The unknowing response

A terrible day for the world, a doubly terrible day for the nation of France. Terrorists dressed in suicide vests blowing themselves up and along with them hundreds of people. It is a despicable act. An act wrought out of some ideology that I simply am

unable to fathom.

I simply am unable to understand how a human being can believe that blowing themselves up is a way of obtaining justice for a people, freedom from oppression, or change in the state of national affairs. I just don’t see it. It is illogical. It is nothing short of horrendous murder.

I contend we shouldn’t refer to these horrible acts by radicalized people as suicide bombings but simply as murderous bombings. Because that’s what they are. A murder of innocents that just has the bomber as collateral damage.

My response to these events is always horror and disgust. I abhor them and get angry about the world we live in that creates such ideologies and feelings. But I do see that I have a somewhat different response to these events than many others. I suspect this is something to do with being an autistic. But that’s just what I think, it’s not something I can say definitively really.

Emotional responses, and emotional feelings and expression are always different and difficult to interpret and express at times. I wrote about this more fully in a post called Emotional Dissonance.

I see family members, acquaintances, friends and colleagues wearing their hearts on their sleeves, being extremely impacted by such events. My response is different. Somewhere inside me I think I hold that emotional response within me and it leeches out in different ways at different times.

I suspect that this is the kind of thing that allows autistics to be labelled as lacking empathy, uncaring and unkind. But all of that is absolute myth and rubbish. I emote deeply, I feel so deeply on things that to express that would be something of an explosion of emotion that would be like the eruption of a Mount Vesuvius. I suspect there would not be many people who would be up for being around such an outburst of emotion.

One thing I notice about my own emotional responses, when events like this or other disasters or events is that I seem to respond more demonstrably to events, feelings and issues portrayed in far more trivial settings with much more raw emotion.

A lovers tiff on a sitcom, the death of a character in a book or movie and I will be quite the mess, tears rolling down the face and me sobbing. I wonder if this is a situation of me, perhaps subconsciously exerting and expressing in a somewhat safe way the underlying, deeply felt pain and sadness that is unexpressed in the face of obvious traumatic circumstances like these terror attacks today in France.

This is just some thoughts about the unknown response I have to these events. Responses that are often on my mind around these times. As my mind wonders to itself, why aren’t I more impacted by this terrible thing. Why am I just seemingly so outwardly cold about it when I know that I feel it deeply in my soul.

I don’t know the answer, but perhaps what I have shared above is a glimpse of what may be part of the answer.