I must have been living under a rock my whole life, because I didn't realize that apparently, April is Autism Awareness Month or whatever. I'm not really going to rant about this, because, first off, I'm not informed enough about Autism Speaks and autism in general to be sure that I'm making logical and factually correct statements, and second, I'd just be repeating what I've already seen people say.

But seriously if you haven't already, read kmbell92's recent chapter in her book Kitty in Wattpad Land, Before You Go Blue, because I sWEAR FOR LIKE HALF OF THAT CHAPTER SHE WAS TAKING THE WORDS RIGHT OUT OF MY MOUTH. And cendriia's chapter, Since it's April, in her art book, has a bunch of pictures of tumblr posts that had me wishing I could slam the vote button a billion times. LIKE PREACH PEOPLE THAT STUFF IS SO TRUE AND IM SO GLAD I SAW THOSE SCREENSHOTS.

Anyway, I'm typing this up because I've had this rant bubbling up inside me for a while now, and I thought this was a good a time as any to publish it, since it has to do with autism.

First off, here's a long winded explanation of me when I was young.

Basically, when I was little, I cried a LOT. Way more than normal. Like, if I woke up in the morning and I was the only one still upstairs, I'd get terrified that I'd been abandoned or something and start crying and screaming for someone to come upstairs with me.

I was crazily detail-oriented. If my stuffed bunny was moved from the right of my pillow to a few inches in front of it, I'd go ballistic because someone touched my stuff and it's not in the correct place anymore. (I absolutely could not handle people touching and/or moving my things from the exact place I'd left them.)

I was an insanely picky eater. I would refuse to eat two different foods placed on the same plate. I would also separate out my food into little sections and eat them one at a time. And, on top of that, I would pick at my food for three times as long as I should have, doing things like eating rice a few grains at a time or eating all the butter off of my waffle before eating the actual waffle.

So, what I'm trying to get at with all of this is that I was extremely high maintenance. And, honestly, I drove my parents insane. Especially my mom.

Sometimes, she'd get completely fed up with me. And then she'd start screaming at me.

This would make me start crying, which would make her scream more, which would just make me cry harder and start screaming about how she was being unfair. Then she'd scream at me more, saying that I was acting like a baby and ordering me to shut up. And I'd try to stop crying, I really did. But by that point I'd have reached that point where I was taking these huge gasping breaths and hiccuping and I was completely unable to slow my breathing because I'd already cried too much and too hard.

And then my mom would scream some more about how I was disobedient because I hadn't calmed myself yet. I'd get punished. More screaming and crying would ensue. It was a never ending, vicious cycle.

This would happen several times a week. Because it was so frequent, and because I had those strange little behaviors, my parents were convinced that I was autistic. I'm sure that some of you read that long description of me as a child and thought the same. I have a faint memory of going to a therapist, but it was only once. What I can confidently say is that it turned out that I didn't really have autism. Which surprised my parents, I guess.

Going back to the screaming and crying thing--normally, after it happened, my mom would refuse to speak to me for several hours. 

And anytime I tried to say something to her, she'd ignore me, and as soon as I gave up and turned away, she'd mutter under her breath, "autistic moron." Or something along those lines.

AND HERE WE GO THIS IS WHAT PISSES ME OFF.

My mom would use that phrase ALL THE FUCKING TIME. She would continuously call me "autistic" as a synonym for "high maintenance" or "prone to crying" or "annoying" or "someone who is a fucking nightmare to deal with and who I wish did not exist."

AND SHE STILL DOES IT SOMETIMES BECAUSE I STILL CRY FAIRLY EASILY (she still screams at me for the smallest of things though, but that's a rant for another time) AND THAT'S ALSO THE REASON I CAN'T TELL HER ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED WITH MY SPANISH TEACHER WEEKS AGO, BECAUSE SHE WOULD SAY THAT I AM BEING STUPID AND THAT I AM "AUTISTIC."

And you know what? It hurts to be called that, knowing she means idiotic or whatever, but honestly, at this point, I care less about the fact that she is calling me those things and more that she is using the word AUTISTIC.

Like, what the fuck? If you want to call me idiotic, CALL ME IDIOTIC. If you want to call me immature, CALL ME IMMATURE. If you want to call me a nightmare to deal with, CALL ME A FUCKING NIGHTMARE GODDAMMIT. Do NOT use autistic as a substitute for those things! Because, I swear to god, IT'S NOT. Autism is NOT the same as all of those things. People with autism are just PEOPLE, not burdens.

And here's something really sad.

When I was little, I heard the word autistic coming out of my mom's mouth so often, I legitimately thought it was a synonym for all of the things I listed above. I didn't even know that autism was an actual disorder some people had. Growing up, I LITERALLY THOUGHT AUTISTIC WAS JUST ANOTHER WAY TO CALL SOMEONE STUPID AND A BURDEN.

And when I finally did learn that autism is a thing and autistic people actually exist--which was in first grade or sometime around then--because of the context in which my mom kept calling me autistic, I BELIEVED ALL OF THE STEREOTYPES ABOUT AUTISM.

EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.

I had an autistic girl in my second grade class, and because I grew up thinking that autism was a terrible disease and that people with autism had serious mental problems and should be left alone (which was because of the way my mom acted around me whenever she called me autistic and the context in which she said it), I avoided that girl like the plague. I would not talk to her, or sit next to her. I did everything within my power to not go near her.

I am not at all proud of the way I acted around that girl.

I'm ashamed of the way I treated her.

When I finally did get educated about autism, I cannot explain how much regret I felt for my actions. Which, I guess, just goes to show that people can learn to be more accepting.

I am still FURIOUS at my mother, though, because it was her actions and words that made me have all of those false beliefs. She continually uses autistic to mean all of those negative things, and the only difference is that now, I know that autism and those things are not interchangeable. I guess I can't say the same for her. 

So, aside from me being pissed at my mother, my point is that we should fucking respect autistic people like we would respect any other person.

Stop stereotyping them.

Stop acting like they have something fundamentally wrong with them and must be fixed.

Just ACCEPT AUTISTIC PEOPLE FOR WHO THEY ARE.

.

Edit: I would like to clarify again that I do not actually have autism. (That would be part of the reason I get so pissed when my mom calls me "autistic"--because it's not just stereotyping autistic people, it's also casually throwing the word around when it's not even applicable. And I don't know I feel like that's almost invalidating people who actually do have autism.)