Trials, Tribulations, and Forging My Own Path as a Disabled Autistic Writer

AKA me rambling over the course of several months about working and money and the past - and the progress I'm trying to make for the future.

Hello again. I hope my blog finds you well because I’m back on my bullshit.

This time around, I figured I’d talk about my journey as an autistic writer (and overall contributor to the U.S. labor force). You might wanna sit down for this - but not without grabbing a snack and some water - because this ride is about to get bumpy.

Let’s start from the beginning. I got my first job as a dishwasher at a country club when I was 17 and fresh out of high school. I had just realized that I was trans but was not yet out to anyone other than my best friend. In addition to the challenges of living as my ‘dead,’ ‘cisgender female’ self, I was testing my capacity to work a traditional job for the first time.

Throughout high school, I was worried about not being able to hold down a ‘proper’ job. If I couldn’t work, I couldn’t be independent, and if I couldn’t be independent, how could I possibly be ‘adequate’ as an adult? While working at the country club, it seemed as though I could, in fact, work - just not without immense struggle. I’m not sure how much I would really grasp what my struggles were until later, though, when I worked at my local Giant the following summer. Because I was working full-time, I wasn’t able to attend to any other aspect of my life. Personal hygiene was restricted to what felt necessary for work, if that, and any personal goals I might’ve had fell off the face of the earth, and it was only out of a sense of obligation that I didn’t fall off myself. In retrospect, it truly seems like any attempt at a work-life balance would’ve left me even more burnt out by the time I started school again, and that just isn’t a sustainable or fulfilling way to live. Working like that, even if I find an ounce of enjoyment in what I’m doing, consumes me to the point where I operate solely on autopilot, and my internal motivators and sense of purpose cease to exist (which I say as though living in a neuronormative world doesn’t do that already). As such, I’m trying to find a way to sustain myself through my writing/my creative endeavors at large, things that I’m not only good at (I hope), but also passionate about.

When I first entered college, I was a biomedical engineering major, a far cry from my current English. My choice of major in the first place was a hyperfixation fueled by a superficial idea of helping people, doing science-y things, and *sigh* living comfortably.

My first year of college was…rocky, to say the least. My grades were okay in the fall but dropped significantly in the winter, to the point where I was placed on academic probation. I continued to struggle through the spring, and that’s when I finally reevaluated what I wanted to do with my life. Up until that point, I thought I had made the decision to go into biomed on my own terms, but looking back, I think the decision was influenced by other people’s expectations of me. As a child, I got good grades without trying especially hard, and I was pretty well-rounded, performing well in math and science as well as English (despite my perpetual fear of getting the interpretations of anything I read ‘wrong’). I felt the pressure to live up to the expectations of being ‘the smart one’ in my family - and being good at STEM is often held up as the pinnacle of so-called intelligence.

I also had to think about money. I don’t come from a wealthy family, and while I do have a lot of privileges, it always felt as though my dreams had to be restricted to what could earn me a financial sanctuary that would make me wealthy enough to do whatever the fuck I wanted. Being artsy didn’t seem to align with such a concept, so I tried to stick with being mathematic, scientific, and technological. Eventually, my true passions caught up to me, and that leads us to the present.

I’m doing…better than I was. No, I wasn’t transported to a spiritual oasis upon realizing who I was (or part of who I was, anyway). But I did begin to piece together my own toolkit of coping strategies and I did begin to wonder what more I could do for myself.

If I want to live off my writing, I first have to write, right? But writing can be a difficult process. I find that most of my poems, the ones formed from 2 AM scraps and writing sessions through which I’m suspended in my own mental static, are ones that are somewhat satisfactory, but they don’t always speak to the things that I really want to find words for. Much of my longer-form writing feels the same.

My relationship with words as an autistic person is far more complex than people may think. I may not have gone into too much detail about it in the previous paragraphs, but throughout everything that I've experienced, my autism has been right there with me, even if I wasn't always aware of how acute its existence truly is and was. I was diagnosed at 2 years old, but early knowledge of my truth didn't translate into an early understanding, and it certainly didn't translate into an early acceptance. Instead, like many autistics, I grew up internalizing the ableism that surrounded me - the subtle messages that I absorbed as I went about life. I went from running well past the finish line at the Special Olympics in elementary school to watching as my special education classmates left school to go to the finish line without me. I went from full-day kindergarten (half spent in special ed and half in 'regular ed') to bare-minimum IEP meetings. I imagine that had I not internalized the idea that I was some kind of miracle child 'cured' of my autism, and had I not started to live up to such an expectation, I would've wished I could run, run, run like the wind, running as fast as I possibly could until I reached the sun and left this world that wasn't made for me behind. But after kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd or so, I no longer seemed to have that choice. I showed signs of 'normal,' so I had to be 'normal.' I hid who I was for approval, so I had to be 'normal.' I was doing what I was told, so nothing else mattered, and I learned early on to not ask for accommodations and to not have needs in the first place.

For many years, I struggled to express my emotions in words, whether verbal or written. I was best able to communicate through actions, like yelling and making noises and hiding in my room, but no one seemed to understand the message I was trying to send, and perhaps it's understandable considering I didn't even know what I was trying to say much of the time. I thought I was lazy, incompetent, and not good enough because I couldn't always do things 'correctly,' so I lived as though I was the things I was told because why would I believe anything else? Looking back, my life was strained heavily by unmet sensory needs and the constant need for me to attempt 'normal' communication.

I’ve gained the ability to externalize over the years, yet it’s still damn near impossible for me to talk about things like this out loud. Hence, I write, and I will continue to write so long as I have thoughts on my mind.

I wrote most of what you just read in about November or December, and as I expanded my thinking over the past couple of weeks, I began working on the art of ‘self-discipline’, which is something I’ve always struggled with. I simultaneously get ‘stuck’ in periods where I do next to nothing for hours and end up ‘hustling’ when it comes to my pursuit of work and of profitability off my work without much consideration for the time and energy it will take to realistically obtain such profits, as though my priority in the first place is to earn money (because, when it comes to the impulsive short-term, it often is). I want to be comfortable, sure - comfortable as in ‘I can afford rent in a few months’ time when I have to move out of my dorm.’ But to be comfortable in our society without generational wealth, we have to put our time and energy into things that we may not always be passionate about. I hope to get an off-campus job soon to supplement my two on-campus jobs, but at the moment, I’m trying to prioritize something that I’ve never quite been able to get the hang of: my morning routine. I’ve realized beyond just a logical level that having structure in the morning sets the mood for the rest of my day, and I enjoy waking up and feeling as though I have my shit together when I take a shower, get dressed, wash my face, brush my teeth, make my bed, tidy up my room, and eat breakfast. Perhaps I don’t have it all together yet, and perhaps I never will in the traditional sense, but surprisingly enough, I’ve been a functioning human being as of late…at least when the sun rises.

Maintaining my momentum for the rest of the day is a different story. I know, logically, that I’m worthy regardless of how much I accomplish, but there’s definitely a lot of things that I have to do along with a lot of things that I would like to do. Balance is tricky. It’s taken me so many years to even be able to (kinda) follow a morning routine successfully for a couple of days straight, though, so maybe it will just take more time, more energy, more trial, and more error. I will fail again before I succeed. Maybe someday I will accept that. I can’t expect to make the money I need to survive from my writing without learning a bunch of skills that are so daunting (like you’re telling me that I switched out of STEM only to have to deal with analytics??? Give me a break.) But I also can’t expect to make that money without figuring out what my goals even are with my craft. I’m not sure what I want to do with my writing right now. I don’t have the clearest vision for my future, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe I can figure all of this out along the way.