In the eye of the autistic

Although I said I would cover topics considering the LGBT community and feminism , there also another sensitive topic I wish to cover.

As well as being gay, I have also been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. This means that I find it very difficult to distinguish emotions within myself and others and cannot recognise stuff like sarcasm or if someone is serious or not so I tend to take things quite literally. Famous examples of Asperger’s syndrome is Sheldon from Big bang theory , Alan Turning from The imitation game and Sherlock from BBC Sherlock.

This is a daily struggle within me because this is something that I cannot control or covert and as a result I tend to only stay within small friendship groups or feel comfortable mostly by myself or online friends. I find it hard to tell the mood of rooms and often say the wrong thing, in result of this I have resulted in comedy as a personality aspect of mine as comedy can not have a negative response. As mentioned before , I take things literally because I cannot tell if someone is joking around and often when I meet someone new I try to tell them this , or have many awkward ‘it was a joke’ moments , which is harmful because its something I can’t control and find difficult to manage and often get teased on , which again I don’t know if they are joking or not , but I like to assume not .

As well as making this difficult with other people, it makes me become difficult with myself. Having this does not mean that I don’t not have emotions but I simply cannot recognise them till a physical reaction is shown ,such as crying. But even when crying I am still uncertain rather its from sadness, anger or for another reason. It also means that I tend to make bad decisions and have been described as having ‘questionable morals ‘ as when it comes to situations ,like murder, I physically cannot take emotions into account. Having Asperger’s also means that I find it hard to express emotions and in fact unless someone is close to me , like my mum , then no one can really tell my emotions. I constantly get asked ‘is everything okay?’ or ‘ are you okay?’ just because I will be on phone or being quiet, to which also develop a talkative and loud personality to stop people worrying.

But most days my Asperger’s is alright and I have learnt to cope with it. However , there are days where I will not ‘feel’ anything and these were very common when I was entering puberty , to which was thought as depression. As a result of not ‘feeling’ I was prone to have a ‘down day’ as I called it , where I had extreme issues with social interaction and knowing what I felt and would often last a week. I often made myself feel bad because I could not ‘feel’ guilt , to which sometimes I still can’t.

The reason I am sharing this is because autism is not another topic which is not raised ,even though autism affects more than 1 in 100 . Over 700,000 people in UK are autistic, which means that 2.8 million people have a relative on the autism spectrum. There is also a stigma towards autism , to which I have unfortunately witnesses first hand .

I am sharing this because as well as coming out stories , there needs to be awareness for autism because may have it and not realise ( much like me who got diagnosed at a later date) and nearly 2.8 million families have a relative that has autism .