Assignment Writing Service http://StudyHub.vip/Accepting-The-Monsters 👈

1. Insights
Open camera or QR reader and
scan code to access this article
and other resources online.
Accepting the Monsters
Danny Dunn
There have always been lines, separating what counts
as a human being and everything else. I am not talking
about the lines that make sense, the species designation, ge-
netic similarity, the classification of Homo sapiens. I mean
the lines that change depending on who you ask.
‘‘If you don’t experience empathy, you’re not a human
being, you’re a monster.’’
‘‘Love and sex are a big part of what make us human.’’
‘‘Human beings are defined by our insatiable need for
human connection.’’
As a graduate student, I have completed 31 psychology
courses thus far. I sit in a classroom, and I learn about human
psychology. I learn that this practice of delineating humanity
in exclusion is a foundational feature of how human minds
heuristically process information.1
I also learn evermore lines
that stand between myself and humanity.
‘‘We can all recognize these six basic facial expressions.’’2
‘‘Adult humans cannot differentiate phonemes that do not
exist in their native language.’’3
‘‘Human beings are constantly processing huge amounts of
information about the social world around them, and incor-
porating that into their behavior.’’
I sit in the classroom, a monster learning about human
psychology. In the moments after another line is drawn, I
wonder what put me on the side of monsters this time.
Sometimes the cause is obvious. I do not recognize those
facial expressions because I am autistic. Sometimes I wonder
without resolution, as I cannot figure out why my ears can
differentiate non-native phonemes. Regardless of the source,
the result is the same. I am once more reminded that I am not
a human being.
Although this may seem like a problem, like the problem, it
is not.
I was diagnosed with autism at the age of 19. For all my
developmental years, I lacked a label, a lens that would allow
me to make sense of my life.
I did not know how to be a human being, and no one would
teach me. They would give me directives such as ‘‘sit still’’ or
‘‘write it down so you don’t forget’’ or ‘‘you catch more flies
with honey.’’ They never explained how to sit still, how to
remember to look at what I wrote down when forgetting
things was the problem in the first place, or how I was sup-
posed to be sweet as honey and why I wanted to attract flies in
the first place. What I did get, in lieu of instruction, was
punishment. I got the words freak, monster, retard. I got the
frustrated silence of disappointed parents. I got relentless and
aggressive harassment from my peers. I got confirmation that
I was wrong, in my natural state.
I was hunted as a monster, so I quickly learned to lie.
I learned how to mask and camouflage, how to mimic neu-
rotypicality in all its facets.4
I acquired friends, got my grades
up, and I could almost pretend that I was fine. It chafed to be a
monster walking around in human skin, deceiving everyone
around me into thinking I was a person. I wrote endless
poems in my journal detailing this perpetual lie.
In my early years in high school I wrote How I am
‘‘Normal’’:
Blue clouds hide in the sky,
blending in perfectly,
but if they’re jostled or bumped,
they turn solid,
and come rushing down
to impact the earth
in a pure blue embrace.
I was playing the right part, blending in with my peers, but
I was fragile. The mask had not settled in yet. I worked
harder, pushed through breakdowns, through meltdowns,
through disaster after disaster. I sequestered my tears away in
the shower, my only refuge of guaranteed privacy.
Years later the mask had fused to my skin. In university I
wrote, expressing my fear that this mask had become all that
was left of me, all that I would be remembered by.
I am so afraid
to become a false symbol
of something lost,
to have my memory
be torn apart,
and patched together
into something so beautiful,
that they will lose sight
of the monster within.
I wrote a lot during those years, wracked with depression,
with trauma. I started peeling off the mask, bit by bit. To truly
Department of Psychology and Philosophy, Texas Woman’s University, Denton, Texas, USA.
AUTISM IN ADULTHOOD
Volume 4, Number 2, 2022
ª Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
DOI: 10.1089/aut.2022.0015
102
Downloaded
by
34.237.53.201
from
www.liebertpub.com
at
06/14/22.
For
personal
use
only.

