#asspie

[brendita-13]

Love her artwork 🖤

[growingupautie]

Anti-NT or Misanthropy part 3.

Q: Dear Nathan. Your last response has given me a bit of perspective on my own personal story and made me realize the extent to which, particularly in the crucial years of High School, I have been extremely fortunate.

I moved to Italy from the US when I was 12. To say I stuck out like a sore thumb would be an understatement. I was one of the few foreigners living in the town, I was (whether or not everyone had heard of the diagnosis) evidently non-neurotypical and dressed in a way that was borderline acceptable in the US but totally out of place in fashion conscious Italy. Most of the younger population of the town knew who I was.

I was most definitely a minority of one.

Slowly but surely, throughout the course of seven years, I moved towards a deeper and deeper form of acceptance, until I finally felt free. I recognize that I had some pretty rare catalysts to help me achieve that.

My parents made sure to get to know teachers and make sure the ones they trusted knew of my diagnosis. I’m sure my parents played an eloquent case on my behalf. Teachers tend to prefer intellectually inclined, interested students who respond well to clearly structured activities and have no trouble with rote learning over unmotivated students. I was generally treated very well by the teaching body. Their support was important in keeping me with a sense of self-worth and acceptance. For a while, I wanted to be a teacher. I benefited from both my social class, domestic stability and academic ability. Though this shouldn’t negate the amount of work and energy I invested and how hard things often were for me, these are things I was born with.

Also, the way the Italian school system is structured is (unintentionally) very autism-friendly. In fact, it was one of the reasons we moved in the first place. The school system keeps classes together for many years so small groups of students (25 per class) get to know each other almost as a second family. You tend to stay in the same classroom all day and everyone takes the same classes, week in week out. In a way, I was treated as an awkward cousin from a distant part of the family. Also, the high school system is vocational, grouping people with similar interests and academic abilities into separate schools, reducing potential tensions between ‘geeks’ and ‘jocks’. By high school, I was in a class of very studious people, with little or no contact with the more violent students I had encountered in middle school.

Most importantly, without which all the above wouldn’t have been enough, I benefited from the moral integrity, empathy and strength of character of a few classmates that saw beyond my awkward behaviors to the human behind them. I owe much of my happiness to them.

I survived middle school thanks in part to a very popular and empathetic student who didn’t allow jokes on my behalf to get too far out of hand. I was rejected often (sometimes very painfully) but rarely deceived. Though there was widespread violence at the school, there wasn’t any concentrated effort on people’s part to violently suppress me. I was deeply unhappy. But I wasn’t scared.

In High School, one of the defining moments for me was joining a band. I had been playing the bass 2 weeks and decided I wanted to be part of a band. I went to one of the many political gatherings at my school, thinking it was probably the best place to find musicians, and walked up to some random guy and asked him if he would be in my band. He could have said no. He could have laughed in my face. He could have forgotten about it. He could have used my naivety for a prank. Not only did he say yes, he also matched me up with a drummer friend of his who was looking for a bassist at the time. Being part of a band made an enormous difference to my social life in High School. We didn’t last long, but we lasted enough. I picked up social skills and norms like a sponge. By the end of two years, I had kept some and dropped the rest. I like to think it was like learning a new instrument; I had started with scales and progressed to symphonies.

There were many moments in which things could have gone horrifically wrong. I could have been lured into an abusive situation instead of band practice. I could have been beaten to a pulp on the concrete outside the metro station for reasons I could never have understood. I could have been taken advantage of and blamed for a crime I never committed.

I had watchful angels.

Perhaps what the main obstacle for a lot of people trying to befriend someone on the spectrum is the fear that their boundaries won’t be respected if they do. That they’ll be followed around. That their friends will make fun of them.

My classmates, besides being wonderful people, knew that I was going to be part of the classroom family for five years, so we had time to bond in a way we wouldn’t have had I seen them for a class a week. The structures I was in favored long term investment in people over short term ‘make your friends laugh about the weird kid’ mentality.

A final word on the diagnosis question:

It didn’t take long for that doctor to diagnose me. I was a clear case of autism, exhibiting most of the typical behaviours of an Aspie. It probably took him about 30 seconds to get the gist of the case. I re-read the diagnosis which he emailed back to me when I got in touch with him last year. I was described as a clear-cut case of Asperger’s syndrome. In his office in Boston that morning 12 years later, the question lingering in the air was not whether the diagnosis was accurate. I’ve acquired significant social and coping skills, but my basic traits haven’t changed that far. The question was whether it was meaningful. At the end of our appointment, he told me that ours was more a conversation between old friends than between doctor and patient and didn’t charge me. I loved him for that.

