CW: cartoon violence, graphic imagery, #metoo, Pulse massacre, Copious Steven Universe spoilers, copious Sorry to Bother You spoilers, copious interest stanning for Boots Riley, functioning labels, passing as neurotypical, whiteness, cishetness

“Look at this place, look at your faces.
They’re shining like a thousand shining stars
Isn’t it nice to find yourself somewhere different,
Why don’t you let yourself just be wherever you are.
Why don’t you let yourself just be somewhere different.
Why don’t you let yourself just be wherever you are.”

“Be Wherever You Are” — Steven Universe (SU)

Allow me, oh Rose muse, to quote freely and under the doctrine of fair use, from The Crystal Gems and Sir Boots of Riley and The Coup of Oakland Fuck Yeah.

I’ve had two different coming out processes around being Autistic.

In the same year.

I’d been struggling to find a way to disclose as Autistic for a while. Getting close to finding support materials, then delaying it. Starting to come out, getting scared off (or talked out of it by some allistic friend). Trying again, melting down, waiting. It took two years of sustained burnout, very detailed visual thinking (note to self: don’t read graphic #metoo depictions, don’t read any accounts of the Pulse massacre either), sensory overload and hyperfocusing to decide to take matters into my own hands. Which I did: I took the tests, read the DSM autism criteria, watched videos from Autistic YouTubers, found basic support materials for autistic women, put it all together, done.

I started telling friends online, and discussing things with other Autistic people. Nobody objected, everybody was supportive. Which was a huge relief! “I’m Autistic! Yay.”

I also had a lingering doubt that there was more to this for me than what I kept reading about in the books I picked up, all of which were geared toward Aspies, because that’s what I could find in terms of Autistic 101 self-help books. Once I got past the diagnostic criteria (which was a fit), much of what was being presented as “life solutions” seemed too “shiny“, white, frequently cishet, and written for someone who is closer to “almost neurotypical” (or who views themselves as such). A notable exception to this: Cynthia Kim’s excellent “I Think I Might Be Autistic“, which I found to be much more accessable, informative and not overwhelming in tone or scope.

Further, I deliberately rejected being part of mainstream society as much as possible in my teens (both by choice and out of survival), and shifted my focused to activism, the arts and spirituality. (I also worked full time in the computer industry for years, which felt like living a “dual life”, and frequently resulted in my being notebook-throwing level miserable. I left that behind in 2001.) In terms of useful life wisdom, these books weren’t providing me with much. I was more interested in making informed decisions about if I should try to integrate into society as an Autistic person from a more well-informed place — or more likely, have better tools to inform people with in the creative and activist circles I’ve been part of most my life — but I tried to keep an open mind. “Can’t I just live in a van?”

“All I want to do is see you turn into a giant woman.” – SU

“This is where we get our grub on!” – Sorry to Bother You (STBY)

“Use your white voice.” – STBY

As I said earlier, while I fit the criteria for autism (readily) and “passed” all the self-assessment tests, I didn’t really fit the “Aspie” social profile, at least as it gets typically presented, either. I’ve also been part of crip liberation movement work, and there’s overlap between the disability community and the trans and intersexed communities I’m a part of. I’m also an anarchist and communist. The idea of looking at “Autistic success” in terms of work and monogamy is discomforting, if not offensive.

Nevertheless, my lack of finding a place that fit made me nervous. If I’m not “high functioning”, and I’m not in need of extensive daily support, then who am I? The best solution I could find to “work doesn’t work for me” is “start a business”, which doesn’t work for me either; even if I wanted to do that, I’d need to spend money to handle things that I don’t have the ability to juggle, or become a boss. Allow me to quote from the IWW Preamble here: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.”

It started to sink in that I was a lot more autistic than I had presumed at first. I figured out that I mapped to “low functioning” every bit as much as “high”. Possibly more.

The last “high functioning” book I read was full of dire predictions about the risks of being unassessed later in life, and rather unpleasant (and paradoxical) attempts to unmask whoever was reading it as well. The cognitive dissonance of it was too much to bear, and I started to come unglued.

I am very good at patching my head together on my own. (I’ve got lots of practice.) Life throws something at me, I learn from the experience and adapt. When “something” is more like seeing movies in your head for a month because you read some horrible story, or a series of them, or something affecting you so deeply that it feels like your skull is being split open — that’s OK. I’d learned to take this sort of thing in stride. Pulls out industrial grade self-care kit, gets to work.

So, I know how to fix things, even if i’m the thing being fixed, and I’m the one doing it. Yay! Problem solved, right?

No. I was a mess.

“This is when I started to panic. A little bit.” – me, mimicking Garnet

“Sit. Down.” – STBY

I was in freefall. I pieced my head together well enough, but everything was setting me on edge. It was as if I was living in an meltdown tunnel.

