itās kinda hilarious that people, when they learn iām autistic, they say high functioning, light autism. iām not like their severe autistic children.
i mean, with such an emphasis that i shouldnāt identify as autistic like their children, like they are trying to separate me from their tragic children, itās a bit awkward. i want to side with the severe ones, i want to raise their voice, and being put on the other side of the room and being told i donāt have as much difficulties, that my difficulties are less important than theirs because i look like i have my shit together? i have many things in common with the tragic ones tho. and my issues are quite heavy, and i donāt really has my shit together.
and it feels like they will only help me out if i let myself almost die and burn out completely.
i might not look as weird, but it didnāt disguise my weirdness to the other children who bullied and isolated me. it didnāt help me ask for help with making friends and keeping my grades up (it did help people misunderstood what kind of help i needed though). i still lack enough scripts, from asking for pizza to get a job. thanks to bullying, i learnt that my voice shouldnāt be raised or heard, and now itās pretty hard to do things, and while depression and anxiety are the big issues, their roots are autism and adhd.
telling me that i donāt look autistic doesnāt protect me from many issues that society brings to autistic people. it just leaves me voiceless more and more. why would i use my voice if i know you wonāt hear it?
looking less sick doesnāt usually help those who are sick, because they donāt receive help until they get very sick (have you heard of people who find out they have cancer on its last stages, and that they could be saved if they knew some time before?). looking less disabled doesnāt usually help those who are disabled, because they know thereās something wrong but people donāt listen, donāt try to find out until the person is falling apart.
itās not a compliment that i donāt look very autistic. i needed help, and maybe there wasnāt help when i was young but i needed help, and i needed awareness about my differences, and i needed support, and if i had it when young, maybe i wouldnāt have turned suicidal and anxious over school and social life (or maybe i would if the help wasnāt actually good, and thereās high chances it wouldnāt be, but if i had good and helpful help!). i worked myself to the bone to look normal while everything fell apart.
iām very good at looking almost normal while everything fall apart. thatās not a compliment. i sacrificed everything in my life to look normal, and i was the last in my life to fall and break, and then they diagnosed me.
"I sacrificed everything in my life to look normal"
This is 100% synonymous with my life experience. I'm trying to learn to love myself as I am from the inside out, and to unlearn some of those behaviors and things I trained myself in to look normal. I realized I was tearing my true self to shreds trying to be what I'm not.
