No I haven't suddenly become clairvoyant, the TV program of the same name is still on at 10.40pm on ITV tonight but the article I read about it did make me stop and think.
As much as I appreciate the fact that Autism is no longer the elephant in the room, seen, heard but unmentioned, I still feel that it is being misrepresented.
I agree that the autistics that have amazing abilities need to be celebrated so people can see that this condition can be a good thing and the autistics who are struggling beyond belief also need their turn in the limelight so people can understand just how hard this condition can hit a family. I agree with it all but people seem to be gravitating towards believing that you have to be either an autistic savant or a hopeless 'window licker'.
This just isn't the way it is. There are those of us who are walking geniuses and there are those of us who are going to need constant care from birth to death but the greater majority of us are some where in the middle.
The problem for those of us who fall in the middle is that we learn to hide what we are, we learn to blend in, we learn to walk the walk and talk the talk of 'normal' folks. We learn to walk like you, talk like you and all the time we are screaming inside.
I have pushed myself like never before to publicise my book, going to craft fair after convention after fund raiser. I have paid my door fees, smiled the smile, talked to everyone who has come near my stall and managed to sell some of my books and my artwork. And I'm coming home after each one more and more exhausted.
Just last weekend I was at ExiliCon in Cambridge and it was a very gone convention as far as I was concerned. There was a fair number of people without there being hordes, I sold a fair amount of stuff and was told that my postcards are bargains. The train journey there and back was smooth with no hitches and the gap between platform and train was manageable without a ridiculous step up (the Birmingham train stations could take notes). All in all a good day. And I was shattered by the time we made it home. All I really wanted to do was crawl into a corner some where and blub until I'd cried a pond.
But I couldn't. Why? Because of my training.
Sitting in a corner and blubbing until you have cried a pond when you have had a good day is not normal and therefore is not done. Even though I know that it would make me feel better, I can't over-ride the conditioning to 'act normal'.
There are times when I have a raging case of the jealousies at Down Syndrome people. They seem to go through this life oblivious to their differences, accepting the hand that was dealt them without fuss and not questioning why people don't treat them the same way that they treat other people. I can't. I know that there is something that I'm not thinking, not doing, not saying that makes me different from everyone around my and that it makes me an outsider to society.
I know that I am 'wrong'. I don't know how I'm wrong, I don't know why I'm wrong in your eyes, all I know is that some how I am.
To borrow a quote from the great J.K. Rowling:
"It's not so much anything he's done, it's more the fact that he exists."
She could have written that about any Autistic that has made it through state schooling. We try and hide, we try and run but we can never avoid those that would rather we didn't exist.
So the next time you see an Autistic writer, an Autistic artist or an Autistic inventory trying to sell their stuff at a fair or convention, just remember that though we are smiling and chatting and showing off our wears, inside we are a mess of nerves and tension and conflicting instincts all buried beneath the mask of 'acting normal'. We may act normal and you may think 'you don't look autistic at all' but remember, just because we act normal doesn't mean that we are cured, we have just learnt to hide what we are.
Why do we have to hide what we are to get by when people with missing limbs don't?
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