You don’t understand because you’re neuronormative. And for that I envy you in many ways.
I’ve been called cretin, weirdo, ********, robot, fucked up, automaton, ‘special’, damaged and many other damaging tropes that are associated with autism. I’m sure that RTP has many tales of her own re: her BPD. We have to be very careful not only to mask (appear neuronormative) but to absolutely trust those to whom we reveal our differences. The world is made for people like you, not people like us. Both our conditions are classified under the heading of ‘disorder’. Something that has to be overcome; that which must be fixed, as if we were a broken clock.
I really can’t emphasise how damaging it is when people take our conditions and apply them to those they loathe, as if by pinning such a pseudo-diagnosis upon the individual one can lessen them, other them, cast them as the freak-oddball-weirdo. At the first sign that something like this might happen, our hackles rise: we await the onslaught of slurs and misconceptions.
Would I be neuronormative? No. I’ve grown comfortable in my own skin. Do I wish that neuronormative people understood neurodiversity better? Hell, yes. Because it’s troubling to contemplate the question posed re: neurodiverse issues, let alone answer it.