Shower thoughts got me a blog post.
I remember drawing GD’s peaceminusone design back in middle school.
That was when all the little American children would doodle in their books not paying attention to the failure of the teacher to get the projector to work or find the right page in the book.
Or we just didn’t pay attention at all. That’s possible too.
I wasn’t part of any cliches. I guess that helped come up with the same idea GD did.
I would draw the peace sign. But it would look wrong. As if impossible. And I’d erase the one line.
I hated myself for thinking like that. To think peace isn’t real. That’s it’s not possible.
I normally lie to people pretending peace exists.
But peace never existed for me.
I don’t think an autism diagnosis would have made it any better. Those who got to know me knew I was a genius. I pick up on knowledge fast and can repeat it and expand on it. But I get overwhelmed by various things. I was too different for my classmates.
Those with the diagnosis, which were mainly male, were treated as if they knew nothing or could learn nothing.
That’s bullshit. I knew it back then, but couldn’t explain it. If you don’t offer someone a way to communicate or find where their strengths are, they’ll always fail.
For us, there was no peace. There was no hope.
I was treated differently because “I would make it somewhere” “I had potential”.
As if they didn’t?
Peace doesn’t exist. It can’t exist in our current world order.
This is why equality is so common in my stories. It’s one of my themes.
And I know one of the first steps to true equality is acceptance. You must accept yourself first. Then society must accept you as you are.
Then we can work on accepting everyone no matter what.
And boosting everyone no matter what.
I want peace.
I want the PeaceMinusOne symbol to be a thing of our past.
Is that asking too much of society?
Cat Hartliebe 