I believe all persons with Autism need the opportunity to become friends with other Autistic people. Without this contact we feel alien to this world. We feel lonely. Feeling like an alien is a slow death. It’s sadness, self-hate, it’s continuously striving to be someone we’re not. It’s waking up each day and functioning in falsehood (French, 1993).
Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking
My own recollection of this meeting is of feeling that, after a life spent among aliens, I had met someone who came from the same planet as me. We understood each other. At one point I overheard Donna talking on the phone to someone associated with her book tour. Apparently the caller had asked her something about how the visit was going. I heard Donna’s answer: “We don’t get a lot of cooking done, but we speak the same language.”
It was an amazing and powerful experience to be able to communicate with someone in my own language. I had sometimes been able to establish meaningful communication with people before, but it always involved my having to learn the other person’s language and do constant laborious translating. (Sinclair, 1988) Here, with people who shared my language, meaning flowed freely and easily.
History of ANI
Having finally found out why she had spent her entire life being, in her words, “an alien,” she was interested in meeting other autistic people.
History of ANI
In many cases, the person would express a feeling of finally finding his own kind, as if he or she was an alien who had been stranded on this planet, and now has found other aliens who were from the same planet.
Sola Shelly (2003), History of ANI
During our second day of camping out in this building, Doyle pointed out the window at a radio tower and mentioned that it was for sale. He jokingly asked me if I thought we should buy it. I asked what possible use we might have for a radio tower. Then I looked around the room and, in keeping with our frequently shared experience of having always felt like aliens on Earth, I remarked that we could use the radio tower to send a message to the “mother ship” (a common reference in science fiction stories), telling it that we were all together now and it could come retrieve us and take us home.
History of ANI
Omega hai foleet
Are you awake or are you sleeping? Are you afraid? We've been waiting for this meeting We have come here for you, and we're coming in peace Mothership will take you on higher, higher This world you live in is not a place for someone like you Come on, let us take you home It's time to go, you are infected Come as you are, don't be scared of us, you'll be protected (Protected, protected) I guess you are a different kind of human I guess you are a different kind of human Omega hai foleet, Omega hai foleet There is a flaw in man-made matters But you are pure, and we have to get you out of here A Different Kind of Human by AURORA
“Don’t be scared, you’re okay, you can come with us and you’ll be safe, you’ve spent time on this planet but it’s not the place for you, you have a better place where you will feel more at home, we will take you there.”
AURORA on Twitter: “Track number 8: A Different Kind Of Human.”
Omega hai foleet
Just like in her song “Forgotten Love” from her previous album Infections of a Different Kind (Step I), AURORA has once again made-up an imaginary language for the title track of her third album and it’s probably the language from the afterlife place she has created specially for this track, as she explained:
“It’s a new place I created […] what if those people [the dead ones] came to a different planet, like a safe place, and they were collected by these aliens that came to the world and kind of took them with them, and they said:
“Don’t be scared, you’re okay, you can come with us and you’ll be safe, you’ve spent time on this planet but it’s not the place for you, you have a better place where you will feel more at home, we will take you there.”
And then, they’ll go up to this different place where all those people can live together”.
AURORA has also included the last letter of the Greek alphabet, “Omega”. The Omega symbol has a lot of symbolism behind it, and it’s typically used to denote the end of something.
AURORA – A Different Kind of Human Lyrics | Genius Lyrics
Omega hai foleet
“It’s a new place I created […] what if those people came to a different planet, like a safe place, and they were collected by these aliens that came to the world and kind of took them with them, and they said:
“Don’t be scared, you’re okay, you can come with us and you’ll be safe. You’ve spent time on this planet but it’s not the place for you. You have a better place where you will feel more at home, we will take you there.”
And then, they’ll go up to this different place where all those people can live together”.
AURORA on Twitter
For people on the autism spectrum before it had a name, he explains, the alternate universes of science fiction may have felt less alien than the baffling sea of mundania in which they found themselves marooned.
Picked on by a sadistic teacher, he took refuge in reading “gobs of science-fiction . . . finding myself more at home on impossibly remote, imaginary worlds than the alien world I was strapped to.”
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
Autism, clearly, is a condition that has always existed, affecting occasional individuals in every period and culture. It has always attracted in the popular mind an amazed, fearful, or bewildered attention (and perhaps engendered mythical or archetypal figures—the alien, the changeling, the child bewitched).
She said that she could understand “simple, strong, universal” emotions but was stumped by more complex emotions and the games people play. “Much of the time,” she said, “I feel like an anthropologist on Mars.”
An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales
When comparing myself to all women, I feel lost and alien. When comparing myself to Autistic women, I feel a sense of belonging.
THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: Why Everyone Should Read The ABCs of Autism Acceptance
Oftentimes, you genuinely wonder if you are an alien. You wrote about aliens since you were 8 years old. You like reading sci-fi and supernatural books. People joke about you being a vampire, or an alien, and you joke back, masking your anxiety. It sounds so silly, doesn’t it?
Autistic Masking, Late Diagnosis, and Dissociation: The Toll It Takes on Autistic Mental Health – Autistic Science Lady
At times can I barely keep my mask in place and deep sense of alienation haunts me during and after highly stressful situations. Revealing my autism might at least bring kindness and relief, I sometimes hope. Yet the risk that I’ll be met by miscomprehension and even cruelty (however casual) is great. Condescension, dismissal and denial are also common reactions. This is what makes masking a privilege.
Autism, masking and ageing. A personal view. | The other side
Speaking for no one but myself, I might say that the one constant in the autistic life is alienation. Maybe I should start there. And for me, alienation has almost always been accompanied by symbols. So. Alienation and symbol.
It’s rare that I can forget how different I am from the people around me and how much that has hurt at every stage of my life. When you have a neurobiological disorder that affects just 1% of the world’s population, you will feel unlike most everyone you come across almost all the time. And meaningful relationships-those time-honored antidotes to alienation-can be, in a cruel irony, difficult for people on the spectrum to achieve and maintain per the very nature of our impairments.
Notes from the Autism Spectrum, Part I: Alienation and Symbol – Ruminate Magazine
This myth, that of faeries kidnapping children and replacing them with changelings, has been utilized by many Western cultures for centuries to explain why certain children have developmental disabilities and neurodivergent conditions including autism.
Neurodiversity, Changelings, and Fate: The Winx Saga
Find Your People
Image Credit: Swamburger
When I found the autistic community, it was like finally coming home after 23 long years at sea. Often you don’t realize how lonely and frightened you’ve been the whole time, until you find your people.
Community As Home – Portraits – Disability Visibility Project
How can we cultivate spaces where everyone has that soaring sense of inclusion, where we can have difficult and meaningful conversations?
“The Beauty of Spaces Created for and by Disabled People” by s.e. smith in “Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the 21st Century“
Because everyone deserves the shelter and embrace of crip space, to find their people and set down roots in a place they can call home.
Until one day… you find a whole world of people who understand.
We were no longer alone.
7 Cool Aspects of Autistic Culture » NeuroClastic
All our lives we’ve been alone in a world of alien men. To find kindred at last is a special joy.
A. E. VAN VOGT, SLAN
