This isn’t a post about how people overdiagnose themselves with autism. Nor is it a post about how assholes use autism as an excuse to be horribly racist individuals hellbent on destroying the world and reforming it in their own malignant image. 

It’s mostly a post about how I am 99% sure I have autism, even though I don’t currently have the resources to get a diagnosis. Nor am I sure how getting a diagnosis in later adulthood would help me, apart from confirming what I already know. 

One of the things that has helped me come to this conclusion is working in ABA therapy. I’m currently a behavioral technician for kiddos with autism, helping them develop social and communication skills so that they can thrive in a neurotypical world. 

First off, I want to make it very clear that the ABA therapy of today is absolutely not the original ABA therapy that was essentially a form of aversion therapy against autistic people (in other words, torture), and was the basis for Conversion Therapy. I literally wrote a book on how horrible Conversion Therapy is, I am deadset against it.  

Unfortunately, there are still a few facilities that run on the basis of punishment until conformity. I yearn for the day that they are all shut down, and their sadistic staff stagger off into unemployment. 

Those sorts of “therapies” are hateful evil practices that are just torture, plain and simple, in order to try to manipulate someone into being something they’re not. It’s horrid!

The modern therapy that I work with uses reinforcers like toys, playdoh, iPad time, wagon rides, etc to get kids to work first and foremost on communication skills, which is something many children with autism struggle with.

I myself was delayed in my speech by well over a year, then when I did talk, most of it was scripting, i.e. quoting things like movies and videos, which is very normal with autism. My parents often found me quoting Short Circuit, or ET, or Back to the Future, the few movies I could get my hands on in the 80’s (can you tell I’m old?). There was quite the stretch in my life where I could quote the entirety of Return of the Jedi.

I’ve always been an outsider. I literally felt like an alien (and many days still do). It really didn’t help that my autism was combined with Marfan Syndrome to make me tall and oddly proportioned for a girl. Due to Marfan Syndrome, I was never allowed to participate in PE, adding further to the otherness.

I’ve always preferred solitude after interacting with others for any length of time, and become overwhelmed by loud noises and big personalities that tend to take up a lot of space and energy. That’s not abnormal, per se, but the amount of time I could be by myself in solitude might be. 

On the other hand, I’m desperate for friendship, and absolute garbage at making friends. I’m the person everyone neglects to invite to anything, even if they’ve known me as long as they’ve known everyone else they did invite. I struggle so hard with social cues, and knowing when I’m annoying someone, or when I’m being taken advantage of for my naivety.

I’ve been fortunate to make a couple close friends in my life, and fear losing them all the time. I’m afraid of not being left alone, and afraid of being alone and ignored by everyone. I’m overwhelmed by loud noise and struggle to process information when people are talking (subtitles are love, subtitles are life!). However, I’m calm and collected in a crisis, and use the wealth of knowledge I’ve compulsively accumulated to attempt to help people live their best lives, even when they never asked for my advice. 

I speak a bit loudly, and have been told this by numerous people. But my presence can also be very calming. I’m incredibly literal when talking to people, even though I was raised in a very sarcastic family and have a dark sense of humor. 

When it comes to maintaining eye contact, I’m either looking at the ceiling, or somewhere just above the person I’m talking to, or I’m staring them in the eye like a serial killer and trying to remember to look away, for the love of all things holy, look away!

I suck at small talk. I want to get to the bottom of things, so if I bring up the weather, you best believe I’m gonna talk about climate change and how we need the rain because the alternative is terrifying wildfires…

My boundaries are not great. I’ve worked a lot on them over the years. If someone gives me joy or dopamine, I have a tendency to become obsessed. Well, had. Now, I just wonder why no one likes me, and ask everyone else if they feel the same. 

I could go on and on with this list, but I feel I’ve bored folks enough. I will say that I hate this struggle. I hate feeling different, and wondering what it would take to feel normal, and cohesive in a group. To feel like people want to be around me, rather than find me a burden. I want to be around people who can let me take my mask off and be my weird self. 

I think this is why I like working with children so much. I don’t feel judged by them. I don’t feel othered. I feel accepted.