What I was rejecting was not so much my identity – being a ‘self-hating’ autistic person as you say – as the clammy feeling of the hospital still lingering on my body. The demeaning ritual of special ed “speech and language therapy” classes, grouped with pupils with severe learning difficulties. Seeing myself as the observed in a science experiment. Perhaps I threw the baby out with the bath water. I think in hindsight I see the value of diagnosis.

The summer before going to University, I had opened up completely about my diagnosis and my history to the guys I keep closest to me. We spent the summer with a running joke. They would insult my special ed. Teacher in the US every time I made a clumsy move like missing a volleyball or spilling something, calling him a useless pile of junk and a failure as an educator. In my heart of hearts I whispered “I win.”

I guess I didn’t really reject autism. It’s just that in my high school years I never was forced to wear a neurotypical mask. I went from being begrudgingly tolerated but isolated at middle school to being so completely accepted by the last year of High School that the distinction between myself – because as far as autism is concerned, I had always conceived of myself as a minority of one – and the others, ceased to be meaningful. I knew them down to their most intimate frailties and up to their utmost strengths. I praised them and they praised me. We were free to be individuals. The label ceased to be meaningful because they saw leagues beyond it. The autism toolbox remained in the shed. I thought I didn’t need it anymore.

As I write to you, I am in my last year of University the week before spring term starts.

Moving to the UK for University, I came up head to head with problems that I hadn’t faced before. The rigid routine of Italian high school faded away and the support of family and friends became more distant as I moved away and my friends began University in Italy. I didn’t come face to face with abuse or misunderstanding or oppression. I came face to face with entropy. All at once, I had to build my own social circle from scratch, dictate my own times, do my own cooking. It was a kind of pain I had never encountered before.

It was the first time I really, really doubted my ability to cope and make good decisions for my own well-being. I was very offended when my mother suggested I request extra time on my University Exams for ‘my autism.’ In retrospect, some autism support, not so much on academics but on life skills would have been useful.

I suppose part of my reason I burnt those documents in my first year of University was that I was rejecting the idea that I needed extra support ‘for disabled students’.

As it stands, I’m much better off than I was then, but the doubts haven’t gone away and building up a stable social life in a universe of fleeting encounters and pleasant but sometimes distant acquaintances still isn’t easy. My cooking has improved vastly but is still a chore.

What I wrote to you at the beginning of ‘wanting to take myself off the centre of the Universe’ needs to be explained a bit better. What I really realized being in the UK was the importance of contributing to something much bigger than myself in order to find happiness and meaning.

I meant, in my engagement with this page, to deepen my understanding of how the autistic community perceives itself. The oppositional imagery NT/autistic was a surprise for me since, considering I am still am the only autistic person I know personally in Italy and I knew my class well, I never thought of myself as ‘neurodiverse’ in opposition to ‘NTs’. Also, I had never heard of or encountered Autism Speaks until last year and it had no impact whatsoever on my years in Italy. It seems to be one of the main factors creating the opposition in the first place.

At the moment of writing to you, I am preparing a speculative application to Specialisterne, an organization that specializes in helping people on the Spectrum into employment by offering training and a link to corporate partners. I’d like to write posts for them, since they do not have much of a media outlet, particularly on google and that would help their outreach. Perhaps ‘autism toolbox’ (great concept from one of the comments) would be a good place to start. Any other advice from you or others is much appreciated

Peace

A: Our lives mirror each other quite a bit minus the traveling. I've had some pretty bad culture shock at times when it came to switching schools. I originally went to a kindergarten close to my home where I was isolated from the rest of the kids. They felt like something was up with me from the getgo and made sure I never got too close. When I was ripped away from there to a new school, it was a small Christian school where I managed to befriend a few people, possibly through the prodding of teachers and the principal.

After a few years though, my friends left the school and I was left with people who didn't care for me, and people who bullied me.

After a few year at that school, I was taken out for a public school for financial reasons, and that barely lasted a week for two. I was bullied by almost every kid I met. One kid grabbed me by my backpack and pushed me in the circle of the hall and into my class because he was "helping me" understand the one direction only rule they had in the hallway. After a week or so of this, and me drawing on my notes in class, a teacher grabbed me by the shirt and drug me into another classroom where there were several other mocked me, and tore up my artwork, telling me it was a waste of time, and I would never amount to anything. I was back in my Christian school by the next week.

Back in the Christian school, I continue being bullied until I joined the basketball team, and through showing some skill and oddly enough becoming somewhat "volatile" (when needed) towards bullying I became more accepted. But as usual, once I found acceptance through hard work and perseverance I was taken from that comfort and put into a completely new place. Middle school at a "Magnet School" where you could specialize in Engineering, Arts, or the Performing Arts. I went into music as I have been a musician for years at that point.

