30 Days of Autism Acceptance Challenge - Day 2: What I love about being autistic is...

...the perspective and view being autistic has granted me in my life.

This one is hard to answer, because I've never known what it's like to NOT be autistic - it just is who I am, similar to my eye color or the way my earlobes hang.

My mechanical and technical ingenuity I've always associated with family, but looking back it's highly likely they were also autistic, and passed such traits down to me.

I don't always like to associate various skills or interests or “superpowers” with autism, mostly because there are a lot of autistics like myself that are not savants. We generally are not experts at playing instruments, or creating artwork, or singing, or coding or even building things. While I do excel in some areas, it's not something that I would consider newsworthy - or social media worthy. Not everyone is the same, and that goes for autistics as well.

But what I love about being autistic is that I am able to recognize discrimination, racism, bigotry, and hate. Allow me to explain.

Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if I were never diagnosed, if I just...existed. No clear understanding of who I am, no community to share and belong to, just an awkward and often painfully lonely existence, with only a diagnosis of depression to guide me. Would I still feel lost? Would I ever become comfortable with who I am?

And much more importantly: how would I view persons with disabilities, neurodiverse individuals, and non-cis human beings? Who would I be - the person I am today, or someone much more fearful, closed-off, unrepentant, possibly inept and refusing to recognize their own privilege? Would I ever have had the opportunity to truly grow as a person into someone I actually like?

I honestly don't know.

Being able to embrace others that are not like me, that don't follow strict social norms and mores, that are expressive and engaging and knowledgeable and have bodies & minds that aren't typical - that's something that I try to hold onto as hard as possible.

Whether or not my autism is a key part of that, I am unsure; however, my activism and advocacy would most likely not exist if I was not autistic - at least, not as much.

Being autistic is something no one can ever take from me. And I embrace it, with all aspects, both positive and negative, because it is an inseparable part of my existence.

Perhaps that's what I love most about being autistic.

- Leo Jones