Jiheishousha celebrates 1000 Ausome Things #AutismPositivity2013

And now, as my first actual post, I'm going to jump into the Autism Positivity flashblog event.

Other people can, and will, be eloquent today. I, however, had the good fortune to attend a Japanese festival on Saturday, which was massive fun but left me with vertigo so severe I couldn't even leave the house for church the next day. Eloquence, therefore, is a bit beyond me at the moment.

So with a lack of anything else to say, I'm just going to list the things I love about being autistic.

* Hanging out with all the 'weird' kids at school, laughing our heads off and speaking exclusively through in-jokes.
* Hearing thunder with my entire body. (Also taiko drumming...)
* Memorizing a new song, in Japanese, in the half-hour when I'm the only one in the house (and can therefore sing as loud as I want, and repeat that super-fast line twelve times in a row to make sure I got it right).
* Singing the super-fast line perfectly the next time I hear that song.
* Reading 700-page books in a few hours.
* Being unabashedly weird.
* Obsessing over the tiny details on a cosplay outfit.
* Realizing I just understood that entire paragraph in my light novel, kanji and all, and didn't have to translate it to English.
* Stimming.
* Weirding people out by singing along with songs they hadn't even realized were playing in the grocery store (and they still can't quite hear them even after I point them out).
* Being super-good at I Spy/Where's Waldo-style picture games. And spotting 4-leaf clovers.
* Always knowing when the mail truck gets to our house.
* Talking about my obsessions.
* That happy thrill running through my brain when the song I'm listening to goes like that, the thrill that's so strong that all I can do is grin and flap.
* Listening to that song three more times in a row, just to get that thrill again.
* That childish feeling of joy when I bounce a rubber ball.
* Understanding my teacher's lecture so thoroughly that I get 106% on a test where the class average is 62%.
* Patterns! Especially tessellations.
* Figuring out whodunits.
* Being thrilled by utterly simple things.
* Mad crossword skillz.
* Watching episode 56 of D.Gray-Man for the seventeenth time. In Japanese. Without subtitles. And quoting along, because I've memorized it.
* Still getting the shivers the seventeenth time I hear  そして悶えながら死んでゆくんだ！
* Folding the laundry into two piles: my sister's multicolored sprawl and my neat little stack of black jeans, black tees, black socks. (Also, never really agonizing over my outfit before leaving the house.)
* Krypto.
* Writing fanfic in my head as I go to sleep.
* Skimming through the entire chapter in a textbook and being able to spot the one word I need to answer a question.
* Going outside in below-freezing weather without a jacket and being perfectly comfortable.
* Imitation skills strong enough to leave me without an accent when I speak Japanese.
* The feeling of a piece of tape on my fingertips.
* Hyperlexia.
* Not having to worry about people seeing me without makeup.
* Being able to express exactly why I like Marvel comics better than DC comics.
* Giving people the temperature in Celsius.
* Reading other autistics' blogs and feeling that common thread that connects us, even though their circumstances are vastly different from mine.

初め - Start

I've been toying with the idea of starting a blog for a long time now, but never really knew what good it would do. Lately I've been reading a lot of blogs written by Autistics, though, and I keep wanting to post something, even though I don't feel nearly as eloquent as people like Autistic Hoya's Lydia or Yes, That Too's Alyssa.

Because yeah, I'm Autistic. And it just feels important to me to have something like this out there: a pretty nice life, as experienced by an Autistic girl.

Posts will likely be highly random. I have only vague, scattered memories of most of my past, for reasons that are entirely unknown to me. Each year of my life has a couple of images that stand out, and the rest is just a blur of uncertain recollections. I piece together most of it by borrowing other peoples' memories and using them to fill in the gaps, but there's so much that I'm missing that I have no way to recover. That's another reason I want to do this: it's not really a journal, but it might help me to hold onto things that I feel are important as I move into 'adulthood'.

People's names will be changed; I don't really have anything to hide, but I'm not comfortable with handing random strangers that much access to my life. If you know me personally, though, you'll recognize me. It won't be hard.

The basics:

I'm 25 as I write this--although I generally look like I'm 14-18--and I'm almost finished with my General Studies Associates' Degree. And all that that implies. I barely top five feet. My skin is so pale that 'ivory' colored foundation makes it look like I have a tan--which would be a pain if I actually wore makeup--and tinted an odd shade of yellow for indeterminate reasons. My hair is waist-length and brown, with white streaks in front to make me look like Rogue from the X-men, thanks to a high-school obsession that still hasn't died down. My eyes used to be blue, but now they're more gray. My ancestors came to the US on the Mayflower; before then, they were mainly Welsh, with a smattering of half the countries in Europe mixed in. I'm straight and cis. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormon) and identify as Liberal for the most part. I'm studying Japanese and Asian Studies in preparation for a career as a translator. I dress all in black, usually jeans and geeky T-shirts, but my favorite color is plum. I'm severely nearsighted with astigmatism. I have comic-book superheroine boobs. I eat almost everything with chopsticks. I knit occasionally and reluctantly, love origami and calligraphy, and make chainmail out of soda-can pull-tabs. I have a deep and abiding love for the manga and anime D.Gray-Man. I love snow and bunnies and city lights at night.

And yeah, I'm Autistic.

Welcome to my life.