When Appearance and Reality collide
Nobody ever guessed, or even suspected, that I was autistic from looking at me. I did stand out, admittedly, and my different ways of doing things and saying things were noted. The pecularities of my speech and behaviour were put down to minor eccentricities on my part. It would also seem that I became an expert at masking, mimicry, and mirroring. If I may be so bold as to say, I fought so hard and so heroically in overcoming the struggles that came my way every day - triumphing over stress and sensitivity and anxiety levels that were off the scale - that many would have been inclined to take the high-achieving public image I projected at face value. If people never saw the struggles I faced, they never saw, either, my fierce determination to overcome adversity, the almost inhuman dedication I brought to every task, the long hours of work and preparation I put in, the sacrifice of ordinary pleasures and happiness, all the things I gave up in order to devote time to masking, mimicking, and mirroring. With bitter irony, some who saw only the achievement, and not the struggle and hard work, declared me a 'natural,' someone who was highly intelligent, who only had to turn up for honours to fall into my lap. If I don't 'look' autistic, that is precisely because I am autistic. Which is to say that I worked damned hard, with a singular and fierce dedication to my passions and interests, in order to hone my talents and abilities and succeed. I approach the world in my "writing voice" and have produced a substantial body of work over the past quarter of a century. I have written some twenty million words, mostly of a very high standard. Laughably, I have had to face the contempt and scorn of people, perfect mediocrities, who, intimidated by intelligence, post memes which say 'deeds, not words.' I'll stack my deeds against theirs any day. When it comes to words, there is no contest.
