This month we are pleased to introduce J, an adult with Autism, who has offered to share her thoughts, advice and inspirations. In writing her series Faking Normal, J.'s goal is to help people understand what it's like to be someone on the Autism spectrum, and to offer hope to others with Autism and their families.
Hello, my name is J. It was first suggested that I might be Autistic when I was eleven years old. At that time, in the late 1980s, the idea of Autism was greatly informed by the movie Rain Man. To some extent, I think it still is. But I wasn’t obsessed with watching Wopner, I didn’t really care if I had four fish sticks or eight (as long as it was an even number), and if someone had thrown a box of toothpicks on the ground, I certainly wouldn’t have instantly known how many there were (unfortunately, I’m the boring kind of Autistic that doesn’t come with being a Hollywood-friendly savant). So I was treated for attention deficit disorder, anxiety, and several other things that made up a cocktail that would today be placed under the umbrella of the Autism spectrum.
I was very lucky. I had parents who recognized that I was not like the other kids and had the resources to send me to therapy. Even today, many children are not so lucky. I had a therapist who was extremely patient and his goal was to teach me to act like everyone else did, even though my brain functioned differently. I’m sure there’s a more clinical phrase for it, but I’ve always thought of it as “faking normal.”
One of the first things he taught me was that when you meet new people, you have to start out by introducing yourself, so that’s what I’m doing here in my first post. You have to tell people who you are and why they should be interested in what you have to say; you can’t just start talking. My impulse is to immediately launch into whatever it is about which I want to talk and I had to be trained that you can’t do that. My therapist compared it to watching a movie starting in the middle; when you speak to new people, you need to give some background and explain who you are.
So here’s who I am. I’m thirty-something years old, I’m married with a teenage stepdaughter and no children of my own, and I’m an attorney with a master’s degree in something utterly useless. Also, I’m female. Apparently Autism is much more common in men, so that part is kind of important. I was born and raised in the greater Seattle area, I have dark red hair and green eyes, my favorite color is green, and my favorite movie is The Usual Suspects (actually, it’s Clueless, but don’t tell anyone).
My main goal in writing this blog is to give hope to people who are on the Autism spectrum and to their parents. Look, an absolute cure for Autism may never be found, and frankly, I’m not sure I’d want to be cured. So I want to reassure people who are Autistic, or have someone in their lives who is, that it is not some kind of death sentence. I know that sounds melodramatic, but I’ve heard a lot of parents whose children have been diagnosed talk about it in such dire terms. I’m a fully functioning adult. I live independently, I’m in a normal marriage, and I have a normal education and career. Don’t give up on yourself or your child just because you or your child might think somewhat differently than do most people.
When I was discussing the creation of this blog with the director of WAAA, she aptly compared Autism to a vision problem or diabetes. Is it more work to have a child with any of those things? Absolutely. Do those conditions need to hold that child back in life? Not necessarily. You get them glasses or teach them how to recognize blood sugar spikes and inject insulin, and life goes on. I do also recognize that, as with vision difficulties or diabetes, Autism has a very wide range. Certainly people who are blind or regularly go into diabetic shock can never drive cars or pass themselves off as people without those conditions. However, on the milder end of things, it’s very possible to function just fine in society despite being a little bit different.
The most important service my therapist did was to teach me that it’s perfectly okay to think so-called weird things. Knowing when it’s not appropriate to act on them is what helps you interact with other people and fake normal. That’s why I’m here – to share my own experiences growing up with Autism and learning how to fake normal. I’m not normal, and I wouldn’t really want to be. I wouldn’t want to be the lady at the grocery store buying three oranges when two or four would make so much more sense. Even if she’s making a recipe that calls for three oranges, I really want her to just buy a fourth. Peel and eat it. Make juice. I don’t care, just get the fourth orange! But I can fake being okay with her orange choices long enough to not yell at her, and that’s what’s important. I buy my own fruit in even numbers, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
