#aam19

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(Late) April 15th

Prompt: Free Write!

Well, I’m not sure what to do for this, so here, have a poem I wrote recently.

Oh how glorious

When one finds

Out a glimpse of

Who they are.

That sense of

Recognition,

That I am

Not alone in

Being this way.

I am not broken.

Maybe it is the

World, cracked and

Scarred, confused

At its own.

There should be no

Shame in who I am.

Even if I don’t even

Know all of it.

Even if it happens

To change.

That is the nature

Of it all, anyway.

How hard it is

to remove the stain

Of caring how one

Is viewed.

If only it would

Lift itself, if only.

Oh, how marvelous

I could be if not bound

To this plain of

Existence, this form

Of living.

But maybe without

These chains I would

Not be much of anything.

Hear that call, let

Your thoughts wonder.

See what lives in the

Edge, at the periphery.

You may find it

Seems familiar.

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(Late) April 4th

Prompt: What do you wish more people knew about autism?

Honestly there’s a lot I wish people knew, from how people assigned female at birth tend to slip under the radar because they’re able to mask in social situations to how functioning labels are useless because autism isn’t a spectrum from low to high, but like a sundae bar where there’s loads of toppings and all sorts of combinations that can happen.

But like above all right now, that vaccines don’t cause autism so vaccinate your fucking kids.

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(Late) April 23rd

Prompt: Talk about stim toys. How many do you have? What’s your favorite stim toy? What stim toys do you wish you had?

I only have 3 actual stim toys, but I have things I use as stim toys that weren't originally stim toys too.

For the actual toys, I have a spinner ring, though since I lost weight, my ring size shrunk so it doesn't fit any of my fingers any more. I also have a fidget cube and a fidget spinner, though I use those more at home since they can be a bit noisy for lectures. I also have a cool rainbow brain stress squeeze thing that I like to use too, especially when travelling.

For the things made into stim toys, that includes things like soft foam blocks I can use like the stress squeeze things, hair ties or rubber bands for tension on my fingers, I even got a hand exerciser band that I can use too for that. For when I need to subtle stim, my go to is the cap of a pen or the eraser on a pencil rubbed across my lips, or even my finger if I don't have either, though I try to keep my hands away from my face for acne.

I've wondered if I would like a tangle, or if I'd get to focused on using it. I like the idea of chew things, but I also gross myself out by leaving my spit on something like that so I usually either chew gum or the collar of a shirt if I need to, but chewing isn't my major stim anyway.

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(Late) April 29th

Prompt: Talk about your strengths as an autistic person. What do you think your good at because of your autism?

I definitely think I’m good at teaching because I process the world differently. People always tell me that I’ve explained things better than the teacher has, and I chalk that up to me first interpreting what the teacher says for my own understanding, and then adapting it as needed to whoever I’m helping. Considering my current job is a tutor and has been for three years, I’m doing something right on that front.

If I’m passionate about something, I do go all in. So if a subject is a special interest, I’ll know a lot about it. That helps being in academia, where I basically get to infodump all the time on things (I think it’ll make the process of doing a dissertation much easier I hope). Liking repetitive tasks also makes working in lab nice too. Most people don’t like doing the menial tasks that make a lab run, but I do, so wherever I’m working, stuff gets done and done well. Also, hyperfocusing, that can be useful too.

I think I have pretty good spatial awareness too; I’m always a navigator on trips, people rely on me for directions. I can look at maps and know where to go, which apparently not everyone can do I’ve found out. I’m also pretty quick to memorize things involving navigation too, though I don’t know if that’s an autistic thing or an anxiety thing of wanting to know every step to take to get somewhere.

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(Late) April 19th

Prompt: Discuss autism and bullying. Have you ever been bullied for your autistic traits?

Bullying is such a mean thing to do. I know I hated it anytime people did it at my school growing up, but I guess I had a good age group since I don't remember but a few incidences. I don't think I was directly bullied either, that I remember anyway, but I also know I had the reputation of being “scary” since one of my friends openly admitted he was scared of me when he came to my school and didn't want to cross me. So perhaps I was not a good target for whatever reason.

I also don't really know why I was “scary” though, maybe because I had played basketball for years and could get pretty aggressive when competitive (so now I rarely do anything directly competitive), or the fact I've been weight lifting on and off for 5 years, but usually I was the one people would either ask for help when teachers didn't explain things well (turns out thinking differently than teachers made me really good at “translating” concepts), or to be on your team if it involved knowledge or trivia.I tend to be either oblivious to people doing stuff, or if I notice and it's not right, I do something about it, there isn't a middle for me. 

