When my mom asked me how I felt about creating this list, I told her that it made me feel “incrementally more powerful”.
A Hard Man Not to Love
I am hard to live with. I am hard to teach. Everything in these sentences is true and indisputable. However, what is also true is the fact that I am still worthy of being loved, still worthy of being taught, and still worthy of being treated as a useful member of society. I am aware…
What If We’ve Been Wrong About “Profound” Autism?
In the war for attention, funding, and autonomy among autistic people and caregivers, there are various armies. There are the autistic self-advocates (SAs), who have been loud in demanding a seat at the Internet and policymaking tables. In addition to condemning Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) (a widely-adoped, oftentimes relentless therapy for training autistic people to…
Me, Not You
This is a short essay that was part of an assignment in my online course, Grammar & Composition, which I’m taking via the Virtual Access Academy, a program within the Optimal Access non-profit organization. Getting lost in my head is something I struggle with every single day. I am autistic, meaning that my habits, communication,…
The Q&A Essay
This was an idea my mom had, since I was always writing about the same things, and people were probably getting bored. She asked people on Facebook to ask me any question they had for me. My dad and my sister also asked a few questions. I then picked which ones I felt like answering….
Just When You Thought I Was Done Talking About Autism: My Plea for Others
Mom typing here… Everything my son had written before this was just a stream-of-consciousness exercise, followed by a few hours of editing. In an effort to get through the end of a homeschooling book on Middle School English at the beginning of summer, I found a chapter on composition, and used it to help him…
My Trip to the ER
I want to write about what I felt when I was in the hospital. They stuck a needle in my arm and filled me with Ativan. My arm was strapped to the gurney. I was terrified. I was twilight. I needed to be engulfed by the quiet. I could feel the drug enveloping me, swallowing…
Learning to Spell: Piecing Myself Together
The year spent working on the letterboard with my mom has been the best year of my life. I have allowed myself to be known. I have also gotten to know my mother as well. Before this journey began, I was locked up inside my head, looking for a way to show the world I…
How I Learned to Break Out of My Shell: an Autistic Boy’s Perspective on Communication
I learned to communicate on a letter board this year and it has changed my life in immeasurable ways. A letter board is a plastic stencil board with the alphabet on it that I touch to spell out my thoughts. Before this year, I was locked inside. I couldn’t express myself at all. I didn’t…
Helping My Mother Die
Yup. I’m going there. And nope, this post has nothing to do with autism. Also, this post is definitely going to be a bummer. Here we go… When my mother suggested that I write an essay titled “Watching My Mother Kick the Bucket”, I confessed to her that the idea–if not the title–had already occurred…