I'm Not "Dramatic", It's Neurodivergence!

As a society, we absolutely need to stop using functioning labels to describe autistics. Here's why.

1. They're ableist. Functioning labels are independent of intelligence, and don't do a great job considering the abilities of an individual. By saying someone is low-functioning or high-functioning, we isolate them from their non-disabled peers by implying defectiveness. Think about it. We speak of autistic people the way we speak of a malfunctioning machine, which diminishes humanity and encourages stigmatization. Let's use the term low-functioning as an example. By referring to a person as low-functioning, we imply they can't get by on their own, and that their success in life comes only from the assistance of others. We degrade them to a term, a disability, rather than an independent person with ideas and talents. With each disablity hurdle comes an overwhelming skill.

2. They don't tell the whole story. Autism is a spectrum, and a very big one at that. By limiting autistics to the basic terms of low-functioning and high-functioning, we eliminate all possibilities of anything existing within these. Autistics are often pitied, mourned for their loss rather than celebrated for what they can achieve. We are more than disability. We are more than how well we function. Consider, also, the ability to mask by many neurodivergent people. Someone introduced as high-functioning will feel obligated to present this way to avoid stigma or harassment, and subsequently, might find themselves masking more and more to adhere to the expectations pushed on them. Some days, it's harder to function than other days. The depth of my disability does not determine my competency as a human being.

There's a stigma, most certainly, around all things autistic. There's a certain type of stigma towards those who self-identify as autistic, without having been told so by a medical professional. When most people think of autism, there's a very specific picture that comes to mind, and likely, I don't need to tell you what that picture is. The biggest issue with professional diagnosis in the autistic community is the broadness of manifestation of symptoms within individuals. A person told me, once, that I can't be autistic because I can hold a conversation, as if this was the end-all, be-all of any type of discussion.

Self-diagnosis is valid in the autistic community for a multitude of reasons. With outdated views comes narrow-minded expectations of what autism looks like, as if it's the same in everybody, as if there can't possibly be variations. It's expensive and hard, the lengthy process of evaluation, done by clinicians with likely no personal experience of autism at all. Clinicians can't speak for me, after brief meetings and hasty judgments in their offices. Clinicians can't speak for my life experiences when they don't know about them at all.

It's an emotional struggle, as an autistic, to try and determine whether it's worth disclosing my disability to an potential employer or a new friend. There's a sort of grapple between the two possibilities of disclosing and risking ableist treatment, or masking in the attempt to come across as no different than anybody else. With autism comes a hefty list of potential comorbidities, which more than likely provoke ableism all on their own.

As a youth, the hardest part of daily life for me was making friends and keeping them. I was comforted by old friends, disinterested in making new ones, but highly inept at the art of maintaining friendships. Anyhow, friends were unnecessary and uninteresting, fascinated by my life happenings and meaningless chatter forced mainly to fill the silence. As a lover of silence and solitude, I'd much rather have stayed home and kept myself company than attempt to engage in socialization I had no idea how to do. It all seemed so fickle, so empty, leaving me bewildered on the seeming importance of casual conversation, and the ways in which my conversation differed from anyone else's.

I am not having a temper tantrum.

Emotional dysregulation is a lifelong struggle, a constant battle of over-exaggerated reactions and dramatic responses. A meltdown is distinct from a tantrum in that it isn't done voluntarily, or to gain any type of attention. As a child, I would have had a very calculated tantrum to gain sympathy, or to get what I wanted from somebody easy to manipulate. Tantrums are controlled, and they can be stopped whenever an individual so pleases. As an adult, I feel frustrated by emotions I can't explain, or words that refuse to come from my mouth when I desperately want them to, and I find myself overcome by uncontrollable meltdowns that always end in shame and crippling embarrassment.

