Autism, From Someone Who Is On The Spectrum

Autism: How it is Superpower Instead of Disability (2018) (Part 1)

This month is Autism Awareness Month. Today is World Autism Awareness Day (Autism Speaks calls it Light Up Blue Campaign) because more boys are affected than girls. The Autism community does not like Autism Speaks because they want a cure for Autism. There is no cure for Autism. But the Autism community has made this month Autism Acceptance Month and today is World Autism Acceptance Day.

"Can you tell I have autism just by looking at me? Many disabilities are invisible. Do not judge what you cannot see."-Laura Henretty

This quote is how I feel many times over the last 20 years during my journey to come to terms with my autism diagnosis. Every time I have gotten to the point where I accept I am Autistic, there is someone around me who is clueless about Autism. So, I have been educating many people what it is like to have autism, at least for me. In order to understand why I am talking about Autism, you must get to know me, first. I was diagnosed with Autism but because I am so high functioning many people have told me many times I could not be Autistic. I was four years older than the average diagnosed as a toddler. Also, Autism is more common in boys than girls. So, most of my life there have been so many people, who did not believe I was Autistic. The formal diagnose was PDD-NOS, which is a catch all on the Autism Spectrum Disorder if you do not have Classic Autism (The thing most people think when you say Autism) or Asperger Syndrome (Another type of high functioning). So, once I had the diagnosis of Autism, my autism journey started with the local public school. I was so high functioning that I confused the local school system in whether I belonged in resource classes or the mainstream classroom. I have always been smart but because I struggle with reading and writing, they thought I belonged in resource class more than mainstream classroom.

By the age of 12, I was being bullied so much for being different and the fact they kept pulling me out of mainstream classroom, almost every afternoon I came home in tears. The following year, we decided it was time to take me out of public school and put me in a private school. The Super Court officially rule in March 2017, that school system must give student the tools to successful make meaningful progress versus minimum progress (Supreme Court Rules in Favor of a Special Education Student). Which would have helped me during my public school and private schools because my parents fought both the public school and my private school to tools I need. This private school was supposed to be a place where I could grow into myself, which did not happen until after graduating in 2008. A few factors played in to this. The first reason, before I turned 18 was to make sure my accommodations were ready when I decided to go to college or if I decided to go college. I will never forget the doctors telling my mother (because she was the only parent with me at the testing), I would not make it in college and if I did I would have to take one class at a time especially when it came to sciences. I was able to do more than that I was able to take two or three classes a semester to graduate. The second reason, I was told by a teacher in my senior high school that I would not make it in college so do not even worry about it. The day after she told me that I signed up for community college. The last reason is the main way my autism affected me is when I am overwhelmed in sensory or in general...I cry and many people have yelled at me for getting overwhelmed.

Over the last couple years, I have realized that those who yell at me for getting overwhelmed, plus the bulling I experienced over the years by many people have led to me to have anxiety. Those people at this private school were not as accepting as we first thought just like the public school, they even divided us into a group of mainstream children and special education kids. For the first 12 years of my autism journey, I had the label of special education kid until I graduated high school and I finally was able to be like everyone else with a few differences. So the last 10 years have been the second part of my autism journey. I enrolled at the local community college in Spring of 2008. I did Student Orientation on my 19th Birthday. The first semester was Fall of 2008, I took Student Development Skills and Reading Development. It was not until that point in my life, no one taught me the point of reading. Reading resource teachers could not figure out a way to teach me instead of being bothered with that they just passed me along through the system. In the last month, I figured out I actually enjoy reading if it is audio-books instead of paperback book. Over the next couple years, I gained more skills and came out of my shell more. My grades were good enough to be invited to join Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society in Fall of 2010. In the spring of 2012, I had a friend who was involved in Student Government Association suggest that I get involved as a senator.

When I graduated in the Spring of 2016, I was vice-president/president/co-president for Student Government Association for school year of 2015-2016. In the Spring of 2014, I joined Student Ambassadors which added new skills on how to be part of my community. In the Spring of 2015, I was invited to join The National Society of Leadership and Success, which was based on my Student Leadership skills and Grades and to become an inducted member was a four step process completed in Spring of 2015. During the 2015-2016 School year, I was Student President for The National Society of Leadership and Success. In the Fall of 2015, I was invited to join the Sigma Kappa Delta Honor Society for my English grades. The more I was involved on campus, the more I figured out my difference made it easy for me to look at student leadership situations differently, which is great thing. In the Spring of 2016, I was able to prove the doctors and that teacher from high school wrong; I walked across the stage and got my associate degree with a GPA of 3.5 and Honors along with all the other stuff I accomplished with my degree. When I was taking Biology 101 in the Fall of 2014, I figured out that the Autistic traits rise is connected to a rise in societies' use of Technology.

Now after 20 years on my autism journey, I have finally learned to embrace the fact that I have Autism and some abilities that come with it. One the biggest abilities that came with my Autism is my view of the world, which I show when I am taking pictures of the world around me.

"Photography is an art of observation, it's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place, and it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with how you see them." -Elliott Erwitt