I have been wanting to write something like this for a while but never knew quite had the words
When I was fifteen, I thought that autistic people were completely non-verbal and could only utter nonsensical sounds, that they would scream and make these weird noises all the time and that they were simply in capable of understanding what "no" meant
I thought that they were destructive and could not be responsible for their own actions
I thought that they were the children whom were not toilet trained until they reached close to double digits
I thought that they all had really low IQs and would not be able to learn their ABCs for anything
I thought that they had zero motor skills and could not hold a fork or write their name
I thought all the yelling and screaming that these people did was on purpose to get attention
I think what is most scary is that I saw these children as lessers and as subhumans
It also never occurred to me what happens to these children when they grow up.
But that all changed one day, and I was forced to re-examine what it meant to be autistic
Ever since I could remember, I loved spinning. I would twirl in my house until I was sick;
My favourite thing in the jungle-gym was the tire swing and just spin until I was sick
I have always been mesmerized by rhythmic gymnastics, watching that ribbon twist and swirl
I would pick up pieces of string and ribbon and swirl them whenever I had the opportunity
I guess that is how it started; a woman who worked with autistic children at the time saw me doing just that;
She had also heard me talk about autistic children with a kind of ignorant smugness that mad her upset.
She started laughing and said, "Oh my god she's stimming, she stims just like my cousin who has "ash-burgers". Oh my god this girl has "ash-burgers""
I kept my head down this entire time.
"That is it, I am diagnosing this girl with ash-burgers!"
I looked up at her and went on with the rest of my day, seemingly glazing over what had just occurred.
I refer to what she said as "ash-burgers," because that is honestly what I heard out of her mouth that day.
That evening, I put the words "ash-burgers" into Google expecting nothing
Thankfully Google came back at me with "aspergers" instead. "Sounds good enough I thought"
I read the description over and over
"high functioning autism"
"often normal to high intelligence"
"Absence of speech delay"
"Lack of ability to interact socially with others, has a hard time with communicating with people, lack of innate social skills"
"Problems with empathy and relating to others"
"brutally honest and very literal"
"High anxiety and trouble in crowds"
"Prone to temper-tantrums way past what would be considered a "normal age""
"Lack of understanding of personal space"
I quickly realized that this definition was me. That I had aspergers, that I was autistic.
I had to drastically change my understanding of what it meant to be autistic and what is meant to be viewed as having a disability
This took me years to really change my thinking completely; and to this day I am not sure I have yet
I always knew I was different; but I never even thought that I could have a disorder of this magnitude
I also felt like I was a lighter version of the people those textbooks and websites described
And then I read that this condition was understudied in girls and often was more mild when documented
When documented, does that mean that there are people out there that are like me, walking around having this thing, "this disorder" without even knowing it?
I brusshed it off, no way I am autistic! I kept going on with my life
But everytime I did or said something that was slightly offbeat and strange the word "aspergers" would pop back into my head almost reflexively
It hurt, I always knew that I was not normal and that everyone saw me as strange and avoided me like a virus
But I never thought it was because I was "clinically not normal"
All my parents wanted was a normal child, and I could not give them that no matter how hard I tried,
After everything I had put them through with not being that normal child I could not bring myself to say to them
"Guess what, I will never be normal, I am autistic!"
Also, I just thought that my parents would never understand the implications of what I was saying, nor would they take it seriously
This is why we still need aspergers in our vocabulary
To give people who may not be readily recognised as autistic a voice, a voice that is separate from autistism
Most Doctors, even now, will not consider an ASD diagnosis if the kid can talk and has a reasonable IQ; even less so if the child is past a certain age
This battle becomes even harder once the child has become an adult and has gone off to college
It seems like psychiatrists tiptoe around autism as if it does not exist but are all too happy to throw antidepressants at me
The new definition is of autism in the DSM is broader but also much vaguer
which will leave more and more people behind, people that need help communicating and just want someone to understand when they feel overwhelmed rather than having someone telling them to "Suck it up!"
They need people to understand that they not purposefully being rude and defiant, that they genuinely do not understand certain things that others just seem to know
People with autism need to embrace what they have as a gift, a gift for seeing the world in a way that no one else can
We see the world with fewer limitations and fewer rules
It is this view that simply helps us to navigate it differently
Not recognizing these people as autistic means that they are more likely to be arrested for being "disruptive" when they are really just overwhelmed
Not recognizing these people as autistic means denying capable people opportunities because they think that they do not want to talk to people
Not recognizing these people as autistic means walking away from someone who has lots of potential because you thought they were rude or insensitive
Not recognizing these people as autistic means means that you deny people an opportunity to reach their fullest potential
On the other side though, calling someone autistic and placing them in a special learning class where they cannot learn anything hurts them more
This is why we need aspergers, so that eccentrics and oddballs that would normally just be labelled as weird and rude have voice
And that people recognise that we have abilities and that what we do can be enduring
We are not choosing to be rude and defiant, we just simply refuse to walk through life the way Neurtypicals do
It took me a really long time to be comfortable with being autistic; but now I realise that it is the only thing that makes sense!
