As a sort of tribute to Autism Awareness Month 2019, I think it’s time I share some of my story.
Definitions:
Asperger’s – An Autism Spectrum Disorder referring to high functioning autistics (meaning they can take care of themselves)
Neurotypical – Anyone without abnormalities in their brain structure
Getting a diagnosis of autism was an awakening for my family. The very fact that I was only 12 years old made my diagnosis a statistical anomaly (less-so these days), and gave my family time to help me figure things out before going into adult life. You see, for years during elementary school, my parents were trying desperately to figure out why I was having so much trouble and was so unhappy. And after much difficulty, we managed to get it narrowed down to Asperger’s Syndrome through the work of the Thompson Center in Columbia, Missouri.
Before the diagnosis, I had several rounds of medicine that came about after I started to have increasingly frequent and severe behavior problems in school. Thus, the medicine I was put on suppressed the ability to have dramatic mood swings. Unfortunately, this medicine also made me feel a sort of sickness I was and am still quite keen to avoid. Thankfully, that medicine became unnecessary after several years with the help of maturity, therapy, and most importantly, the beginning of my relationship with God (namely, the level of peace that relationship brings in otherwise uncertain situations).
The immediate result of the diagnosis took the form of therapy and many other less conventional things (the latter of which resulted in less than optimal results). As for me personally, the diagnosis changed very little of what I thought of myself and in fact changed virtually none of my actions for quite a number of years until I started high school. I suppose the level of information overload I was getting at the start of high school was sufficient to push me to understand myself better. I would google various things that were happening in my life and would quickly find that many of the “unexplainable” things could easily be tied directly to Asperger’s. In fact, the whole process of understanding why the “unexplainable” things were happening in my life led me to a greater sense of fulfillment as well as serving to be the first step towards this website, wouldaspie. My “quest”, if you will, was to understand why an aspie would experience the things I was experiencing then.
Part way through high school, I became entirely overwhelmed and was beyond lost as for what to do. I had made so many mistakes without choosing to turn it around that the phrase “keeping my head above the water” would likely fit the situation flawlessly. That’s why I choose to move from my public high school (Hickman in Columbia, Missouri) to Heritage Academy, a private Christian school. I knew deep down that I needed two things fundamentally in order to recover from my confused sort of state: good people and a restored relationship with God. Heritage Academy seemed to me to be an excellent place to start to try and accomplish both of those things. And luckily for me, it acted as a substantial help to me during my last two years of high school and healed a great deal of the junk I was dealing with. In truth though, that was only the start.
Around this time is when I started getting to know a particular girl who both attended my school and my church who managed to be quiet, attentive, understanding beyond belief, and, perhaps most miraculously of all, held an interest in me! This girl’s name is Sarah, and a little over a year of friendship later, we started dating. (side note: for those of you who didn’t know, aspies can indeed date successfully! ;D ) Over the course of our relationship, I have had the opportunity to learn more about myself, about God, and what all goes into making someone as amazing as Sarah into the person she is today. It has been quite the adventure and one that I very much hope to continue for many years to come.
For those of you wondering, I actually did tell her I have Asperger’s about three months before we started dating, and she accepted it with tremendous ease despite the natural confusion when one learns a detail like that after knowing someone for over a year. And for those skeptics among you, not noticing someone has high functioning autism despite being around them frequently for a year is not a sign that the person is uncaring or blind. Rather, it goes to show how much high functioning autistics are able to mask certain behaviors commonly associated with autism (that sort of masking can be a big problem when trying to diagnose adults with autism).
Throughout the process of sharing my experiences of autism with Sarah, I came to have restored hope that I could explain what autism is like from my perspective to others in a successful, healthy, and potentially life-changing way. Reading that, it should come as no surprise that my explaining autism to Sarah has directly led to the creation of Would Aspie and all of the work we do here. As a matter of fact, Sarah dots my i’s and crosses my t’s around here for nearly every single word I write on this site! (Only grammatical things, of course. Anything that might change the meaning of my writing is something we discuss before a change is made) She has been a wonderful support and has made the stress of going through life so much lighter. It’s really good to share experiences with someone else and hear the stories that made that someone who they are. For that reason, I really hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article and hearing some of the things that led to the creation of this site as well as some of the things that have shaped me into who I am today.
With that, I wish you all the best and thanks for reading.
Luke