Autistic and I Have Friends

For my regular followers, the cover art work for my book is progressing, in as much as I've done one design and rejected it so my book is inching towards publication.

For those of you who are just dropping in, the title of this post was done in response to something that was told to my friend Michelle.

Michelle, through an unfortunate series of events, has wound up spending her teenage years in care. More specifically in placements that have not encouraged her to make friends with people.  Let's put it this way, in one placement one of the other girls used to go round pouring water into the sockets in an effort to start a fire and burn down the building.  Not exactly the sort of people you want to be hanging round with.

Michelle, thankfully went to the same church as me and we got talking one day.  One thing led to another and by the time she was posted back to Yorkshire we were firm friends.

However, at the placement where there was the little fire starter, Michelle was being picked on by the staff because she 'didn't have any friends'.  When she turned round and said that she had me, she was informed by a member of staff that "she can't be your friend, she's Autistic and they don't know how to be friends."

I've had a lot of accusations thrown at me over the years because I'm Autistic and I have to say that this one has to be one of the most insulting that I have ever heard!

Yeah, so we have to be taught empathy and compassion.  So what?  That just puts the responsibility on your shoulders to teach it to us, if you want us to be able to use it.  Once we've learnt how to use compassion and empathy we can't stop.  Once the ability is turned on, we can't turn it off so all we need is for someone, like my Mother, to put the time in to teach it to us.

We can be friends and we make for very loyal friends, probably because once we have found someone who can put up with our little querks then we stick to them like glue.  So what if when one of our friends has a problem we don't just sit there shaking our heads and going 'oh what a shame' but get up and go out of our way to fix said problem.  Doesn't that make us the better friend because we are willing to pour our time and effort in to fixing other people's problems before our own?

So what that we sometimes get confused and have to ask someone to explain it all to us?  We are human, we make mistakes like homo sapient do, at least we tend to be more ready to admit that we've done a goof up.  Doesn't the ability to say 'I was wrong' make a more forgivable friend?

So we seem to think sideways when compared to everyone else?  Doesn't that make us the more interesting friend?  The one that you can count on to bring something something new to the table?  Something different?

Or is that the problem?  Do people find different scary?  Are we the big bad Bogey man?  Are we the one where it's not what we've done, it's more the fact that we exist?

Well, I'm autistic and I have friends, even if with some of them I count them as my friends and they don't count me as theirs.  I hope that I haven't picked up any of those in recent years, I don't think I have since I left High School.