Friday, April 26, 2013

Diagnosis Day

I have seen some Autistic adults who were diagnosed as adults celebrating their diagnosis day as a sort of a second birthday. Well, this is my diagnosis day. One year ago, I got confirmation, officially, from a licensed professional, that what I've known/suspected for a long time really is the case. I actually am Autistic.
There's a community. I'm a part of it, now, and it's wonderful, truly. We do things like take April and put our own things in it, we do things like Autism Positivity, we just hang out together and be Autistic.

Trigger Warning for abuse/murder on JUST THIS PARAGRAPH.
I wish we could do that more often. We are drawn together by the necessity of people attacking us, attacking our rights, denying our humanity, abusing or killing one of our number, far too often. But we do come together for that, and it's important.
End Trigger Warning

We make plans. Fun ones. Like an Autistic Encyclopedia, like consulting groups, like anthologies, like websites of art and literature, like an Autistic Literary Journal. (Possibly to be called "The Spoon Knife and Bladle." I think that would be a good name.) Like communal living where Autistic people help other Autistic people, since our exact strengths and weaknesses vary enough that it would totally work. (And contemplating the idea of advertising it as a residential placement so that we can get Autistic kids from the next generation that way too and keep them out of the real institutions. It's win-win-win: We get money, the people getting placed get a community that thinks Autistic is totally fine, the parents who didn't want to deal with their kid don't have to.)
And we even make some of these plans happen. Loud Hands happened. Autreat is a thing. AutismPositivity is a thing. We got Google to remove the autocomplete suggestions that were hate speech. (WE did that. Autistic people made that happen, don't ever let anyone tell you different.) We have a culture, and we have traditions. And we take our diagnosis days to think, when we can. (I've got a take home exam due, a project due, and two online quizzes, none of which I started or prepared for, so iffy on my "can," but blast it I will do something for my diagnosis day. Maybe I'll track down an Autistic friend and some cake or something. Maybe ice cream.)

1 comment:

  1. Autistic humans are gifted human persons. Different, true, but the kind of different that makes the world a richer place indeed.

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