Took many steps to get here, but I have finally left
http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/real-estate/2015/06/14/took-many-steps-get-here-but-have-finally-left/tCLgoa8t3BIStVJfetAdpI/story.html
To anyone else, the plain, white triple-decker on an unassuming street is nothing special. To anyone else, it is just another building in Greater Boston where three unrelated adults are living as roommates, common in our cut-throat housing market. To anyone else, there is nothing extraordinary at all.
To my family and me, however, this house is more than just another apartment. It is more than just three young-ish adults living on their own, because one of those adults will be me. Underemployed, overeducated, autistic me. And nine years after graduating from college, I have finally left home....
“Ah,” you say, “but those statistics don’t refer to you. They refer to real autistic people who can’t talk, much less go to college. You’re much too high-functioning for real problems.”
Leaving aside the incredibly ableist language of functioning labels and the fact that there are plenty of people in college or pursuing college who do not speak, um, I’m still autistic. Through years of therapy and very hard work, I am able to hide it in the outside world, but I cannot disguise it at home. Home is where my special interests flourish, where my sensory sensitivities are by necessity accommodated, where I can stop making the unnatural eye contact and small talk and just be me, faults and fortes together.
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