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I’m me, everything good and bad that comes with that. I’m autistic, that’s who I am, and I’m proud of that now. I won’t say I’ve always been proud; it’s been a hard journey to get to where I am, a lot of self-hatred and self-doubt, but now I’ve accepted that my autism has always been part of who I am, it always will be. I’m so much more than just being autistic, but I don’t need to justify myself – we always feel the need to do this, show we’re more than just our diagnoses to justify ourselves to allistic people, and frankly, we shouldn’t have to.
Most of us know from the minute we start to think consciously that we’re different, for a lot of autistic/neurodivergent people, though the diagnosis itself ends up happening later in life. Sadly, the medical understanding of autism is dreadfully inadequate and inaccurate, especially for diagnosing people who identify as women or gender diverse. For me, it happened early on. I also have ARFID, an eating disorder, and it affected my health from the moment I started eating, so my parents went searching for answers. We lived in England at the time, and the medical system was frankly terrible; they wouldn’t provide me a diagnosis but once we arrived in Australia I thankfully (in retrospect) received my diagnosis pretty quickly.
For all of us, diagnosis or not, navigating this world is difficult. It’s not in any way built for us, While I don’t fully agree with the view that all the struggles we go through as autistic people are the fault of the system and the allistic world we grew up in, I do think viewing it through this lens not only explains a lot about our shared experiences but also helps us realise it’s not all on us. We aren’t the problem. We’re often sidelined, treated as lesser than just for existing. If you’re able to mask, able to hide most of yourself to the world and maybe have the academic skills to match, then you might be able to get by, but that catches up to you…I know.
The need to mask can feel inescapable. For me, most of the expressions, body language, responses and actions I make during a conversation are done consciously. I have to be on the ball the entire time, I have to be thinking about all the possibilities for where a conversation might go, how the other person is interpreting my facial features and body language and whether I’ve provided every bit of context I need to just so I don’t get misinterpreted. It’s exhausting. Living in a world full of people on a completely different wavelength to you, with what I can only assume is a completely different interpretation of what’s happening around them, is incredibly difficult. For me, the first time I was able to unmask and just enjoy my social interactions came when I first found the Disability Collective. Meeting other autistic people, making my own little world of other neurodivergent people was, and still is, so fulfilling. Since then, most of the friends I’ve made are neurodivergent, in many cases, that’s just by complete coincidence (though a lot of credit to my autistic radar). It’s helped me realise that life and socialising can be enjoyable, it doesn’t have to be a tall task if I’m able to just unmask, be myself and connect with other people with a similar brain to mine.
While this article might feel a bit negative, the main thing I want you to take away from it is that you can find your people. You can find other autistic people to be around – if you search for them. If you search for groups like the disability collective or autism meetups outside of uni, you might find the validation and community you’ve been seeking. You might finally, for the first time in your life, feel like an autistic person in a world which works for you, rather than the one we were all born into…
Written by Joshua Nichols
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