I Hid

Trigger Warning: Discussions of abuse and ableism (as reasons to pass)

Today is a fairly heavy-duty post, but it's not something I wrote today. This is a poem, sort of. It's about being autistic in a world that sees autism as only meaning the non-speaking children in the corner and not wanting anyone else to know.
It's definitely meant to be read aloud.
Also, this is my submission to the Loud Hands Project. If this tells you who I am, don't go using my full last name, thanks.

I Hid

I knew.

I knew what I was, what I still am.

I say what because so many of you see, well, that, as a what, not a who.

So I hid.

I hid because I knew.

I knew what would happen if anyone found out.

I knew that if anyone who could diagnose me, who could label me, ever got near me, 
         the game would be up in a moment.

I knew what they did with kids like me. With the Autistic kids.

We didn't take hard classes. We didn't even take normal classes.

What we could do was ignored to make the time to get us the abuses we needed.

But it wasn't called abuse. If you're autistic, it's ``therapy.”

So I hid.

I passed.

Not for ``normal,” of course. I could never have done that.

But I could pass for merely weird as long as I avoided the people who thought they were helping.

If you're just weird, you can take whatever classes you want.

If you're just weird, no one bats an eye when you have two pairs of pliers in your bag.

If you're just weird, you can spend a month in another country.

All that's OK, as long as you're just weird, not Autistic.

So I hid.

I had ``quiet hands,” and no one even had to hold them down.

If no one knows you move like an Autistic, you don't, right?

I looked at people's foreheads.

No one notices you're not looking them in the eye if you look at their foreheads.

I made sure my teachers knew I was smart.

The top of the class can't be Autistic, right?

I was hiding.

But someone noticed anyways.

By then, I was in high school.

In high school, it's harder to make you do anything, unless you're already not quite human.

They have to convince your parents to force the issue if you don't want to be evaluated.

Who's going to convince parents who went through life with the picture of autism most of us still have?

The kid in the corner who doesn't talk or look you in the eye, who bangs his head on the wall?

He's autistic.

The girl who's been doing her best to pass for merely weird, who flaps her hands when excited?

Not autistic.

Hiding was working. Not going was working.

I kept hiding.

Because I knew.

I knew that even in high school, that label would give them too much power.

I knew that the Autistic needed to be made normal in ways the merely weird could escape.

I knew that we were somehow broken and needed fixing.

I didn't want to be fixed.

I kept hiding.

The problem is, hiding yourself is hard.

Maybe some people can do it forever.

I can't.

All the problems are still there, and I'm terrified.

I'm terrified because I still know.

I know I'll be an object of pity.

I know that some people will still see me as less human.

I know those same people will see me as broken.

I know they'll try to break the person I am in order to fix the person I never was.

I know they'll think I'm trapped in the shell of Autism, not the shell of normalcy they want to force me into.

I know I'll be ``too Autistic to understand,” except when I'm ``not Autistic enough.”

I know I'll be ignored.

But I also know that nothing will change unless we make it change, and those same people won't.

So I know that I have to do it.

I guess I can't hide anymore.