2. heal the wounds that were festering beneath, I had to expose
them to the air. At first, they were bloody, horrific, and I saw
my worst fears coming true. I thought that when I took off the
mask, everyone in my life would see me, see what a monster I
was, and they would turn away in disgust. They would lock
me away from the world. And at first, I did lose friends. I went
in and out of inpatient psychiatric treatment. I thought I had
been right, but one friend stayed by my side through the worst
of it all.
He tells me I am a monster
But he says it like ‘‘I love you’’
He says it like
‘‘I’m a monster too
So show me all your darkest corners
All the skeletons in the closet of your mind
Because it means I’m not alone’’
He says it like
‘‘You’re a monster
And that means I don’t have to fear you’’
What a wonderous reply
How absolutely divine
When all the world
Has one color of response
In many shades of disbelief
Judgment, horror, rejection, and fear
At the slightest flash of the monster within
We fear being seen
Because we do not like how we look
Not this body that we pilot
But our faults and cracks beneath
Easy as it is to assume
They will hate what they see
Turn away in revulsion and disgust
When they find out
I’m a monster
Insecurity is well founded
Because they do turn away,
They do judge and hate and leave
He tells me he is a monster
So that I know I have nothing to fear
Over time those ugly wounds began to heal. Open and
genuine, no longer lashing out in pain, I foraged new con-
nections. I have more friends than I ever had before, and
better yet, they are friends with me, not my mask. I do not
have to lie to them. I have support from my families, born and
found alike. I am safe without a mask in the space I have
carved out in the world. I am no longer a horror, but I am not
human either.
I sit in a classroom, and I learn about human psychology.
I am no longer disturbed when a line is drawn that makes me a
monster. Certainly, I would appreciate a correction as they
speak about human psychology to ‘‘most people’’ instead of
‘‘all people,’’ or even better, giving accuracy and precision
all at once with study-specific variation on ‘‘X amount of the
sampled population.’’ But I do not need to be included as
though I were human.
I am other, a monster among humans, but I only wish to
live my strange life in peace, unmasked. I want to be seen as I
am, but to not be hunted, shunned, and prosecuted for my
existence. I want the humans around me to look at my odd-
ities, my inhumanity, and decide ‘‘this is something to pro-
tect.’’ I never knew how to be a person, growing up, and I just
wish they had let that be ok. I wish they had never forced me
to put on a mask of humanity to be safe and accepted.
Once again, I would like to emphasize that these lines are
not incidental, humans draw them because of the way they
process the world. It is not the problem because it has no
solution. I want to live in a world where all of those lines do
not hold the monsters at gunpoint, to conform or die.
I would much rather live in a world that supports the in-
human monsters than one where I am counted as human and
there are still human beings sleeping on the streets. The world
as it is today will not allow me or anyone else to just exist. We
live in a society that sees us as a puzzle to fix until we fit their
definition of human, and we live in an economy that demands
that we produce labor or die trying. There is a lot of work to
be done, but it is not just about redefining who is and is not
human, who does or does not deserve our respect and com-
passion, because the answer to that should be obvious. It
should be everyone, wherever they happen to fall on the lines
we will inevitably draw.
Author Disclosure Statement
The author has nothing to disclose.
Funding Information
No funding was received for this article.
References
1. Allport GW. The Nature of Prejudice. New York, NY:
Addison-Wesley; 1954.
2. Ekman P, Keltner D. Universal facial expressions of emo-
tion: An old controversy and new findings. In: Segerstråle
UC, Molnár P, eds. Nonverbal Communication: Where
Nature Meets Culture. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, Inc.; 1997;27–46.
3. Best CT, McRoberts GW, Sithole NM. Examination of
perceptual reorganization for nonnative speech contrasts:
Zulu click discrimination by English-speaking adults and
infants. Journal of experimental psychology: Human Per-
ception and Performance. 1988;14(3):345–360.
4. Mandy W. Social camouflaging in autism: Is it time to lose
the mask? Autism. 2019;23(8):1879–1881.
Address correspondence to:
Danny Dunn
Department of Psychology and Philosophy
Texas Woman’s University
Denton, TX 76204
USA
Email: ddunn6@twu.edu
ACCEPTING THE MONSTERS 103
Downloaded
by
34.237.53.201
from
www.liebertpub.com
at
06/14/22.
For
personal
use
only.