#16d

sen demedin ki bana bekle diye. sen deseydin, beklerdim. geçmeyen zaman da üzmezdi beni yaralamazdı. çünkü bekle deseydin aklında nasıl geleceğin olurdu, aklımda nasıl geleceğin olurdu. sen ve ben aynı anda düşünürdük seni ve beni. şimdi ben seni düşünüyorum, gelip gelmeyeceğine dair en ufak bir fikrim dahi yok. aklından geçip geçmediğimi bile bilmezken geleceğini umut edip beklemek nasıl bi’ eziyet kendime yaptığım biliyor musun? kendime göz göre göre eziyet ediyorum. bi’ yanım avaz avaz bağırıyor gelmeyecek diye. susturamıyorum. diğer yanım o kadar büyük bir umutla bekliyor ki seni, kıyamıyorum. kendime kıyamıyorum ya. daha ne kadar üzülüceksin be kızım. daha ne kadar ağlayacaksın. doymadın mı? doymadın..

bana bekle demeyin. ben bir ömür istemesemde beklerim.

hi! i hope all still here are doing well! i have decided that i will be coming back here occasionally to vent, as well as to talk about my days or months. this was a very impulsive decision, and i might not come back for another day or month or so. nevertheless, this is how my life has been going: great!

- i am currently in my junior year of high school. it started out pretty rough, and i was drowning in my own tears from stress, not only from schoolwork, but from the burden that my adhd had become. but after years of questioning my self worth and effort, depression, shit grades (DESPITE spending hours on unfinished homework), and poor self esteem, I was (finally!) diagnosed last June by a medical professional. however, i wasn’t able to get my meds until october. after such, my life has almost improved; my grades are improving, my anxiety is (almost) manageable, and i’m not as everywhere as i’ve been before.

- i’ve been going out with this guy for almost 9 months, and i’m glad to say that it’s been some of the happiest and most fulfilling 9 months of my life so far. he’s beautiful, adorable, kind, sweet, hilarious, and everything i could ever ask for (as a 16 year old girl). i don’t know what else to say that wouldn’t make me a heap of soggy mush. my relationship with him has been the most trusting and most loving so far, and i wouldn’t ever wish for anything else.

- besides such, my friendships have been okay. it’s really difficult to manage school, a boyfriend, extracurriculars, work, sleep, and friends; i feel a little lonely from the bunch sometimes, but your junior year is the most important year here in the us, so it’s understandable.

- this year, i’ve been doing a lot more art. i currently get paid to do screenprint art downtown, which is one of the most enjoyable yet stressful things i could ever sign myself up to do. plus, i’m taking an ap art class this year! my work so far is okay and barely passing subpar, but i’m getting to where i want my work to be, so it’s all good!

- i’ve been in an existential rut for the past 6 months. i don’t know if i want to get into crazy detail about it, but for the most part, this world and the lives we lead are insane. i’ve learned to love myself more, appreciate what’s around me, and how to push myself for my future.

- after 4 years, i finally managed to push myself to do my schools cross country team! and boy, do i regret not doing it sooner! at the end of the season, i PR’d by 2 whole minutes in a 2 mile race!!! which is wack!!! with that, i also had so much fun running with friends. it was so painful, but so worth it!

Thank you for your message. I really value input from our autistic readers, and it is definitely true that autism isn’t “one-note”. We do our best to encourage varied portrayals of autism, and we try to show as wide a range of experiences as possible. There is a lot of variation within ASD, so we do run the risk of under-representing certain sections of the autistic population.

One thing that would help would be telling us which traits you do relate to and would like us to talk about more. A list of traits you do not relate to is less helpful if your aim is to help us to encourage writers to create autistic characters that you do relate to.

I do take issue with part of your message. I think it is extremely rude to contrast “positive” portrayals of “beautiful, successful” autistic people against the traits you mentioned (“unable to live independently, constant meltdowns, unable to handle school/jobs, no sense of style, nonsexual”). People can be beautiful and successful and have difficulties, the two are not mutually exclusive.

I know that your message was probably written in frustration, but the way it is written makes it sound like people with those traits are not beautiful or successful, and that characters with these traits are automatically negative portrayals. As I said at the beginning of this reply, I value input from our autistic readers, and I really want to represent autism in a way that you can relate to; however, it is important to me that encouraging representation of some parts of the autistic population is done without insulting others.

If you would like to re-send this message in a way that clarifies what you would like to see—and does so without insulting other people, even though your rudeness was unintentional—I will work on incorporating information that you feel better represents your experiences.

-Mod Snail

Is this really the kind of message that we get across? If we do, it is involuntary. Readers, and especially autistic readers, we’d appreciate your feedback if you feel that we tend to highlight one type of character over another or to focus on some specific traits too much. We want to do better. Our inbox is always open for remarks about what we post.