I started reviewing my past in more depth, my childhood in particular. My childhood had no filter. I stacked rocks. I stared at shiny things. I’d read the encyclopedia, or go through the same book for hours. I’d stim in whatever way I’d please, or get stopped from doing so. While a lot of things were rather intense (I remember throwing up in the green stamp store as a toddler because everything was way too green), the most overwhelming thing in my environment were authority figures and other kids. I’d run into closets at the school, chase my crush’s boyfriend when my neurology spiked, reinvent the rules of a game on the fly while we were playing it together, fight back. When I got sufficient support from teachers (which did happen twice), I’d focus on school work, and start to relax. In those cases, the teacher served as a sort of stand-in for friends. The moment I’d move to the next grade, the support was gone, and everything would fall apart again. I decided to bail on society when I was 14, left high school when I was 16, and save for a few rather miserable years where I half-assedly and very angrily tried to assimilate in my 30s, that’s where I’ve lived since. This is not an “Aspie success story”. I’m not even sure it’s an Aspie failure story. The “fitting in, eventually, but still being sort of quirky” narrative wasn’t me. (I also think that narrative is assmiliationist, but it seems like some people are able to sustain that better than I can — frequently at a cost.) I’m not sure that I’m that different from when I was younger, I’m just an older, more experienced, less traumatized version of myself.

Eventually, I started finding more cogent answers on the basis of lived experience, not just diagnostic criteria. I pieced together that “Asperger’s” no longer exists, “functioning labels” are flawed and offensive, and that there’s community to be found across the entire spectrum — but that it’s less likely to be found in a book from a mainstreaming-focused publisher. I was wounded, but I was magical as well.

“You might not believe it
You might not believe it
But you got a lot in common, you really do
You both love me and I love both of you”

“You Both Love Me And I Love Both Of You“- SU

“We are all part of one spectrum.” – Amy Sequenzia

What saved me was reading people who have a strong self-advocacy narrative around being disabled. I can’t integrate into society, I’ve tried. Perhaps in the future, I will, but I’m not going to risk setting myself up for more failure. It looks way too much like “I didn’t even know that you’re autistic!”, which is both offensive and not who I am. People know that I’m different well enough to comment on it, resist it, give me grief over it all my life. I don’t hold any resentment over that (now, at least), but I get the message. It hurts to say that I’m “too weird” for even “weird subcultural spaces”, let alone mainstream ones, but I am in a lot of cases. I discovered support materials that were more of a fit – “Loud Hands“, “All The Weight of Our Dreams“, autistic bloggers who write about being Autistic as a disability (including bloggers with multiple disabilities), all from a self-advocacy and crip liberation perspective.

I also started to realize – admit to myself, really – that I’m not always capable of speech. Definitely not fluent speech. When I started writing this, I was coming off of two days where I could barely speak. This is probably tied to burnout in part, but I’ve always preferred not speaking. When I speak, I’m not speaking as much as translating (writing is the same way for me, it’s just easier), and unless I’m scripting, I’ll have to pause at times (or go mute for a bit) to “catch up”. When I am speaking, I do love to talk about interests with friends that I trust, one-on-one.

Having challenges speaking was the last piece in the puzzle (cue Autism $peaks détournement) — accepting this was what allow me to feel whole again. I let go of “Autistic as in different” and grew into “Autistic as in disabled”. This also maps to a growing body of information that women and non-binary people (and I’m presuming, trans people as well) have “more pronounced symptoms”, or as I prefer to look at it, “That’s right, we’re even more fucking awesome, even as many of us have more challenges living in a society that was never designed for us in the first place“. I gave myself permission to say goodbye to the high-functioning (?) person I thought/hoped that I might be, but that also left me with a strong “wait…oh, shit, this is deeper than I thought” feeling when I considered that as a possibility, so I could be who I really am, without reservations.

“It’s over, isn’t it? Isn’t it?
Isn’t it over?
It’s over isn’t it? Isn’t it?
Isn’t it over?
You won and she chose you
And she loved you and she’s gone
It’s over, isn’t it?
Why can’t I move on?
It’s over, isn’t it?
Why can’t I move on?”

“It’s over isn’t it” – SU

“A cop lives inside of all our heads
We’re gonna kill him dead, we’re gonna finish what we started
A boss lives inside of all our heads
We’re gonna kill him dead, we’re gonna finish what we started”

“Finish What We Started“- Anti-flag

“This is Cassius Green. Sorry to bother you,” – STBY

So…what’s next?

Running after some “You’re almost neurotypical but not quite, back to work” unachievable goal that recedes off into the horizon endlessly (until it all falls apart and I’m left exhausted and unfiltered), will simply never work for me. In a lot of ways, being someone who integrates into the frequently ableist (and racist, and sexist, and…) activist spaces I was part of doesn’t really work, either.

If the theme of my childhood was being who I truly am without reservations (and paying the price for that), this is the recapitulation.

Sing it loud and proud: I’m a disabled, brown, gendervague, neuroqueer Autie.

I wanna know you, know I know you know me
I want a fire that can extinguish the sea
I wanna crush my loneliness into dust
Please ride with me until this whole thing busts

Anitra’s Basement Tapes – The Coup

Here’s to the new life, friends. Forward.