The Social Journey Of An Autist

WARNING: Implications of sexual harassment by a peer and bullying. DISCLAIMER: Another older piece. A personal essay I wrote in tenth grade about some of my experiences being autistic.

**Note:
I have also published this piece on Joara under username AC2066 (Alira Cohen), and it can be found in Huntington Youth Writes 2018 issue, with a slight change to title due to personal reasons, under my name (Alira Cohen)



The Social Journey of an Autist
Alira Cohen


The hill that served as my personal “safety zone” back when I used to go to Montessori Magnet School in Albany, New York years ago was a green, grassy wart on the face of the field that surrounded my elementary school’s playground. I guess it was kind of a loser, like me, because I hung out there more than anyone else did (to the best of my memory), and if I stayed up there by myself, I felt certain no one would cross that way. Since it was pretty much isolated from everything else, it was really the only place for me to go on days when the other kids didn’t want me around. I would watch them, hoping they didn’t spot me up there, and think to myself: I wish I could talk to them. To me, they were scary. And they were only going to get worse.
Truth was, I didn’t blame them, mostly. I didn’t think they weren’t doing the social thing right--I thought I was doing the social thing wrong. In the past, I’ve written about Asperger’s Syndrome and bullying and how those things go hand in hand quite a bit; in fact, I’m trying to write a book about a character who has Asperger’s. It’s what I spend most of my time doing, if I’m going to be honest. And let’s be real, I’m so far removed from that point in my life, I need to dig pretty deep and think pretty hard to feel it all again. So that’s what I do. I sit down and I think about my diagnosis, and I reflect on how it has impacted me.
When I was little, I used to stim. Heck, I stimmed a lot. Stimming is when you flick your fingers, flap your hands, and rock around (sometimes violently) because you’re having such an awesome thought that you can’t contain yourself and you need to celebrate! Alright, so that isn’t necessarily the science behind it, but it’s a nice, light-hearted simplification of the pretty hard to explain reality. In reality, this is the result of something called a supercharged brain. So, what is a supercharged brain? A supercharged brain is a brain that experiences the world, thoughts, and emotions with an intensity far greater than that of a neurotypical mind, and it can make socializing feel impossible and make your own feelings extremely powerful. Hence, you zone out more often, and sometimes when you zone out you have reactions to your thoughts that are pretty intense, like stimming. When I would stim, I wouldn’t usually notice. I’d get lost in a daze, sinking in thought, and it would just happen. I wouldn’t “wake up” until someone snapped me out of it. My peers didn’t react very well to this, as you could probably imagine. They reacted, you know, the way kids do; when they see something they don’t understand, they are afraid of it. They teased me, isolated me, and made me feel like I was less than they were. I just accepted it. I thought that I was meant to be “stupid.” I made a couple of friends, but honestly, I didn’t want to talk to people, so for the most part teachers paired me with kids who I couldn’t communicate with or I was stuck with kids who hated me. I didn’t really have a good side to choose. And I got pretty angry sometimes--at the bullies, myself, and other kids who had autism. I didn’t realize it was wrong to think that way about children who have autism...all I knew was I didn’t want to be associated with them. Of course, now that I am older and in a much better place, I understand that this is an entirely unacceptable way of thinking, and is the kind of thing that gets people hurt. I am at the point in my life where I am far more mature, and have nothing but support for ALL of my fellow autists. But anyway, I digress.
Soon enough, my family and I moved from Albany to Long Island. It felt strange, of course, because I was ten years old and I’d never moved before. All the same, I got used to it quickly, and going to a new school didn’t really bother me because I was playing the same role as before--I didn’t talk that much and no one knew me. I sometimes drew scary pictures to get my peers’ attention, and listened in on some stupid horror stories they told, but that was about it.
Then middle school began.
Now, if you were to ask me, I’d tell you that nobody in middle school really feels comfortable in their own skin, so it wasn’t exactly a shocker that I didn’t. I kind of kept to myself, you know, because my role was supposed to be the “person who doesn’t have a role” role, if you get what I mean. I made a few friends, which was definitely an improvement from before, but often I found it was hard for me to fit in with the girls as well as with the boys. Mostly, I just saw them as two different disgusting flavors of irritating.
It was in high school that I actually started to get out of my shell a little bit, and that’s only because someone pushed me to do it. Last year my parents convinced me to join the school’s literary magazine, and when I walked into the room I was upset to see that there were only a few students, about four or five. Maybe less. I didn’t really talk to any of them until one senior boy came up to me and introduced himself. His name was Justin; he was very tall and had short blonde hair, and his face looked so happy it was almost sickening. Almost. But he was a very nice kid and he promised to get me out of my shell. I laughed at him when he made this promise, but the kid was determined. Not even two weeks later, sitting in choir class, the same kid came up to me and told me he didn’t want to see me sitting alone. He brought me over to his group of friends, and I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t planning on talking; that is, until one boy brought something up that I felt I needed to be a hero and argue against. Long story short, that argument lead to me making a lot of good friends. It was great.
Of course, that wasn’t the end of things for me. I still have a long way to go socially, and I have been through many social situations since that time that have changed me as a person. Full disclosure, in the original version of this paper (yes, this is a greatly edited version) I described a very uncomfortable experience that I had with one of my peers. This experience, though it could’ve been far worse than it was, altered the way in which I view socializing immensely. It hurts me a lot to need to remove that part from this essay, but I know that it would not be appropriate for me to keep it in. All I can say is that because of my naïveté and my insecurity, I was nearly tricked into doing something disgusting that I didn’t want to do after school. I will never forget the lesson that I learned from that situation.

Socializing is like flying too close to the sun.
I realized that a long time ago.
Sometimes I want to crawl under a stone, I want to hide my face, I want to become invisible and make everyone go away. I don’t want to reach out, for fear of burning myself, for fear of not healing. But despite this, despite all of this, I’m going to conclude this paper by telling you the simple truth: My diagnosis is the most beautiful part of me I can find.
Without my diagnosis, I wouldn’t be able to feel the world half as intimately as I do, and my mind wouldn’t wander to greater places like it does. The words I write and pictures I draw would mean nothing without the imagination I’ve been given, and I have my diagnosis to thank. So, would I trade it in for a completely neurotypical mind? Would I want to be completely “normal”? Never would I ever want that. With the help of Asperger’s, I can really focus, I can really create my world, and I can see the greater beauty in this one. I think about that when I think about my diagnosis. And as long as I get to see the light, I don’t mind getting burned. This is the truth. And all I have left to say. I wouldn’t give it up for anything.

Author's Note

This one is, of course, very personal for me. That does not leave it exempt for any and all criticism, but I do ask that anyone who might want to comment be respectful. Thank you.