Sometimes, a meltdown leads to injury of oneself or an object. A hand slammed into a desk, or into a face; a cell phone thrown against a wall to break. I am not having a temper tantrum. Control your emotions. You're an adult. I have never felt like an adult. There's a perpetual sense of youth, incurable by age or time, trapping me within the mind of a fifteen year old, or within a giant living puzzle I can't find an answer to. As an autistic adult, I live for routine. As an autistic adult with comorbid ADHD, I become excruciatingly bored doing the same things.

As this is still something that needs to be said, do not support Autism Speaks. For a group that claims to help autistic people, it's nothing more than ableist patronization toward the very group they claim to protect. Such groups are harmful because of their portrayal and ignorance toward the autistic community. We are not something that needs to be cured, or an incomplete piece of a puzzle. Do not speak of us as though we cannot speak for ourselves, or as though we are all the same. Do not speak over us. Do not cast a neurotypical actor in the role of a neurodivergent character. Most importantly, do not use the puzzle piece.

Stimming is a term that refers to self-stimulatory behavior that is repetitive in nature, used as a way of regulating emotion in the neurodivergent. I've been doing it since I was a kid, without having the slighest idea of what my behavior represented. Despite, of course, being stigmatized due to its common indicativeness of autism, stimming is healthy and normal, and I love to see it in public. As a semi-verbal autistic, I have trouble especially in times of stress to produce coherent words, or even to produce words at all. I suppose this is why I took up writing.

The thing about autism is it's not a disorder. It's a neurotype, untreatable and not something to be cured. The neurodivergent are not dramatic. The disabled are not incompetent, despite the views of society on what competency looks like. To disregard a person based off of disability or disorder is ableism, which makes those of us that were born different learn to fear those who weren't.

Allistic is a word meaning non-autistic, a type of person which I'm different from in many ways. When my partner tells a joke, he usually has to explain it in the end, which ruins the humor in it. When something is being explained to me, it usually needs to repeated five or six times for me to understand. I am not unintelligent. I am not intelligent in the way an allistic would define the term, and this makes me feel stupid. As a person who's lived in the same city for twenty seven years, I still cannot get anywhere without using a GPS. I cannot read a map, and rely on memorized routes and rehearsed schedules to get me where I need to be.

There's something I've been bothered by lately. When a parent learns their beloved child is autistic, it becomes all about them. I'm exasperated and annoyed by autism moms on the Internet who make their child's diagnosis all about them. Your autistic child was not given a death sentence. You are not a saint for raising them. The thing about anything different is one can't understand an unlived experience. In the same way I, a white person, cannot speak for people of colour: the same way that my cisgender partner cannot speak for the trans community. In the same way, an allistic parent cannot speak for their autistic child.

Doctor Steven Shore, an autistic professor at Adelphi University, said the following: "If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism." To be autistic is to be diverse and creative, and certainly miles different than another autistic. I am asocial and react in extreme ways to a meaningless catalyst. An autistic friend of mine is extroverted and seems not to react at all.

I learned I was autistic at the age of twenty six, after a lifetime of feeling out of place and misunderstood. My teenage years were a flurry of frustration and short-lived friendships, irritated by my childish responses or my awkward conversation. I always wondered how the average person made such easy conversation when I struggle to simply introduce myself. There's a sense of relief, of comprehension, and then a large wave of imposter syndrome, to whom I'm definitely no stranger. I don't have particular skills or talents. I'm either in hyperfocus mode or nothing at all.

When it comes to autism, lack of understanding leads to lack of acceptance and ostracization in educational and professional settings. To work is mostly to mask to avoid attention, and in turn, to decrease one's quality of work by becoming overstimulated or hyperfocused on seeming normal. As a society, we must learn to accept and educate those of all different skills and backgrounds. I am rendered completely incompetent in environments with too much noise and fast-paced work. I am at peace and efficient in an environment that's easygoing and friendly. Like any other human, I am multi-faceted and individual, with my own sets of skills and interests.

I am many things: a parent, a queer advocate, a writer, an autistic. Despite being frustrated and isolated a lot of the time, my neurotype makes me me, and I deserve to be heard.