What does it feel like to be autistic?

Normal. I guess?

I mean, how does it feel being neurotypical? Probably normal, right? Right!

I was lucky (or maybe not so lucky) as a young boy; I was grabbed from a young age and thrust into sports. I can remember being manhandled by my Grandad down to the local park with a golf ball and a stick. It felt weird what he was trying to teach me to do. I was there without my say so and here was one of my father-figure’s pushing a forty year old golf club in my face and shouting at me, “just bloody give it a swing, give it a try”

I didn’t care, I just wanted to go back and play with my bike and my tractor – stupid wooden straight pointy stick-thing. What use is that anyway? I would give it a swing, take a big massive clump of dirt with me and scream at him,

“There?! You happy!”

I’m 42 now, back then I was about five and just starting primary school so you bet I went back home with a red-hot bottom. My first brush with golf wasn’t a good one, my memories are faded but I do remember the very first time we attempted it I was not in the mood and I ended up getting the slipper.

It was the same with football. I can remember my Grandad playing football with me for long hours out in the fields until it got dark. I had a rocket right foot. I can remember kids picking me in school for football purely for the strength in that right foot. If you can compare it to anything it would be Fulton from D1

That of course phased out in High School as I began getting interested in being a goalie. It’s a long story, and perhaps one for another day. Main takeaway from this is that I was brought up to love sports and I really did love sports. Sometimes you would see me on the golf course three times a day in the summer holidays practising. Morning, noon and night before the dark comes in.

I wasn’t your typical Autistic kid. My love for tech, games and sci-fi? Yes, that is actually really strong too — I grew up loving computers and Star Trek but at the time it was my dirty secret; something I didn’t want the world to know — because popular kids didn’t do that. It’s only what the weird stupid kids that try to get A’s in class do.

It was crazy looking back because I could have just not given a crap and enjoyed what I enjoyed but it seemed growing up my love for sports and popularity were in direct conflict with my love for hyper geeky stuff.

A popular autistic kid? Nay? I hear you say? Yeah, truth be told I wasn’t really popular at all. My friends would only hang with me outside of school because being near me IN school was sometimes all a bit too insufferable. I’d often get jibed by one of the big fat girls that I was a, “Norman nae pals” – In Scottish that technically means that I was known for having no friends, and in school that was a big insult. Having no friends in school was sort of like you were unlikeable, a loner, a loser.

It was quite the mishmash of feelings. On one hand I desperately tried to be the cool kid that played sports and hung with all the hyper masculine guys, and on the other hand I desperately wanted to sit and play the computer all day.

Sadly, rather than succumb to my needs and wants I gave into my lust for popularity and power which in the end just resulted in me pissing off most people because in reality I was being false. It really wasn’t who I wanted to be. I wanted to be head deep doing geeky stuff like coding my own program or starting my own tech business.

Trying to understand people was a funny one too. Why did people do what they do? It made no sense. I’ll be honest, it still makes no sense. But I’ve elevated my worldview to live and let live — if people are doing it then it must make sense to them and that’s alright.

Don’t even get me started on relationships. I can remember thinking that women were almost super human as to how they couldn’t be nervous on a date and it was almost inconceivable that I even managed to get on dates. It wasn’t until I met my wife and I could visibly tell that she was nervous too — that I realised most women are ultra good at masking and throwing us off scent.

I used to blame my dad for all this but in reality I’m not so sure now. I mean it hurts that he wasn’t there but a lot of what I went through I see my son go through it all himself. The only saving grace is that I really drummed it into him that he should absolutely do what he likes and he should not pay attention to what anyone else thinks. So right now he’s in the chess club and doing programming as an extra curricular activity — good for him I’d say.

It was my son that made me realise I definitely had autism. I wouldn’t have known beforehand. I mean we suspected but I wouldn’t have known for sure. It is something that’s been suggested to me many times before.

That being said it’s never been a hindrance to me. One lady on hive @traciyork (thank you) suggested that I was an overachiever in that whatever’s put in front of me I try my damndest to make it work.

I used to own a super popular blog at one point which started off as just a few random thoughts but merged into something that attracted over 30,000 visits per month. Few people ever get to that stage. Of course it was suggested that I got there because of my white privilege but in reality it’s because a lot of thought and effort goes into my work — if you want to coast at life then you’ll never be successful with money. Perhaps happy? Maybe, but never successful. The successful route is the ultra hard path. It’s never easy, and it requires lots of sacrifice.

If you catch it early enough (like I did) then you can turn everything that you are into a positive. Autistic people (including me) tend to have ultra focus, repeat things that they enjoy, and tend to overly indulge in their interests. That’s why I would say there are a high percentage of autists in ultra focused skills — like Brain Surgery for example.

That’s not to say that everyone is like this and you’re thinking of wanting to give me my laser and scalpel and send me off to recreate life altering brain surgery, no. It’s all about focus; see where it is and encourage it. My kid wants to be a game designer and a Youtuber. You ever seen the views some of those game youtubers get? Big money. If you didn’t know, views = money.

If you had asked me this perhaps 20 years ago I would say life sucks and the only good thing is the beer, spirits, the drugs, and the ladies. Luckily twenty years later and I’ve found passions I never knew I had and really quite enjoy life. It’s why I’m still writing. I’m financially comfortable now so I’m going back to what I love. I also game lots to the annoyance of my wife. She is to GTA 5 as my friend Ben is to Facebook chat. I’ll give you a hint, it’s not a positive!

But like I say. A lot of people walk around thinking high functioning Autism is a bad thing, it’s not. If you aim your focus right and dial down the thirst for hedonism, because boy do we get a little side-tracked when we discover hedony, the exploration for pleasure is high with us autists — especially when we spend our childhood being made to feel like we aren’t anything special.

When we find that glass of vodka that finally makes us feel special? You bet we’re climbing those highs.

So whatever the case it feels normal being Autistic. It’s always been for me anyway. It perhaps even gives me an edge over life? Because when you are scrolling Facebook endlessly I am indulging my interests, learning new things, and taking pleasure out of what I do, rather than blaming the world for everything that’s not good.

I jest of course but it would be really nice if we began to all take a good cold hard look at ourselves and aim to improve that which we don’t like!

Peace out folks 🙂

Started a new wp blog with the intent of pushing people over to hive. Check it out :) (my own work) https://learnisart.com/what-does-it-feel-like-to-be-autistic/