This guest post is by William Arbuckle, a young man on the autism spectrum who was diagnosed with autism at the age of 2 and has been accepted to the University of Missouri – Columbia. William is applying for the Spring 2023 Making a Difference Autism Scholarship via the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference started by me, Kerry Magro. I was nonverbal 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, was released on March 29, 2022, on Amazon here for our community to enjoy featuring the stories of 100 autistic adults.
From early on, I knew that I was autistic. However, I didn’t always know what it meant for me. Of course, I’m always going to be myself, but I didn’t realize that meant that I would be different from others. In elementary school, it was something I didn’t particularly understand yet. I had friends and loved going to school – at one point, begging to go to school despite being sick – but at home, there would be bouts all the time between me and my mother.
My parents are good people, and they’ve cared for me my entire life. But in elementary school, arguments and crying were almost a daily occurrence. It could come from various things, but I was very schedule oriented. If things did not go according to plan, then it was not a good day; even if an interruption would’ve been minor otherwise.
My family was rather open about me being autistic. But in my early years, they hadn’t told me outright, but they weren’t hiding that I was different. In hindsight, waiting to give me that talk was the right thing to do. Though, there were things present in my life that I thought were completely normal by mistake. I had therapy in multiple fields, but sometimes, people would visit our house for ABA. Until recently, I made the mistake of assuming that they were babysitters (despite my parents still being home).
Moving forward into middle school, the reality of being different started to hit me. I was already different in terms of academics, as I excelled (and almost took Algebra 3 years early, but instead did it 2 years early). I’m referring specifically to social aspects. I didn’t particularly credit it to my autism, though; I took it as me being a “nerd”, which was a title I wore with pride.
Generally, I secluded myself with friends that I had made in elementary school instead of branching out to meet new people. I didn’t have many problems making friends in elementary school, as most kids were far more welcoming and were taught to make friends, but the same couldn’t be said for middle school. Some would branch out or even become popular, but I stayed in my shell so as not to stand out.
It wasn’t until high school that I broke this mentality. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still introverted and keep to myself in some circumstances, but I broke out of my shell and became far more social than I ever had been.
See, I’ve been practicing music for as long as I can remember. It was foresight that my parents had as soon as they discovered I was autistic; I started when I was three years old in piano lessons. Then, from there, I began percussion when I was 9. The idea behind it was that in the future, I could participate in marching band. If I already had the musical part down and had a leg up on everyone else, then I could instead focus on social aspects. I believe that in the end, it worked.
This isn’t to say I didn’t have difficulties, since marching was a new experience for me. But with music coming to me without as much difficulty as I could’ve had, I was able to spend more of my time with other people in the drumline. I couldn’t exactly leave band camp, so instead, I got to know the members. In fact, I was even able to go out for dinner with the other members, and eventually, even go to social gatherings and such. Sure, I had gone to birthday parties and such, but never something like this with more than one friend.
I started to grow more and more, and even when I wasn’t, I was discovering new parts of myself. I didn’t have to pretend to be someone else just to be around people, I could just be around my bandmates. And in my senior year, I found myself going places all the time just to be with others, even outside of band rehearsal. At some point as a senior, I even became someone that the other band members looked up to. To think that an introvert like me – autistic or not – could find myself in a position like this truly makes me happy. I don’t think I could’ve just done this anywhere, either. I might not be the perfect leader or a perfect example, but I’ve grown significantly and the best is yet to come as I discover myself even more.
Follow my journey on Facebook, my Facebook Fan Page, Tiktok, Youtube & Instagram.
My name is Kerry Magro, a professional speaker and best-selling author who is also on the autism spectrum. I 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 was 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.
