Diary: Autistic, Me? Yes. Why Do You Ask? April 4, 2025

Friday, April 4, 2025, 10:24 pm

As hard as I’ve tried for my entire life, and despite my efforts being as earnest as they possibly ever could be, I’ve never been able to conform to social status quos.

But in truth, I now also no longer believe that I should try to “fit the mold”—How could I ever be true to myself if I am forever trying to be like everyone else, even if for the sake of feeling “accepted”?

After many years of deep reflection on this matter, and taking into consideration my unique “quirks”, I have learned to view certain things about myself that I always felt were “flaws”, not as “flaws”, but as unique characteristics and attributes that make up the very essence of what makes me, Me.

These specific things about me are not things that are in any way in opposition to standards of morality or my religious beliefs; They were simply things about me that have always existed, even when I was a toddler, but of which were simply considered “unconventional” or “weird” (or, both, even). But even though these things that were the core of my personality and who I am and always have been as an individual are not “wrong” in any sense, I had learned a long time ago that the vast majority of people, accept for young children, viewed them as “weaknesses”, “immaturity”, “ridiculous”, “flaws”, “failures” in adulthood, and “delusions of grandeur”.

My “faults”, that I now speak of?

• I daydream, and I daydream without reservations regarding the limits of reality; My imagination is already larger than life, and though others have always told me that I “dream too much”, I still don’t think that I’ve ever dreamed nearly far or widely enough.

• I fantasize about what might be possible and what fantastical things the future might yet hold.

• I romanticize things. Everything. Always. Because, why not, as long as I a still firmly grounded in reality? Life would be so dull and depressing if it weren’t for reveries of romanticism.

• I have always had a natural tendency and desire to *believe* in the possibilityof the “impossible” becoming possible, the same way that a very small child *believes*.

• I am an optimist by nature, but my unique kind of optimism seems to be in direct opposition of what society believes should be tolerated for an adult to have, but of which other adults can never seem to give a truly reasonable excuse or explanation for why optimism should have unreasonable caps on it, other than “because thats not how a mature adult should think”, as if being genuinely and open-mindedly optimistic is somehow incompatible with logic or reason.

• I want to see the good in everything and in everyone, and because of that I am a naive person by nature, and of which I have had to learn how to guard myself against being taken advantage of and had to learn many different ways to compensate for my naivety.

• I never grew out of being “childlike”. I have spent my entire life trying to hide it, change it, grow out of it, and I had always viewed it as a negative trait if mine, and also as if it were a “flaw”.

• I dream too big.

• I love too deeply.

• I care too much.

• I want to help everyone with everything and solve every problem.

• I want to see every single person, ever, know what it is to be happy, loved, safe, valued, and that they are wanted, needed, they matter, and that they belong.

• I want to give, and I want to give to everyone.

• I still believe in fairytales, Once-Upon-A-Time’s, and Happily-Ever-After’s.

I have been this way since I was at least a toddler (those years are the earliest and most detailed memories that I have of these thoughts and feelings), and I never stopped being that little girl at heart; I just learned to hide her away from the whole world, because being her meant getting hurt.

So I spent my whole life pretending to be someone other than I truly was—Pretending to be someone who was entirely serious, someone who was entirely no-nonsense, someone who had no time for “childish” things.

And I still want to be a mature, sober-minded, and prudent adult—I just don’t want to take any of those qualities to such an extreme that they not only evict the real me, but which end up also missing the mark, entirely, of having such attributes and the purpose that they are meant to serve, and that is to allow us to live a life in harmony with behaviors and habits that produce joy. And how can we have joy if we only take everything in life so seriously that we become unable to experience joy?

Three years ago, I learned that the things that make me, Me, were not personal flaws nor are they a detriment to my character. I have many imperfections, and I am a very broken person, but I know now that at least these things about me—my childlike nature that is, at least in part, a result of me having Autism Spectrum Disorder—these attributes are not flaws by default. Sure, they could potentially become flaws, and I know that, and I’ve always been aware of that risk. But I know that they can also be not only a positive characteristic, but that they also have the potential to become a catalyst for nurturing something more—Something meaningful and positive, because that is the entire purpose that our Father in heaven gives us gifts and talents, even if we don’t always recognize our gifts and being a gifts or as being a blessing, and even if we don’t realize what these gifts can both help us accomplish and also help us become, because of them.

I no longer intend to hide myself—the real Stacy—from the world, and neither from my family, friends, or anyone else within my social sphere.

To quote one of my all-time favorite writers: “…To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” —William Shakespeare, “Hamlet”.

The month of April is National Autism Acceptance Month, and though it has taken me three full years since I finally received a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), it’s only been this last year that I have really been able to start allowing myself to be comfortable with the real Stacy who has slept dormant, as if she had pricked her finger upon a spinning wheel, for so, so long.

I hope that as I continue to become comfortable again being myself and not concealing the pieces of me that seem (to me) to be undesirable or undervalued by others, that not only will I be able to someday fully accept me, for being Me, but that those who consider themselves my friend or loved ones will also be willing to accept me, for Me. And perhaps allowing myself to do just that will prove the meaning behind my name to be prophetic in some peculiar way, and I will one day find that the true Me as been revived, renewed, reborn—eccentricities, autism, and all—and if that happens, then “Stacy” will be truly be a “renaissance”.

Happy Autism Acceptance Month, everyone.