The things I like to think might have made me autistic

I don’t know what life is like without autism and I like being alive.

Maybe it was being walked up and down the stairs as an infant in my parents arms whilst they hummed the tune of The Addams Family and bounced on the two clicks.

Maybe it was the clarinet reeds. I went through a lot of them.

Or perhaps it was all the snails. I collected a lot of hem as a child and very carefully designed their own hotel in the different cupboards of my plastic Fisher Price kitchen.

Maybe it was a witch. An autistic witch. I mean, I know a few. And not an ‘autistic child as a curse kind of way’ but because any good witch knows we are a blessing.

Maybe it was my Mum’s love of Sense and Sensibility. Or my Dad’s love of Korfball, because who doesn't love an obscure sport with a post which is three meters high.

Maybe it was the blown glass paperweight gifted to me by my uncle when we moved my Granny out from her home in Billericay, the place I lost my first tooth biting into a piece of lamb before the table was set for dinner. In my defence, the M25 traffic had been arduous that day, and there is only so much a small child can do in a car except wobble a tooth back and forth (it is a supremely fun stim).

Maybe the autism got in through the potatoes I grew aged seven as part of a Brownie Badge, that came back year after year after year (and they still do) at the back of the garden, where a rhubarb plant has flourished since, though I can’t take any credit for that.

Maybe it was the book I wrote in Year 4 as ‘handwriting practice’ but was actually an excuse to write about red squirrels and for which I created a spreadsheet with their times of birth and the explanations I allotted to each.

Maybe it was the bird books. The stories my parents invented whilst waiting for the bus. That was it, The Frog Who Liked Spaghetti, The Zebra Who Liked Lemons, The Goat With Blue Horns - are we surprised I became an author, in the end.

Maybe it was Dad putting Pink Floyd albums on and driving me around as a toddler until I would fall asleep. Or the purple, green, blue juggling clubs he kept in the shed.

Maybe it being read to for two to three hours every night in bed and the co-ordinated flash cards.

These are as good a reason as any for the way my brain is. I don’t care what made me autistic. That some fascist politician thinks he can tell you anything about my bodymind is ludicrous. That millions will listen is worse.

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I want to quote Armistead Maupin’s Letter To Mama. In context, though I don’t always wait for that.

‘I know what you must be thinking now. You're asking yourself: What did we do wrong? How did we let this happen? Which one of us made him that way?

I can't answer that, Mama. In the long run, I guess I really don't care. All I know is this: If you and Papa are responsible for the way I am, then I thank you with all my heart, for it's the light and the joy of my life.’

I found it far harder to understand that I was gay than it was to realise I was autistic - one I wrestled with & was nearly destroyed by over the course of years, the other was a blessed relief.

I might have been diagnosed at nearly nineteen but it wasn’t a switch that flicked, though people treated it as such.

I didn’t become autistic - wasn’t converted or infected. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.

It wasn’t caused by something anyone did or didn’t do and even if it was, I am grateful.

I don’t always love being autistic. I also don’t like being 5’8, or my tiny hands (no, seriously, they’re tiny).

But, we are where we are. And we are where we are and where we are is lying in bed on a Tuesday night grappling with the ludicrousness of even attempting to determine what made me autistic when I can’t imagine a life any other way.

I don’t know what life is like without autism and I like being alive.

I’m blessed to be surrounded by autistic community. The world could learn a lot from us.

I like it here.

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