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(Late) April 25th

Prompt: How did you come to accept yourself as autistic? What was the biggest help for you in learning to accept yourself?

I’m still in the process of accepting myself, but the hours and hours of research I put helped. I liked having labels that somehow conveyed a lot of information about me in a word, like using my Hogwarts house or personality test things, but none of those really described me in the detail I was looking for. I never actually found a term that does, because I realized with all my researching not just on autism, but my sexuality and gender as well, that no one term can do that. I am autistic, and I’m also non-binary, and I’m also demisexual, and I’m also pansexual, and I’m also an artist, and I’m also a gardener, etc. There’s no word that puts all the facets of me into one neat box.

A lot of my research for all of that showed me that no, I wasn’t broken, I wasn’t a failure, I wasn’t sinful, and it took me till even now to be able to accept myself as I am in some of these areas. Autism wasn’t really a part of me that I had much trouble accepting at first when I first realized it (compared to being trans and not straight), though a lot of self-doubt I experienced after my initial discovery of autism happened because either there was some self-dx discourse going on, or I was in a good place stress wise so I wasn’t experiencing as many issues in my day to day life.

But I’ve realized that just because something isn’t making me directly aware of a part of me doesn’t mean I’m not still that thing. Just because I’m not thinking about my gender or my sexuality all the time doesn’t mean I suddenly stop being non-binary or anything, so just because today I didn’t have any loud noises mess with me or my schedule was not interrupted doesn’t mean I’m suddenly not autistic anymore. If I still call myself an artist even though I’m not painting every day, then why am I discounting myself on these other areas of me?

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(Late) April 5th

Prompt: Talk about how/when you were diagnosed. Alternatively, if you’re self-diagnosed, talk about how/when you realised you were autistic.

I didn’t really think about it until my freshman year of college. I’m not sure what made me first start looking, but it may have been from me not being able to make friends very quickly. My guess is some post on tumblr came up and I was like “hey, I relate to that….” and then research exploded from there as it does. That happened January of 2017, and then in early February I went to the on-campus counselors and asked about getting diagnosed, but like a good psychologist, he said he couldn’t because he wasn’t trained to, but he could refer me, and told me insurance may not cover it.

So, since I had no money, and my mom is a great denier of anything about me that isn’t cis/het/neurotypical, I never got diagnosed. Part of me decided that was okay since I was only really wanting to get diagnosed for like confirmation of what was up with me, but I didn’t need any accommodations for school so there wasn’t exactly a practical point.

Since then it’s been a cycle of “yeah I’m pretty sure I’m autistic” to “but I’m doing well right now, I’m not having that many issues, I must not be” to “okay yeah stress has made me stim more/get closer to overloading/making me go non-verbal or semi-verbal so like yeah I probably am.” I’ve done the tests, utilized aspietests.org and that one asperger’s test that went around a couple years ago in the #actuallyautistic tag (the one that was a circular polar plot of where a person fell on specific symptoms), all of which generally put me above threshold for autism.

I did notice as I took those quizzes, at first I would score lower because it’d be a statement that I’ve trained myself to be “more neurotypical” regarding statements like “I understand when friends need to be comforted” or “I cannot tell if someone is interested or bored with what I am saying.” So if I answered those based on my ability now, I am “normal,” but that discounts the fact I had to teach myself how to do that in the first place instead of it being a thing I could just do. When I answered those quizzes with the mindset “Okay, I can do this now, but I had to figure out how to do that,” the scores went closer to the average autistic scores.

The main thing for me now is to actually listen to what I need. So instead of forcing myself to not stim when I need to, or keep myself in an overloaded place out of politeness, to take care of myself first. Letting myself stim in public has been work as I’ve been trained out of it since I was a happy flapper kiddo, but I’m getting there, letting myself use stim toys in class, to not make myself stand still if I don’t need to.   

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(Late) April 30th

Prompt: Discuss autistic pride. What does autistic pride mean to you?

To me, autistic pride is accepting myself for who I am, to see being autistic as an asset, a strength, not a bad part of me or something I should fix to be like everyone else, and it’s the same for being queer for me too. A lot of it is active work on reminding myself of that, of dealing with it when others may make rude remarks, when someone tries to utilize the Bible against something I am. It’s actively reminding myself that it’s not that being autistic is a disability, it’s how society treats autistic people that makes it one.

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It’s been really cool going through these prompts. They’ve made me think, and that’s good.