Blog from the Middle Spectrum #1

Blog from the Middle Spectrum #1

All right, so I'm going to confess something to you. You may think what I say is weird, but that's okay. Maybe it’ll compel you a little bit more to read this. Ready for this?

I’m autistic.

All right, so, to those who know me, none of you are shocked. Most of you knew something was wrong with me in the first place. I was too weird, odd, freakish, whatever label you want to put me under, to be normal. Congratulations, you figured out I was different. Very astute observation, dear Watson!

But now we get to the serious topic/topics here. Why am I now making this publicized? Why am basically putting a target on my back so I now may get even more criticism? Do I want the Rain Man jokes? No, absolutely not. First off, Raymond (the autistic savant Dustin Hoffman played) and I are on two totally different ends of the autism spectrum. The doctors can easily diagnose Raymond. However, they cannot easily diagnose me. I am a hybrid of Asperger’s, autism, and a raw drive to be normal. I left the people at Heart Springs (an autism research center) scratching their heads. They had no clue what I was, only that I was some type of autistic. So thus trying Rain Man jokes on me is like trying to make fun of a mouse for not being a hamster. It just doesn’t work and makes you look like an idiot.

But back to the point. Why am I doing this? The answer was actually the first thing you saw when you first started reading this blog. It’s because I am, what I call, the Middle Spectrum. I am the halfway point between being autistic and being a normal, completely functioning human being. They don’t talk about kids like me because there are only a handful of them in the world. There are so few kids out there, who can comprehend situations at my level, that we are ignored. My mom tired hard to find a role model for me, and she bought me a book on Temple Grandin. She is a woman who has autism, and she designs equipment for animals. First off, God bless her. She has done a lot to get where she is. She is a very successful woman and inspires many people. But I cannot identify with her. There are few times in her book where she’s mentioned social situations, but it is in a way so logical and scientific, that it almost seems cold. For people like me in the Middle Spectrum, that is our main problem: the social aspect. We can handle ourselves academically very well; in fact, we sometimes do better than most of the ‘normal’ kids. Yet we are so awkward when it comes to social settings, we come off as being a freak. And we know we do. That’s what makes it difficult. We know that we are different and we want to achieve normality. We long to be one of the normal kids.

When I was in fourth grade I realized I was different. I looked at my mother one day and asked her, “Mom, why am I different?” She gazed at me lovingly and said, “Oh honey, you’re not different, you’re just special.” I looked at her, tears stinging my eyes, and said, “But Mom, I don’t want to be special.” The scary thing was, I meant it. Understand this, in fourth grade I moved to Goddard and away from a small town called Sedgwick. In Sedgwick everyone knew everyone, so thus, you had to be nice to them. I was not picked on in Sedgwick because of this fact. But when I came to Goddard, the floodgates of hatred opened. None of the students had ever seen a hybrid child like me, so no one knew how to react. People fear what they don’t understand, and the kids didn’t understand me. So they reacted off their fear, and that fear turned into a secondary emotion called anger. At the time the conversation between my mom and I happened, I was being picked on by these students. I had no friends, no one to stand up for me, I had no one. I remembered telling my teacher that a fellow schoolmate had written a mean note to me, and after class I showed her the note. The teacher called the student in, but ten minutes later, the same girl walked up to me and said, “She didn’t do anything to me you know.” I can still hear her voice in my head. So, because teachers and counselors didn’t do anything, I stopped fighting and I began resenting myself. If being ‘special’ made me treated this way, I wanted no part of it.

I strove to be normal after that. Being normal meant getting out of a special ED room for certain classes, it meant getting out of social working and speech therapy, it meant getting away from my paraprofessional, para for short. (NOTE: a para/paraprofessional is a teacher who is basically a private tutor and helper to a child with special needs.) I knew I had to get away from all these things to be normal and have my own life. I was going to try my hardest, do what the teachers told me, and not give up. I had to be normal. I had to be.

In sixth grade I went to see “The Phantom of the Opera” in the Warren downtown… and I first heard the music. It wasn’t just music, it was THE music. I saw The Phantom in the show, saw Christine, saw Raoul, and fell in love. I understood the storyline and the characters. I got the music, knew the notes, when no one else in my age group could. It made sense to me, for some odd reason. It was then I started singing, and my mom told me, I was actually pretty good at it. I always sang songs and hummed to myself, before actually learning to speak to other people. The music had always been there, I realized later, I just hadn’t heard it. But now I had, and it saved me.

I was drawn to theater soon after, where music was combined with real life, and soon I began reading Shakespeare. I remember walking into my sixth grade classroom with “Romeo and Juliet” in my hands, and my teacher’s eyes nearly bugged out of her face. I began writing stories the same year, and soon it became apparent that I had a good novelist imagination. All the while I still tried to be normal, tried to act normal. But still, I wasn’t getting there.

I was never interested in ‘girly’ things as a child. I didn’t want to do my hair or makeup, and I detested it when I got older. I was not a pretty child, I did not think of myself as a pretty child. I wore makeup a few times, but no one ever said I was beautiful. So I thought, “Why bother?” Me and being beautiful did not go together. I was only beautiful when I wrote, sang, or was on stage. That is when I had true beauty. In seventh grade I remember a boy in my age group was standing next to me at my locker. I was singing, “You’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, it’s true…” The boy smiled cheekily and said, “Thank you, I know I am.” I replied, “I was singing that to myself.” He burst out laughing and said, “No, you’re not beautiful, you’re ugly!” I didn’t reply to him after that. I was correct, I was not pretty. I had always known I wasn’t pretty. But if I had always known, why was I about to cry? Why did I hide my face in my locker to keep the burning of my cheeks from showing? Why did I care?

Later on, because of an incident in my seventh grade summer, I grew to hate men and the world. The only men I did not hate were in my musicals I watched or Josh Groban. I loved his voice, and still do to this day. I loved how he sang and gave emotion to every song. When he sang a sad song I used to think, “He’s singing my pain”. And I had read somewhere that he hadn’t fit in, in school himself because of his music and talent. Was he a bit autistic himself? Were we both part of the Middle Spectrum?

Then in my freshman year, my life changed. To make a long story short I found these people called theater people. They were the ones who dared to be different, and to accept the others who were different. I found my most wonderful friends here. Backstage we laughed and joked. On stage we sang freely. In the theater room, under the watchful eye of a man named Bryan Grosbach, we learned. He became my mentor, and sometimes, the one person in my life who always believed in me.

At last, I gave up my quest for normality, and started a quest to being ME. If there is anyone you know who has autism or some type of handicap, pass this blog onto them. I am telling these kids now, I get it! I know what it’s like to watch the world, knowing that you are different, and that you can’t change it. I know what it’s like to be aware of your oddities and how it affects others. I know what it’s like to not be able to control it. It sucks, I get it. But find the joy. I’m telling you, try to find the joy. When I was young the doctors said I would never learn past the Elementary school level. I am now writing my own plays and reading books that college students can’t make heads or tails out of. I am in the National Honor Society and in mostly AP classes. Do not let anyone say what your limits are! Don’t let anyone tell you how to act or how to live your life. I know that if you’re still in school and with all these peers around judging you, it’s scary. But don’t be afraid. You will come out of it. Keep your true friends close, and what you love to do, closer. I have found I always have a friend in music and the arts. If you have found a friend in something constructive, hold fast to it. This ride of life only becomes crazier, and when you hit a few bumps, sometimes that’s the only thing you can turn to. But enjoy the view around you. It’s not the destination that matters… it’s the road you take.

“Two roads diverged and I
Took the one last traveled by
And that has made the difference”
~ The Road Less Traveled By