Some days, I'm just so very tired. Oh, not tired of being autistic. Not at all. But tired of being made to feel like being autistic is somehow bad or wrong.
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| Image Description: A black and white diagram of a brain, shown from above. Both the left and right lobes are splattered with brightly colored paint blobs. |
Standing in the lineup at the grocery store, I peruse the titles of gossip magazines. A cover photo catches my eye: a smiling woman with a beautiful little boy, with the cutest grin and sparkly eyes. The glaring headline: "How I Cured My Son's Autism."
A distraught mother sobs on a famous talk show. Her son has been diagnosed with autism. She will do anything, she says... anything at all to be rid of this monster that's stolen her son. Her son, sitting next to her, listening to everything she says.
A so-called "autism professional" smiles brightly at me though a computer screen. "We're going to have such a wonderful time, aren't we?" she coos. "We're going to learn all about how to get along and share, and how important it is to be at work on time! Look at Johnny! Johnny likes animals. Hannah likes animals too! Wow! Hannah and Johnny are going to be the best of friends!"
A medical professional sighs at me over the phone. "You have to remember, Hannah, not everyone is as lucky as you. It's a spectrum. Some people are severely disabled by their autism."
Another medical professional shakes her head sadly when I tell her that the Autistic community prefers the term "Autism Spectrum Condition" rather than "Autism Spectrum Disorder."
"It has to be classified as a disorder," she explains to me patiently. "We'd never receive funding to treat it, otherwise."
Treat it. Cure it. Make it go away.
This beautiful, rainbow brain of mine.
The one that makes me flap my hands with excitement.
The one that makes me able to pick up on other people's emotions and feel them as if they're my own. The one that makes me able to hear electricity.
The one that enables me to sit in silence for hours, not needing words to spoil the golden quietness.
The one that allows me to focus for hours on something, forgetting to eat, drink, or sleep.
The one that sees colors in music and in the months of the year.
The one that enables me to see in the dark like a cat.
The one that lets me smell smoke or hear dripping water long before anyone else senses it.
The one that allows me to be unfailingly, unflinchingly honest.
The one that enables me to sit down and chat with a poor person just the same as a rich one, and not see any difference between them.
The one that sees the good in everyone.
The one that allows me to come up with creative solutions that leave people scratching their heads and saying, "How did we not think of that?"
The one who can look at an animal and sense its emotions as strongly as my own.
The one that sometimes exhausts me with its constant spinning and looping through different ideas and imaginary worlds.
The one who loves challenging the status quo.
The one who can coax a smile out of almost anyone upon first meeting them.
This beautiful rainbow brain of mine, is... broken.
That's what they say.
Severe. Handicapped. Differently-abled. Special needs. Failure. Too slow. A scourge worse than cancer. Treatment. Cure. Therapy. No, ma'am, it's not your child, it's the autism. If we get rid of the autism, you can have your child back. Autism stole your child. A fate worse than death. Scrambling. Panicking. Try this diet... try this medication. Detox. Electric shock. Motivation-based. Rewards. Compliance. Hand-over-hand. Don't do it that way, do it this way. Can't you just be normal? Can't you try harder?
"But it's not you," they reassure me. "It's only the people who are suffering from autism. The ones who are severely autistic."
The severely autistic ones... who think the same way I do. Who react the same way I do. Who process the same way I do. Who respond the same way I do. Who feel things the same way I do. Who have feelings and emotions the same way I do.
Where, exactly, is the difference?
And it's exhausting, to scream into the void to a world of people with their fingers in their ears, who smile and pat you on the head and say, "That's okay, dear. Of course you don't want to get better. You just don't know any different, because you've always been this way."
And it hurts, and it aches, and it bleeds, and it keeps you awake at night wondering WHY it is that who you are is so awful and so terrible and so scary and so wrong?
And I wonder...
Why can't I just...
Be...
ME?
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| Image Description: The author, a woman with long red hair, is lying on her stomach on her bed, with her chin propped up in one hand, facing the camera and smiling. She is wearing glasses, a black shirt, blue jeans, and bright red socks. She has her feet in the air with her ankles crossed. |
