Being autistic one of the things that bothers me is my dependency on the external world for help. It’s not that I hate dependencies, it’s that the external world is often not reliable enough to depend on. This is largely because things and people are always changing, minds are changing, including my own. They’re also called dependencies for a reason, they generally come at a price. The cost is both your being dependent upon something or someone external to yourself, and the actual price you’ll have to pay for services rendered.

A thought occurred to me the other day, that true independence may not be just reducing external dependencies to nothing so there’s nothing I’m dependent upon. I’m not sure it could even be done in a functional society because socialization itself is dependent upon the give and take of those dependencies.

INdependence. The word itself is the best clue and I can’t believe I didn’t notice it and what it suggests a long time ago… especially since I’ve been actively working toward it my whole life. Maybe, just maybe, it means learning to depend on the people within myself to help me in my external world. What word would we use to describe such an outlandish idea?

Independence. Depending on the only people you can depend on, because they are entirely dependent upon your “being” for their way of life. Self reliance isn’t having noone to depend on, it’s the absolute reliability of your own people within you 🙂