This has a very nice feel to it because its made of metal unlike most of my other favorite things and I like to hold and feel this on me at the same time I am feeling other things that are quite different (like my blanket or some of my other toys).
I love to hold it up to my eyes and look through it and at all the parts and patterns. My theory is other people see the world in lumps and this is what makes it so hard to understand. They see a lump, would not even see all these things but its just a one lump like a shape or an outline I think or something and then they give that whole lump shaped outline a name but if you are me you are looking at and admiring one part at a time and don't see it the way they do and so don't know what they are seeing or talking to you about. It took me a really long time to start to figure this out. See all the patterns and shapes and ways this goes? If you are like most non-autistic people or are not me anyway you probably don't see it. Anyway it keeps on doing that if you move yourself or it at all there are always a bunch of different ones to see. I can look at them for hours. I can explain here and you probably still can't see them.
This is another favorite I call "big bird in a wheel' because I don't know what its actual name is and no one ever said a name to me so I made that up and can sign it.
I don't really understand really how people can NOT see things the way I do, I just have come to understand that they don't and they also don't understand the way I DO see things. Its not because of my low vision either. I didn't always have low vision and these pictures show I think very much the way I see things and sometimes makes an annoying flash when it shouldn't but the camera does not have any low vision.
I like to look through some favorite things because I like it and because it helps to see where things are separate different things the way they are. That is maybe a hard thing to explain but it helps me to see better.
When I first started typing and a long time after (and then more again when I got online on the internet and started typing here) one of the first of many questions people often ask is "What is it like being autistic?"
They don't ask things like "whats it like being short?" or "whats it like having white skin?" or a bunch of other things I have always had or have always been. They don't ask eachother those either. If I ever had Black skin and now I didn't or was ever tall and now I'm not then I might be able to answer those. But I have always had white skin, always been short, just like I've also always been autistic. I don't know what its like being non-autistic any more than I know what its like to have differnet colored skin or be differently shaped than I am, so I ask them "What's it like NOT being autistic?"
They don't seem to have an answer for that one either. All these people like Temple Grandin and Donna Williams and Thomas McKean and others "on the circuit' writing books for the non-autistics and trying to be "The Ambassadors of Autism" and trying to say what 'autism' is like and one size fits all (I do NOT think in pictures for instance, I'm the opposite and maybe that's why I like making pictures so much since I can't have them in my head much at all I can have them here).
I have had it suggested to me many many times that I should write a book too like Donna Williams and Temple Grandin and Thomas McKean and the others but I don't want to do that. They're not really Ambassadors of Autism and neither am I. If any of them are autistic or had been around other autistic people they would know that we're all different from one another and individuals just like non-autistics. I know that I am autistic (or something alot like it, with my sister going and sometimes myself I wonder if maybe I'm 'something else' too) but whatever I am, I am me and nobody else at all is going to be the same as me if they have the same things different about them as me or not, I am still like nobody else, only I am just like me. This is part of why I like to say "this is me" about me and "this is not me" and "you are not me" to people when I need to say that to them.
I am the Ambassador of Me.
I don't think the world would like a book that is The Ambassador of Me since the world is not trying to be me (I have had people try to be me before and that is extremely upsetting and I don't want anyone doing this) and being one person and only able to speak for me I don't think a HandBook On How To Understand Me would be handy or useful to many people. Even those that it would be handy or useful to read don't want to read anything like it. I don't want to write books, I don't want to be 'on the circuit' (which is 'code' language for going to conventions and performing like a trained monkey on demand the way they do and especialy Thomas McKean used to do anyway with his guitar and singing and his book that I think was 'ghostwritten' and not by him at all). I don't want to be a famous trained monkey. I am okay with my life as it is, I don't need to add having even more people know me that I don't know them and having all that even more socializing and troubles that would come from doing that.
I got the question on here:
You've written a hit musical! How will you avoid having fame go to your head?
This is my answer:
That's easy: I would keep the hit musical to myself so that I never became famous.
I think if anything if we need any books, what we need is a book by a neurotypical (a non-autistic person) who says what neurotypical is like and can be the Ambassador of Neurotypical. THAT might be the HANDY and VERY USEFUL book for us, especially since (except for maybe a few very sick and cruel individuals I have met online) non-autistic people aren't trying to be autistic, its autistic people who have to try to understand and fit with the non-autistics.
Another question people used to ask (and before any others and and not TO me, I don't remember this question ever being asked TO me but just AROUND and ABOUT me to others) "does she use FC?" or "Does she use facilitated communication?" which means "Is that really HER typing or is that somebody else writing and just using her fingers and hands (because someone like her can't REALLY be able to think and write for herself)?"
Its very insulting and made me very very upset and angry when people said this. To this day whenever I think about it very much it still makes me upset. Its a way of saying they don't believe I can think. I know "FC" is a false thing and people ARE often used as puppets for their fingers and hands and arms and I think its very wrong when its done to them.
I do NOT 'use FC" or "facilitated communication' *I* type for me, this is entirely me and no one else. No one else ever has. My words are all my own that I type.
