if you ever think representation in media isn’t important, just know that the reason i got diagnosed with autism, the reason i went on to make autistic friends, learn self advocacy, become a board member on several advocacy groups, join autism social groups, give autism advice on my blog, write fiction and fanfiction about autism, work on an autism and voting guide, write a guide to help people figure out if theyre autistic, help several friends get diagnosed, create an autism game, etc ……
….. was because of a video game
it was just after freshman year of college. my therapist suggested i was autistic, as her adult son had recently gotten diagnosed, and i reminded her a lot of him. i didnt know anything about it. the research i did made me uncertain. some of it sounded like me. some of it didnt. but i was pretty sure she was right, and i was autistic
i brought it up to my parents
they said i couldn’t be autistic. i was such a good kid. i could talk. i seemed normal most of the time. i wasn’t into math. they saw rain man, i was nothing like him. i wasn’t a bad kid, i couldn’t be autistic, they just wanted me to figure out what was actually wrong with me
i tried to convince them. i told them about my research. i showed them the results of quizzes, and then, when they weren’t happy with that, i let them take the quizzes for me. i showed them youtube videos, ted talks ….
they were in denial. i wasn’t autistic. find something else.
i was upset, i was alone … just moved into an apartment no one thought i should move into because they didn’t think i’d be able to take care of myself, no one trusted me to be alone. i was upset and trying to distract myself so i got a game bundle for a dollar. some of them seemed interesting. there was one, to the moon, that i’d never heard of before, didn’t know anything about it, but i started playing
little did i know, there were two autistic women in the game. one who was quiet, awkward, didn’t make eye contact, had strong special interests, couldn’t put her thoughts into words, didn’t know how to respond to non literal statements, had comfort objects, expressed herself through crafts, and had a lot of empathy for inanimate objects
the other, i would later discover, was a masker. to most people she seemed normal. but to her, it felt like she was an actress. it didn’t matter if she was on or off the stage, she was acting. and she’d acted so much and for so long that she wondered if she even knew what she was really like. she pitied the other girl for being so different and not being able to hide it …. but mostly she was envious that she actually knew who she was
that was one of the only times in my life i’ve had a meltdown. i had such strong emotions that i didn’t even know what to do with them, and i just broke. because that was the first time that i felt understood by anyone or anything in my entire life. that was the first time i understood i wasn’t alone
i called and made an appointment with a diagnostician the next day
that’s why media representation is important. if i hadn’t have had that game, right when i needed it, that frank of a mirror reflecting myself back at me …. i don’t know where i’d be today. i don’t know if i’d ever have gotten diagnosed. i don’t know if i’d ever felt as seen and understood as i did in that moment
because of a video game. a video game
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