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What's It Like To Be Autistic?

I've never been asked this, but here's my answer.  Consider all of the social things you can do without thinking.   Now consider something you could do that would necessarily dominate your attention.  What would it be like if you always had to think about doing easy, natural things as much as you had to think about doing new and difficult things?  What if laughing at a joke took as much concentration as escaping a burning building?  What if producing one word in response to a stranger's greeting required as much consideration as defusing a bomb?  What if you had to think about how to move your face, how to modulate your voice, how to adjust your posture?  If you can imagine all this, you're on your way to understanding what it's like to be autistic.

There are some things others do automatically that I must do with great effort.  Other things I'm incapable of doing at all.  There is a social game in which strangers test each other by trying to communicate without saying very much.  No matter how I try, I can't participate in this game.  There is another game in which people say things that aren't true or pretend to be a certain way in order to see how someone else will navigate their mostly benign manipulation.  I can't play this game either.  I can only speak one way and I can only present my genuine self.  This is a serious disadvantage when I have to lie or pretend.

Socially, I can't improvise, take risks, or navigate gray areas.  If I must do a certain thing, but I can't be sure exactly what will happen when I do it, then I won't do it.  I'll literally do nothing.  Thus, I miss crucial opportunities.  Every single conversation, no matter who I'm with, is like walking blindfolded through a minefield.

I'm asocial.  I've never wanted friends.  I don't get bored.  I'm happiest being alone doing nothing.  Even being in the presence of one person in a quiet place costs too much energy for me because I have to think hard about every social behavior and because I have no impulse to socialize anyway.  Every interaction is like swimming the English Channel.  At the end, I am tired and battered.  I may be proud that I did it, but I certainly wouldn't want to do it every week.

Autism is a multi-system disorder.  It affects my eye muscles, my gait and balance, my metabolism, my entire nervous system, even my GI tract.  It's not just in my brain.  My social impairment is simply the most conspicuous one to me.  That is a profound and complex impairment that goes beyond just not being able to do some things.  Autism affects every aspect of the way I'm able to be a person.

I've heard autism described as a super power.  I'm capable of strong focus that, apparently, others aren't normally capable of.  I may be better able to be dispassionate when others are blinded by emotion.  I'm not ashamed of being autistic, but I don't feel superabled either.  Realistically, autism presents me more challenges than benefits.  If I could choose to be neurotypical, I would.

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