April: Time's up...

 Imagine how desperate it feels to be waiting for change.

Imagine how degrading it feels to be reduced to a stereotype.

Imagine how dismissive it feels to be told that you know less about your own disorder, how it affects you, and what supports you need, than a first-year psych student.

Imagine how it feels to be told that someone else's experience of you is more important than your experience as you.

Imagine asking for help and being told you can only pick and choose from services that will cause you further distress, further dysfunction and potentially, long-term trauma.

Imagine how desperate it feels to be waiting for change.

Imagine:

~your diagnosis and very way of being, used as the punchline to a joke all around you

~being told to let others do the speaking for you

~having your expert perspective completely ignored

~being told you won't amount to anything

~being accused of having no emotions and no connections

~being feared because your diagnosis is falsely linked to the potential for violence

~being ostracized from your peers for fear of social contagion

~ having limited learning opportunities in self-contained classrooms because bureaucracy only funds to the general population, not specific need

~learning and working and living with people who assume incompetence

~spending every day exhaustively in mimicry of other peoples' actions/behaviours/expressions/vocal patterns/etc... for their comfort, at the cost of your own mental and emotional health

~being punished or penalized every time you try to self-regulate

Imagine how desperate it feels to be waiting for change.

Imagine being autistic.

The waiting needs to be over.  The time for change is now.

We are here.  We are intelligent.  We are reasonable.  We are impassioned. We are emotional. We are empathetic problem-solvers. We are creative non-linear thinkers.  We are communicative.  We are social.  We are familial.  We are familiar.  We are HUMAN.

See us.  Hear us.  Amplify our voices.  And stand behind us in allyship as we change this world for the better by demanding acceptance, inclusion and the respect so long denied us.

Time's up!