As we head through this journey together to unmask the mysteries of autism, we are learning the way of life for some people. However, we have yet to explore the simple day-to-day life of an individual with autism. Although we discussed autistic masking, that is a tiny part of living with autism. Today, we explore the basics of what it is like to have autism.
Before we start, living with autism is a very individualistic topic. People with autism experience their symptoms and live their lives as they do. The following are my experiences (sometimes slightly simplified for writing sake).
The simplest way to describe living with autism would be to describe it as an exchange: I gained some things but lost others. As discussed in earlier editions of this column, one trait of autism is a decrease in social skills. Regarding this exchange, I remember anecdotal details about people โ like specific interactions with them or personal information. However, I am generally pretty awful at remembering basic details like names. What this looks like I might know someone and specifically that the first time I met them, they were wearing a white shirt with green pants, but introduced me to someone new and asked me for their name five minutes later โ I’d be completely helpless.
Another example from the social realm is social cues. Social cues are the unspoken hints, signals, and communication that help others. Sometimes, individuals with autism can misunderstand, misuse, or completely miss the use of social cues. For me, this could be not understanding what people mean in their conversations with me, not empathizing with their emotions, or even having no clue what they are saying. What this could look like in day-to-day life, at least for me, typically includes not understanding a specific sarcastic phrase or having trouble telling if an individual is sad, mad, happy, tired, or mixed emotions.
However, while there are challenges to having autism, there are also many benefits โ fitting into that exchange of skills mentioned above. Although I may not understand a social conversation, I have a knack for understanding history; it simply plays in my head like a movie. The same is true for reading, where I can speed read because my brain plays merely the book as a movie with the words being captions.
Interestingly, and unsurprisingly, there is a realm of autistic traits that are neither good nor bad, and sometimes both. One that stands out in my mind is routines, sleep, and workload. I can take on a near-infinite amount of tasks and never miss a beat. I don’t need sleep as long as my jobs keep me busy. On the contrary, if I lack activities, I can quickly spiral into a slump. It then becomes challenging to start a task at all, never mind the large amount of responsibilities I love to take on.
This is a small glimpse into my life with autism, but of course, this is not true for everyone with autism. Some people could share similarities, while others can be completely different; that is important to remember, especially as there are many stereotypes of what autism is, which will be the topic of the next edition of this column as we continue to unmask the mysterious autism.
