This guest post is by Finnian Bonner Sheerin, a young man on the autism spectrum who was diagnosed with ASD at age 5/6 and has been accepted into St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Finnian is applying for the Spring 2022 Making a Difference Autism Scholarship via the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference started by me, Kerry Magro. I was nonspeaking till 2.5 and diagnosed with autism at 4 and you can read more about my organization here. Autistics on Autism: Stories You Need to Hear About What Helped Them While Growing Up and Pursuing Their Dreams, our nonprofit’s new book, will be released on March 29, 2022 on Amazon here for our community to enjoy featuring the stories of 100 autistic adults.
Growing up on the autism spectrum was something I wouldn’t trade for anything, no matter what new problems it presented. Being autistic is who I am, and who I will always be. My mom and my family accept me for who I am, and they love me no matter what. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have difficulties growing up. Interacting with others directly was hard for me and it still is — I honestly prefer being alone over talking with others most of the time. Even speaking with other people online is hard at times – sometimes it’s harder. But none of this makes me ‘less’ than other people. It just makes me different from them.
Too many people out in the world treat those like us like we’re less than human; as if we’re sick and need to be cured. That is not right, and it will never be right. We love things, just like any other person, we just do it differently. It’s the same for learning, thinking, writing, everything we do and are. We’re not wrong, we’re just different. So why do so many people treat us like we’re a sickness that needs to be ‘cured’ or exterminated? I’ve never experienced blatant discrimination like this, but the fact that it exists is far too much. Don’t we deserve a chance to exist, no matter how different we are?
The fact is that I’ve never had to face some of the worst problems when it comes to being autistic. I haven’t been treated like something less because of who I am, I haven’t felt the need to hide part of myself because of fear, I can only recall one time in my life that I’ve encountered a bully, and he didn’t even bring up me being on the spectrum! But just because I haven’t faced the worst problems doesn’t mean I haven’t faced problems. One thing I can remember is a teacher refusing to listen to me when I tried to explain a misunderstanding, and another – the worst one outside of that bullying above – was when I was treated like I was dumber than a child just because of me being autistic. No outright discrimination, but it doesn’t need to be blatant to still hurt. Sometimes, silent negativity and judgment can be more painful than any hatred, no matter how raw and toxic it is.
The point I am trying to make here, no matter how muddled it seems, is that people with autism are just people. We have dreams, form connections with others, and feel hurt when people treat us like something that shouldn’t exist. People need to understand that we’re not sick, just different. I want a lot of things from the world, but that is something I need from the world. For people to understand that people with autism, non-verbal or verbal, low-functioning or high-functioning, deserve a chance to live as themselves. I refuse to believe that there is anything wrong with that, and I hope that anyone reading this understands why.
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My name is Kerry Magro, a professional speaker and best-selling author who is also on the autism spectrum that started the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference in 2011 to help students with autism receive scholarship aid to pursue post-secondary education. Help support me so I can continue to help students with autism go to college by making a tax-deductible donation to our nonprofit here.
Autistics on Autism: Stories You Need to Hear About What Helped Them While Growing Up and Pursuing Their Dreams, will be released on March 29, 2022 on Amazon here for our community to enjoy featuring the stories of 100 autistic adults. 100% of the proceeds from this book will go back to our nonprofit to support initiatives like our autism scholarship program. In addition, this autistic adult’s essay you just read will be featured in a future volume of this book as we plan on making this into a series of books on autistic adults.
