Hey Friend

The first time I told my parents I think I may be autistic, they laughed at me. For context, my family uses humor a lot.  Everyone teases each other, makes jokes in almost any scenario. In some ways I’m sure it made communication easier. There’s a familiarity and casualness to playing around like that. It also probably taught me how to determine if someone is serious or joking with me. Well…kinda. Sometimes I still don’t know and it makes me super uncomfortable. Anyway, my point is, the fear of being teased, being laughed at, caused hesitation. I couldn't always be vulnerable. So when I told my parents over the phone that I took an online assessment and scored VERY high, indicating that I should consider pursuing formal diagnosis, their response was unsurprising, but discouraging. The conversation ended awkwardly because I had to explicitly say “I’m being serious right now, don’t laugh at me.” My mom appealed to me a tiny bit to ease the tension, but I was already putting up a wall...

Over the next few weeks, I want to share my story about my autism diagnosis. Well, actually, I guess more accurately, I should call this my Autism Realization. The first time I thought I may be autistic was probably my late teens. I knew I was different from my peers in a way I couldn’t explain. But when I was in college, trying to connect to new people, it was exhausting and confusing.  I felt burned out a lot. I felt so lonely and couldn’t figure out why connections and friendships didn’t come naturally to me. I didn’t understand the nuances of interactions as much as I felt like I was supposed to. Why am I not allowed to say certain things to people? Through observation, I figured out “Yeaaaa these folks hated that interaction so it was either weird or rude.” But I didn’t understand WHY it was weird or rude. I just left it at “ok, can’t ask that question, it makes people uncomfortable.”  In college Psychology and Sociology courses, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) was always ...

I’m Alexis. Looks like you’ve stumbled across my blog. Before we really get into it, I should tell you a few things: I’m a woman. I’m in my 30s. I’m Black. I’m autistic. Do with that information whatever you want. I’m doing a thing where I push myself into creative endeavors. Sometimes life happens and I want to share it. Sometimes I have thoughts about different parts of life that I want to parse out in words. And sometimes I write something down and immediately wonder what level of self-importance made me think it needed to be written like that. So yeah… sometimes I find myself annoying. And it’s cool. It’s fine. It’s going to be part of this process. So, to the people who find this blog—welcome. I hope you stick around. Maybe some of this will feel relatable. Maybe some of it will feel completely weird. Either way, I’m here to say, “Hey, friend,” and share whatever thoughts I had that day. Here goes nothing.