This is the best metaphorical explanation I can provide of my experience as an autistic woman, specifically late-diagnosed and with low support needs. (To be clear, I do not believe ASD is a death sentence, only that having ASD in this particular society and time in history certainly can be).
The world is a prison in which I am both the captor and captive.
I wasn't always an inmate. A social prisoner. I used to be free, but always roaming around with an ankle tag I had no idea I was wearing.
Society put that there. And I wear it like a performer wears costume.
Ankle tags as we know them track movement and location. Mine tracks how effectively I communicate, how long I successfully manage to maintain eye contact for, how often sarcasm flies over my head, how much ridicule I have or have not avoided, and above all how "normal" I have managed to appear during the day in the eyes of others.
And I see the judgement in their eyes.
I eventually found out that about the tag.
The worst part is that I spent my whole life thinking I was free, thinking I had the same opportunities and future to look forward to as everybody else. I had hopes and dreams of having a close circle of forever friends and one day, even a family of my own. A love I could be myself around.
Everyday since then was a painfully slow realisation that these dreams would likely not come true.
Then I got my assessment. I was right, I had autism.
My diagnosis felt like both a life sentence and a release warrant - both of which had arrived 21 years too late.
I had been a prisoner all along. To judgement. To stereotype. To gossip. To bullying. To ridicule. To indifference. To soul-crushing hatred. Eventually to abuse.
And after the sudden, deceptively liberating release of my diagnosis, the more I read about the condition, the more trapped I felt. I broke.
I reached out for help, to no avail.
Therapy and medication are as fulfilling for me as yard time is for an inmate. For a brief moment, you feel the cool breeze you've longed for on your skin, but you're only entitled to know that freedom exists elsewhere, for others, and that you will never be lucky enough to feel it again.
The difference between me and a prisoner is that I didn't even get to feel it once.
I lived the illusion of freedom while walking around in social shackles.
The one coping strategy I adopted is not one I was given in therapy, I came up with it myself - if the knives I use on myself are sharper than the ones others can use on me, what do I have to fear?
And now I am no different to those who put me in this cell.
Because I have learned to hate myself more than anyone ever could.
Autonomy and courage wait for me by the open cell door. They try to lure me back out into the world.
But I can't leave now, no matter how much I want to.
I'm a shell of a person. A social pariah. An alien.
And this is how my life sentence became one of death.
The world is a prison in which I am both the captor and captive.
I wasn't always an inmate. A social prisoner. I used to be free, but always roaming around with an ankle tag I had no idea I was wearing.
Society put that there. And I wear it like a performer wears costume.
Ankle tags as we know them track movement and location. Mine tracks how effectively I communicate, how long I successfully manage to maintain eye contact for, how often sarcasm flies over my head, how much ridicule I have or have not avoided, and above all how "normal" I have managed to appear during the day in the eyes of others.
And I see the judgement in their eyes.
I eventually found out that about the tag.
The worst part is that I spent my whole life thinking I was free, thinking I had the same opportunities and future to look forward to as everybody else. I had hopes and dreams of having a close circle of forever friends and one day, even a family of my own. A love I could be myself around.
Everyday since then was a painfully slow realisation that these dreams would likely not come true.
Then I got my assessment. I was right, I had autism.
My diagnosis felt like both a life sentence and a release warrant - both of which had arrived 21 years too late.
I had been a prisoner all along. To judgement. To stereotype. To gossip. To bullying. To ridicule. To indifference. To soul-crushing hatred. Eventually to abuse.
And after the sudden, deceptively liberating release of my diagnosis, the more I read about the condition, the more trapped I felt. I broke.
I reached out for help, to no avail.
Therapy and medication are as fulfilling for me as yard time is for an inmate. For a brief moment, you feel the cool breeze you've longed for on your skin, but you're only entitled to know that freedom exists elsewhere, for others, and that you will never be lucky enough to feel it again.
The difference between me and a prisoner is that I didn't even get to feel it once.
I lived the illusion of freedom while walking around in social shackles.
The one coping strategy I adopted is not one I was given in therapy, I came up with it myself - if the knives I use on myself are sharper than the ones others can use on me, what do I have to fear?
And now I am no different to those who put me in this cell.
Because I have learned to hate myself more than anyone ever could.
Autonomy and courage wait for me by the open cell door. They try to lure me back out into the world.
But I can't leave now, no matter how much I want to.
I'm a shell of a person. A social pariah. An alien.
And this is how my life sentence became one of death.
