Greenfield

 

Yet another thing I don't get about people. There are a great many people who don't take my situation very seriously. Once in a while I get exasperated and make a little speech. I had to make this speech to someone in Turners Falls on Thursday:

                                  What if tomorrow someone put you out of your home,

                                   took your daughter and your husband away somewhere,

                                   and you never saw them again? And then this man comes

                                   along and tells you people want to kill you? How would you

                                   feel?

She was stunned, as others have been. They look down at the floor, off to the side, anywhere but at me. I don't know about the others I've said this to, but the Thursday one seems finally to have got it. Got it that I lost my home and everyone I love all in a day. That people wouldn't tell me where the animals were for certain, and I wasn't allowed to visit them, and I'll never see them again. That I've lived without a proper home for 19 months, and I paid my goddamned rent.

 

I'm the one with Aspergers, the one who's supposed to have no empathy. It's not that simple. There are human situations I have empathy for and there are those for which I have none, in about equal number. But the neurotypicals, who are supposed to be the empathetic ones, have no empathy for what was done to me unless I make the what-if speech. Why can't they figure it out on their own, with their blessed neurotypical EMPATHY? Why do I have to spell it out?