Walk On Podcast Episode 51 : On the Spectrum!!
I would sit on my pretty Barbie sheets, snot running down my face, eyes puffy red, gasping for air, mid melt-down, while my mother stood over me screaming. It wasn’t that I was trying to be difficult, it’s that the dress clothes I was supposed to wear made me feel like I was dying. It wasn’t that I was too lazy to go into the grocery store, or that I was trying to be mean/grumpy/a little fucking brat/disrespectful, it’s that the variance in temperatures, the loud buzz of the florescent lights, the smells, the other people, the incessant beeping, made it hard to be sweet. It wasn’t that I was ungrateful for vacations or parties or romantic evenings, it’s that I didn’t realize I wasn’t smiling. It’s not that I blatantly ignore a text, bail on plans, or get lost on the way to functions, out of some personal grudge or malice, or malleable character flaw, I am simply autistic.
I sat down at a piano the first time in a church sitting next to my father, who only lives in a couple of my memories. I loved the sensation that the keys made—the delightful little thump of the hammer striking the strings. This began my lifelong love affair with the sensory experience of making music. Any time I sat down with an instrument, I would obsess over teaching myself how to play it. I started writing and composing, printing out my lyric sheets in rainbow comic sans, with underscores to mark the length of notes.
I was hyperlexic; meaning, I just knew how to read. Beginning at age 4 (that I can remember) I started reading books on my own and didn’t ever stop. I read like I breathe, constantly, and almost automatically—the words just fill my head with images and I lose all sense of here and now. I love it. I started writing, too. I made a little newsletter in my diary, I created elaborate worlds for my friends and I to play pretend.
My inner world is so vast that I can be happy sitting in a room alone, just thinking. I can dissociate so easily that, in my childhood, when something horrible or even just boring was happening, I could glaze my eyes over and disappear, with no memory of what happened IRL, but a vivid one of whatever mind path I was traveling down. This was a seed that would bloom into a deeply healing and reality-bending transcendental meditation practice.
I stim by dancing, I can pick up choreography after seeing it once. I started choreographing whole routines when I was 8. I stim by singing, I practice constantly, and have for at least 31 years. I stim by walking, I’ve put in miles, hunny!! I stim by swimming. I stim by rubbing my cuticles raw and bloody. I stim by chewing on the sides of my cheeks, playing with my bottom lip, bouncing my leg.
I mask and mask well. Mostly because I never had a word for what was “wrong” with me, so I just pretended I was normal, wishing my alien family would beam me up and save me from this confusing hellscape. People always complimented me on my ability to be very social, while remaining hospitable to those who weren’t as good at it, and without feeling the gravity of what I was saying, I would reply, “I’m a really good actor.”
I burn out. I shut down. I hibernate. I go quiet. I bundle up. I watch the same 3 things I’ve watched 1o0 times, because knowing what line comes next makes me feel safe. I lose friends, I lose jobs, I lose opportunities, I let bridges burn, too tired to argue, I recharge, I try again.
I wouldn’t change a thing.
I am autistic. I did not have a word for my feelings of "different" until I was 27 years old. This has been a constant source of suffering, judgment, oppression, rejection, and struggle for me. It has also been my biggest blessing. My autism makes me who I am, and I wouldn't change a thing about it. Hear my experience with the light and the shadow, the wins and the losses, hear how this optimizes me for non-conformity, creativity, and social justice. Let this inspire you to release yourself and others from the expectations of the white supremacist-capitalist-cisheteropatriarchy. May we all find the peace of just being.
