I personally know someone who, most of the time, feels like an outsider. He is my son and my desire to untangle everyday communication for him, and help him to "get it", is bigger than anything you can imagine. However, even if you have me on one side, who knows quite a bit about the human communication, and my son, who is willing to learn, the task is almost impossible to accomplish. Why is it so? Why is he misunderstood? In my efforts to solve this mystery, I decided to interview my son and ask him some questions about how he feels when there is a breakdown in the communication. Well, it is not surprising that he feels ANGRY. The feeling of anger for him also means that he feels depressed ( read this as hopeless that things will ever change or improve), but he also feels hatred and some disturbing thoughts are coming to his mind. This is how he feels when he cannot express himself in appropriate and socially acceptable way. Why is it so? He says he knows that at times he talks a lot ( but don't we all sometimes do that?), speaks loudly ( again, don't we all sometimes raise our voices?) and his reactions are strong.
But this does not explain why and how he appears to other people as "different". Is it something in the way he says words? Is it something in his body language? What kind of detectors the neurotypical population has so that they can conclude in a matter of seconds that a person is DIFFERENT? And start treating that person differently, and distance oneself from that person immediately, and team up against that person in matter of minutes from the start of the conversation. My son's appearance in any group of people will ensure that in no time they will team up against him, and he will be either ridiculed or teased or just simply ignored (with rolling eyes). Sometimes those who are little bit more polite will just try to avoid that situation all together and find an excuse why they cannot come to his birthday party ( such as, they already have something planned, although they knew about the party well in advance, or they would suddenly fall sick or something else...). Now, it makes me wonder how come 99 percent of people cannot see the beautiful person that he is? How come our brains are not equipped to see the person behind that first appearance that is so damaging to my son. How come people are so judgmental about person's abilities and potential from just looking at the person for 2 seconds and talking to the person for 3 seconds?
In the light of may daily endeavors to help my son communicate better, I developed a keen eye for other people that may suffer from similar communication difficulty as him. Recently I noticed something in Michael Jackson's behaviour that to me was so familiar: some kind of naivety, at times very literal response to complex issues, inability to react in real time to verbal challenges, obsession with specific topics and feeling comfortable when the conversation is concentrated around that topic, and so on. Some will call it "tragedy of genius". Maybe that is what it is. Some people with communication disorders, such as autism and Asperger's are genius and being that can also be their demise. They cannot really take care of themselves, and they are surrounded with "friends". As long as there is money, there will be "friends". Not true friends, who will not feed on that person's money, fame or anything else they find interesting in the person. True friends will accept the person for who the person is, and break heartbreaking circle of loneliness and isolation. Just like my son, I feel that MJ, and many others who are different than neurotypical average Joe, are suffering immensely, not because they feel they are different, but because they are treated differently. And yes, of course, taken advantage of. We need to put stop to this.
And before I help my son learn how to communicate so that he will not tick off neurotypical people with his oddities, before that, I believe that this world will have to recognize those leeches who feed themselves with thinking that they are better than someone who is DIFFERENT. I, personally, chose the life of isolation and loneliness, just to be on the side of those who are so much better than us, but those who we decided are weird, odd, eccentric, or just simply slow and stupid.
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