The school was a hodgepodge of races and a "cliques" none of which I was welcomed into. I made myself known as the "goody-two-shoes" on day one and that really wasn't the best move in the world. Over time, I was bullied so mercilessly that the assistant principal gave me permission to stand up for myself and fight back. I learned martial arts and took up skateboarding. Started getting into shape, and literally became even more volatile (when needed) people started to leave me alone.

I switched to the arts program after a while and found some acceptance with the artist's kids who were musicians, and artists like myself. They started a band and added me because I was one of the only ones who could actually play, and I helped teach them some things as well. A few of them actually skateboarded, so we did that together. Though looking back there was so much micro-bullying and mockery I'm not sure how I can put too much of a positive spin on that. Honestly, I was never even invited to eat lunch with them so it was a little like I was just kept around for usefulness.

By high school, they had "disbanded" the band, and put a new band together without specifically me. I created a new group of friends which were basically other outcasts. Earned my respect in this new school with many of the groups and even managed to become king of prom by the end of it despite maintaining my outsider status. Like you though when I went to college (from home) the lack of structure was my Achilles heel. There were so many new rules, almost all of them were illogical. Very few students and teachers who wanted to help me.

I struggled to get anything done but managed to keep a passing grade the majority of the time. I managed to get my degree even after my life fell completely apart and my group of high school friends who had followed me to the same college had, for the most part, turned against me and (longer story there.) The point being, that diagnosed or undiagnosed, we Autistic people go through some very similar issues. A lot of times our parents struggle and often fail to recognize what it would really take for us to succeed and flourish.

You and I both were young Autistics at a time where it was not as understood as it is now. We are not out of the dark ages just yet, but we certainly know more than we did then about who and what we are, what we need, and what we should do about it. Parents are just starting to catch up to it as well hence the need to fight off groups like Autism Speaks, dangerous "cures," and ABA techniques which often involving torturous methods. Fighting against these people as hard as we often do can certainly make it seem like we are against the entire NT population which is why I try to show some positivity in my comics as well.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that you were a "self-hating" Autistic, but that there were many out there. I sensed your story was similar to the one you eventually gave me. We are all at a different place in understanding at any given point in time and that's alright. I would definitely be in support of an Autism Toolbox thought I myself don't have the time to create or maintain one. (At the moment.) You have probably noticed the Autism community as a whole is quite divided in several ways. The want for a "cure" vs fighting against one. The acceptance of ABA and Autism Speaks vs fighting against them. We all need to do a better job of getting to the truth through facts and coming together for the greater goal of acceptance.

If you are going to write on our behalf, I would focus on the positives and negative, and also on the explaining actions, and needs, all in a way Neurotypical people will understand. A good piece of advice I always give is to scroll the Autism Boards on Facebook and look for common issues with your own life to write about. That way it's relevant to everyone and personal at the same time. And treat everyone as if they are where they are in life understanding that they may not have come in contact with the same information you have, and may not have come to the same conclusions you have. I think you are inquisitive enough, and understanding enough to find common ground and write from a good perspective.

I hope that helps. Commentors, any advice?

-Nathan

[crybabyx3m]

[crybabyx3m]

[halopigg]

If you’ve gotten a work email from me in the last year or so, you may have noticed the signature contains my portrait by the homie @asspie! Yesterday she released two new face filters here on the ole’ Instagram! Go check her page out and try them yourselves! #Asspie #🍑🥧 #SadClown #ArteDeCecelia (at Los Angeles, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CQ6b8UvHKBt/?utm_medium=tumblr

[halopigg]

Occasionally, my friend #CeceliaPerez aka @asspie opens up $25 portrait commissions and I was quick on the reply this time! I sent her a few recent pics and she came up with this gem, thank you so much #Asspie!!!! Based on a #SomeoneElsie (and fake knuckle tats) by @chinnybond, hat by @wrung and @felipepantone, and weed smoke by my employers @sonomapac! Keep your eyes peeled to her IG stories to see when she opens up more commissions and you also just may see the progress video of this drawing! #🍑🥧 #wrung #felipepantone #halopigg #chinnybond #SupportArt #BuyArtNotDrugs #25dollaholla https://www.instagram.com/p/B-M6jZpnoau/?igshid=183r4pe83hfbg

[turgut90]

STFU and just watch.. #MyCake #AssPie #JiggyAss #twerking #twerkvideos #AssClap #wien #österreich #Azerbaijan #aztagram #opurem (в Fam Residence)