were forced to give oral sex instead of full blown penetration -- it was still abuse, and you still had to deal with it. Don't minimize, don't maximize either (in other words "i'm more screwed up because I had this happen younger/with more people/etc."). Just -- deal with it? Not the right phrase. But don't spend all the time trying to put it on some sort of scale of fucked-up-ed-ness.

Oh, wonder what people think about this -- figure this crowd will be honest. I remember after an accident I was in, on a horse, people kept telling me I was lucky. Lucky that I wasn't like Christopher Reeves. I certainly didnt FEEL lucky. I mean ok, I am glad I am walking and functioning and its not a major problem in my life, but a lot of people acted like I should be so incredibly grateful that it wasnt worse. Just seemed weird. Odd. Wrong.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Those are good points... I think you're on the right track. I admit, I haven't given it too much thought...

As to your incident, I'd want to retort, "But if I were even luckier, I wouldn't have had an accident,"

I guess it's like the, "It could always be worse" statements. I don't like them. I know that, but it could also always be better. And besides, I'm tired of "It could always be worse", because my situation was getting progressively worse, so not only could it, it soon would be.

I do think rating is bad though. It doesn't help. And also, if you kind of identify with the community of disabled people or those with your disability, being told you're not like some other members of it just feels like an attack on those members. "At least you'tre not totally blind." Well, what if I were... what about those people. Many of them are much more able than I am and do quite fine and don't want your pity, thank you very much.

I do agree with the general sentiment that you can't compare your good and bad experiences to other people's, because it's subjective. And an incident that is nothing to one person can be huge to another. And it's just pointless to say, I was hurt more... I'm somehow stronger than you. Or, you were hurt more, I'm less fucked up.

I need to think about this more. But I think there are good ideas in this general area that if I can get them through my head enough will be able to come out smoothly in words someday.

Thanks for the comment. :)