Content Warnings: self-harm, violence, ableism, hypothetical filicide, abuse, past sexual abuse, hypothetical drowning.
I was your autistic nightmare child, and now I am your autistic nightmare adult offspring.
I was a “flight risk” throughout both primary and secondary school. If you gave me a place to run from, and stopped me legally being my own responsibility and not another person’s, I would still be a “flight risk”.
I had violent meltdowns that felt like they lasted for hours. I haven’t had one in some-time; I’ve shouted, and screamed, and hit things, but the really terrifying meltdowns are true forces of nature, and I miss them. They bring a relief and an emotional blank slate that absolutely nothing else can. Instead, I’ve learned to internalise my responses, and I am the worse off for it. I turned to self-harm, because that was more “socially appropriate” than meltdowns, and I had to express the pain in some way, and cutting into myself from the outside was the only alternative to exploding out from the inside. I wish I could say I’m clean, but now it’s just more subtle, less cliché and obvious “self-harm,” and I’ve never passed the 12-month mark without relapse. I know the only way to prevent that would be to be able to melt down again, and I fear and worry that it’s too far gone, that it won’t happen to me again unless I’m in truly horrific and terrible circumstances where even a meltdown will not relieve my pain.
People who have been frightened of me, and have said so to my face: my mother, my grade 12 teacher, my classmates, other students….
People who have been frightened of me, and have not admitted it: two different regional religious school organisations, government representatives, CEOs, PR workers, probably you….
If my mother had killed me like she had wanted to do and planned to do, there are plenty of facts and stories about me that would be dragged out in court to show that I’m one of the “bad autistics” and was a burden that destroyed her mental health and drove her to do the only thing she could,
murder her child.
Do not interpret my occasional and situational eloquence as meaning I do not also keen wordlessly, writhe on the floor, scream, sob, repeat one word over and over, engage in physical violence, fail the most basic and base standards of personal hygiene, paint with my own blood, have minutes and hours and times when no matter how hard I try I cannot force a single word to throw itself out of my mouth.
Do not think that because I am a brilliant self-advocate and a modulated and skilful fighter with words that I am not also raring for a fistfight, for a dirty scrap, that I wasn’t disciplined as much for physical aggression as I was for entirely justified “back-chat” and “disrespect”.
I wet my pants well into late primary school. When I was in early grades, I smeared my faeces.
I was the dangerously, terrifyingly naive child who stripped naked and thought no harm in it because I had been pressured multiple times to do so with made-up reasons.
I cut a fantastic figure in a suit and fine gold necklace. On my days off (which are most days, because I can’t find employment that would pay me more than a few hours a month for doing work I could handle) I wear mis-matched, unfashionable, and undeniably odd arrangements of tee-shirts, ripped cargo shorts, and bare feet.
Yes, I can swim, if by ‘swim’ you mean perform a few strokes of unbreathing freestyle in an utterly becalmed swimming pool. Could I swim to save my life? I highly doubt it. Could I drown? Absolutely.
I can’t touch dishwater.
I find legal textbooks engaging and enjoyable reading.
I was your autistic nightmare child, and now I am your autistic nightmare adult offspring. I am your autistic nightmare child. I wouldn’t have it any other way, and that unapologetic autistic integrity is a part of it.
Autistic Writes 