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.
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