I created this comment in response to a post by Retrophiliac on July 4, 2026 on the Meta Facebook platform.
I, too, have made my own jobs and careers centered around the accommodations no one could give me (or understand why they needed to or should have to) but me.
#Autism #selfRX
In school, I was just the nerdy smart girl who cried too much. And not that no one cared exactly, but to get what everyone else wanted from me, I saw but could not yet name that too much was demanded of me because of the things that appeared to come easily to me.
My brain could compensate for my inability to see -- and I was told I faked failing the vision test. My brain could compensate for my dyslexia -- and I learned to read just as quickly upside down or in the mirror as regular text. So I COULDN'T be dyslexic, you see.
I didn't match "boy autism" of the 1980s. But Temple Grandin, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Dan Akroyd and I have a ton in common.
I saw a list of traits that matched what my teachers had been writing in reports about me since grade school when I was in an educational exceptionalities class in college. The list of traits referred to autism. That was in the late 1990s. But I wasn't supposed to say out loud that those traits had me nailed.
Shortly after college graduation, I got married and had a kid and my overload and my burnout hit so much harder because as a mom, there was no ability to run away and take care of myself. And still, I wasn't supposed to say what it was I was trying to run away from.
I got diagnosed with anxiety and asthma and prescribed steriods for the latter. I gained weight and I struggled but put on the bravest mask I could fake.
It took a pulmonary embolism, nearly 20 years later, in the thick of COVID (which I never personally tested positive for) to land me in the hospital for a week for me to realize the mask I had tried so hard to keep on had somehow slipped all the way off. The medical providers treating me diagnosed me with COVID despite all their known diagnostics saying NO. So either doctors and the medical community is capable of mistakes, or diagnostic tools are limited. And if that is true for COVID, why isn't is true for Autism?
Being able to see young(er) people like yourself self-advocating and building community has helped me immensely. That is why we are here. The same ableist people trying to slam you, me, us for existing are obviously hurting. But we are not the ones that hurt them. And it's one of the biggest cruelties OF OUR AUTISM that continues to challenge us to look for ways to help those hurting people to the potential erosion of our own boundaries.
There are so many closets I am not going back into for the comfort of some nameless, faceless individual coming at me from a random social media post.
Therefore, I hope you monetize the heck out of this page and can buy a steak (or delicacy of your choosing) with the proceeds from ill-conceived comments.
