This Belongs to Us

I want to tell you a secret. I have been accused of being neurotypical or "not that autistic" so many times that it could make my head spin. I have been told this by friends or teachers or any number of other people in my life. I have even been told that I could not be autistic by doctors and even once by a psychologist. I have never been accused of being neurotypical by an autistic person.

Not once.

Autism is a community. Sometimes those who hold the keys to this community are those who have power over us. They are the doctors, the parents, the friends who say to us that we do not belong. Even while we may struggle to be like them we have no right to be ourselves. This is what they tell us.

Yet, be it through ignorance or simple naiveté, they are wrong.

They are wrong because they do not know where to look. They do not see what we see when we see each other. They can not recognize themselves in ourselves. When we see each other and recognize each other in each other we form a family -- a community. It is this shared experience, the experience which we are able to share that defines us. If ever autism could be given form it would be this: our shared experience of what makes us different.

It is ours.

Nobody may take it away from us.