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 of the lengths people must go to not feel overwhelmed by living with me. Everything I choose to believe about my family’s feelings toward me is based on having faith in their incredible, enduring love for me, despite the autistic loudness of my entire being. I am like a great big storm of moving body parts and noise that has total control over everything in its path. Every impulse I have tells me not to make a good choice, but instead to choose the stupidest thing possible, which prevents anyone from having a moment of peace in our house. Again, I realize the extreme hardships that living with me present.
Filling the void of not having anything else to do with my time, homeschooling has distracted me in many important ways. I enjoy the learning experience. Nothing gives me more pleasure than to learn the finer points of physics, algebra, and english grammar, which I am currently studying through my homeschool program. I have trouble focusing my eyes on the correct spot on the letterboard, making it difficult to convey my thoughts efficiently, lengthening the time needed to finish each lesson by hours and days. My mom is a little exhausted, having to deal with my inhibitions that transform our schooling into wrestling matches to extract the words from my hardwired brain. The spectacular level of effort required to teach me, despite not having any experience in education, is the reason I love my parents so much.
Everything I’ve described is based on insights I’ve had since beginning my homeschool experience.
However, everything I’ve stated does not hinder my heart from needing to be loved. I enjoy the same feelings of love that all humans require in order to make life bearable. Disability doesn’t keep me from being human: it makes me insightful about the human condition. I give love too. I am a fine example of what it means to be autistic, intelligent, kind, and human, in that I am a hard working pain in the butt.