Autism Acceptance: I don't HAVE Autism, I AM Autistic.

Another thing for Autism Acceptance Month: "I don’t Have Autism, I am Autistic. It is not a thing you have. It is a way you are."
A conversation I had recently online:

"You’re not Asperger’s, you’re a person WITH Asperger’s, it doesn’t define who you are." You see, that would be a nice sentiment if Asperger’s was a separate part of me or of us, a disease we have, or a thing that is just one facet. People with MS for instance, are not defined by their MS even though their suffering is great, it doesn’t change who they are except as another experience they deal with with and learn from, as human beings. If you could take away the MS, they would still be the same person, though with different experiences, without the MS, and probably much happier, since MS is a painful and debilitating thing.

But please understand, autism is not a separate thing. If you could somehow take away what makes someone autistic, there would not be them left, un-autistic. There would be a different person, and not a whole one either.

I don’t Have Autism, I am Autistic. It is not a thing you have. It is a way you are.

You would never say to someone of a certain race, “You aren’t ‘Race’, you just HAVE ‘Race-ness’.”  Think of Autism Spectrum people like that. This is not a separate thing we have, and have to “overcome”, that we can’t “let it define us as a person”. It does. It is. But that’s okay. That’s good, even. I am autistic, and that is how I am. I am many other things too, but it isn’t something I have to  ‘not let define me’. Of course it defines me. Everything I am defines me.

If Autism was an unfortunate thing, then of course we’d be right to say, You don’t have to let it define you. But what if it is a good thing? I have been deciding this last year or so that I am happier when I let it be one of the things that defines me, because it is not a thing I have. It is the way I am. I am me, like this, improving all the time in my way, and that’s okay.