The Autistic Writer: A Wrap Up

tyunglebower ♦ October 25, 2023 ♦ Leave a comment

All throughout this year I’ve posted about the perspectives of a writer that is also Autistic.

Several take aways present themselves for those who have read more than a few of these posts. Mostly certainly, the fact that Autism manifests itself differently for each person on the Spectrum. I may struggle at something another person with ASD may excel at.

On the other side of this same coin, I’ve talked about trends in Autism that are about as near to universal to the experience as one can hope to pinpoint. Among such are an interior life, and inward-oriented mindset.

Also among the most common truths about Autism is the alternate take on the social structure and behaviors of society at large. (Which in and of itself presents differently depending on the society a given Autistic grows up and lives in.)

Yet as I bring this series of columns to a close this week, I’ll remind the reader that even when I am not opining specifically on the nature of being a writer with ASD, everything that i write contains a component of being Autistic. No matter how much I may mask, on purpose or subconsciously, no matter how much those out there may choose to “overlook” my Autism, or in darker cases dismiss it, no matter if a readership knows, or still somehow is unaware of my place on the Spectrum, every word I put down passes through that filter. This series has merely tried to illuminate this truth with greater details than may be generally understood.

Autism Spectrum Disorder is not something to be conquered, or worked around, and certainly not ignored or masked. It is simply a component of what and who I am. It has always been so, even before I knew I had it. In these weekly posts this year, I hope, if nothing else I have presented this truth more than all others.

My whiteness will never allow me to know racial oppression. My cis-hetero nature precludes me from fully comprehending with queer identity issues, and of course I am a male, unaware of the nature of being female. Autism is nonetheless a minority status that, if left unspoken of can lead to it being (remaining?) unaccepted. Which in turn opens the door for misunderstanding at best, oppression at worst.

The world tends to frown upon the outlier, the exception, the skewed and the alternative. Only knowledge and exposure can change this, and such an outcome is possible only if I am open about what makes me who I am, when I do what it is I do. More than anything else, that’s what these columns have been about each week.

And yet, the Autistic is still only half of what I have explored. “Writer” is of course the other primary aspect of these weekly explorations. I wonder if at times if I am anymore able to divest myself of being a writer than I am able to divest myself from being Autistic.

Unlike being Autistic, I do no have to be writing. I could close this laptop and never write another word, but would remain Autistic.

Autistic, but perhaps not authentic.

Writing is difficult. Laborious. Time consuming and energy draining. It’s an activity that never quite mirrors the speed or the coloring of what one sees in ones head, and yet is perhaps the best remedy for placing what is in one’s head in a position to be partaken of by others. Unlike some writers, I don’t break out in a cold sweat chomping at the bit to just throw myself in front of this train daily. But if I were to never do it again, even to myself, I have to wonder if I’d be betraying something of me even more mysterious than Autism and all of its horrors/wonders.

Then again, if not for the one, would there be the others. Plenty of other writers are not Autistic. Plenty of people on the Spectrum are not writers. Did I call myself a writer because of the effects of ASD?

In order to truly answer that question in good faith, I would have to separate the two. Of course, my dear reader, that is not possible. For I am both Autistic and a writer by nature, if not always by presentation.

Here at the end of this series, though, that is of course the point of it all: I am the Autistic Writer.