Autism Story #3: Acceptance Can Come from Anywhere

Greetings, one and all!  Welcome to my third and final Autism Story in celebration of Autism Awareness Month!  Getting right to the point, a major theme that I’ve used in the last two stories that I’ve done is acceptance.  The first story talked about acceptance of myself as someone with autism, and the second talked about the acceptance of autism in the media.  This week’s story talks about other’s acceptance of me being autistic.  And of all the moments in my life, none of those were as powerful as this week’s story.

As I said in my first story, there are times where you feel like a disability hands people a pass to treat you like you have a disability.  I also said that people who are disabled want to be treated like that disability isn’t there- but of course, this is a matter of opinion.  So in laments terms, it’s hard to tell anyone about your disability and expect them to treat you with some dignity.  And sure, that may sound like no one I’ve ever told about having Asperger’s syndrome has treated me with some decency, but somehow there’s always that voice that tells me that deep down they’re bothered by it.  Most of that comes from when I tell them or they somehow find out, their demeanor changes when they’re around me.  Whether or not it’s from their lack of knowledge of what autism is or from some other reason, I don’t know.  But if I could go back to October 2016 and tell that same voice just one thing, I probably would have quoted from Hellsing Abridged saying, “try not to choke on your own foot!”

At the time, I was at work at my local public library.  It was a quite Friday evening and me and another employee were there.  At one point during our shift, we got into a conversation about Donald Trump that had somehow moved into an incident that involved his son Barron.  Around that time, a big news story had gotten out that actress Rosie O’Donnell had claimed that Barron displayed the symptoms of autism.  Being that the subject manner hit close to home, I had some opinions on the issue, and I shared them with my co-worker.  The first was probably the most obvious, Mrs. O’Donnell had no right to make such an accusation; she may have a child with autism, but she’s not Barron’s parent and shouldn’t do that.  Leave it to a psychologist to make that call.  My second thought would have been something I would tell President Trump and/or Melania, if I ever met them that is.  My exact words were “if Barron really is autistic, just because he is doesn’t mean that he’s not incapable of doing whatever he wants to.  I would know,” and at which point I stated that I had some friends who were autistic (which is true, but I was referring more to myself).  That’s when my co-worker said, “Yeah, I know.  Like you.” 

At this point, I should note important detail: no one at work knows about me having Asperger’s syndrome.  So to hear that was a shock.  As it turned out, she had seen my Autism Awareness videos from last year.  Long story short, when I subscribed to her cooking channel on YouTube, she had access to my videos.  Anyway, she told me that she was amazed at how I would deal with patrons who’d come in, how I would help them with the computers, and just how knowledgeable I was.  It made me feel wonderful; hearing that from someone whom I’ve only known for a short time made me feel great about what I was doing.  After that, we rambled on about other stuff that’s not really relevant anymore.

What I learned from this experience was that I shouldn’t be so quick to judge people on what they think of me, whether or not they know about me being autistic.  Hearing that what you do is amazing in spite of the challenges you have to deal with is always great to hear.  And while I left the name of the co-worker out of this story, if she ever does read this, thank you for making me feel like I can do anything!

And with that, that’s all that I have for this post!  I want to thank all of you have been following this year’s event.  Stay tuned for tomorrow when I reveal this month’s Character of the Month and dish the dirt on this year’s Miyazaki May!

-Hanime on Anime