This guest post is by James White, a young man on the autism spectrum who was diagnosed with autism at 3 years old and plans to attend Fayetteville State University. James 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, will be released on March 29, 2022 on Amazon here for our community to enjoy featuring the stories of 100 autistic adults.
Since we’re all autistic here I’m going to be speaking in terms that I know best: comics. I apologize if you’re alienated, if you are, then you’re probably used to it because you’re autistic.
For just about my entire life I saw myself as an outsider. That’s admittedly pretty morose for a kid to think about so my autistic child-brain substituted it for thinking that I was like Superman. As a kid I found myself relating to him a lot. I didn’t have many friends, I had different abilities, I had southern parents, it was the perfect fantasy for a little kid to unknowingly have. That is until about the 5th grade when my parents broke it down to me that I was autistic, which I guess is the equivalent to Clark finding out he’s Kryptonian. Although instead of breaking the metaphorical Kryptonian rocket that delivered the news, I just simply didn’t process what the rocket told me until middle school where I derived an entirely different meaning from my situation. The situation proposed to me was that I was extremely lonely since I was an anti-social weirdo, so what was my solution? Why, get a girlfriend of course! Doesn’t it make sense in a logical way? If I didn’t have any friends, I could have one friend forever that I would marry! Only it doesn’t work that way, and I’m about as good as flirting as Clark Kent was. But I did find a new social confidence in my dating endeavors. I had found my “Superman” persona, which I had adopted from my father’s social personality he adopted as a pastor. Now all I had to do was find a balance between the metaphorical “Clark” which personified my true personality and the metaphorical “Superman” which personified my drastically tweaked social personality.
That moment came in about my 9th grade year of high school. I had managed to find the Clark and Superman balance, I was just charming enough, just dorky enough, I was socially perfect. Girls even started to take interest in me. Unfortunately, it was the wrong girl that took interest in me. That held me back socially and developmentally for two and a half years. It was my Doomsday, the hardest fight I ever had. It preyed on my insecurities, my loneliness, and my lack of self-worth. But, eventually, I beat my fight with the metaphorical Doomsday, and my metaphorical Superman died with him, too. After that fight, I emerged finding my metaphorical “Kal-El”. Kal was the mix of both, the man that I truly am. I found out who I was after that fight and even began to become a much more serious actor. I got super involved in theater and film making and so many other things. Ever since I found Kal, I found out who I really am. I am Clark Kent. I am Superman. I am Kal.
If being autistic has taught me anything, it’s that social rules are dumb. I bent over backwards, changing my personality for everybody that it even helped me find my own profession. Then, one day, I realized that nobody changes their personality for me, so I figured out that it doesn’t matter who I weird out. As long as I’m not hurting anybody, I can be as weird as I want. It doesn’t matter if they don’t like comics or manga because I could care less about sports or hunting. I learned from my favorite hero, Plastic Man, that as long as I’m kind to everybody I meet, it doesn’t matter who I am, I’m still worth something. I hope every person with autism realizes that. It doesn’t matter what people tell you, as long as you aren’t hurting anybody, don’t change yourself to make others happy. Be you. No matter how dorky you are. Find your Kal. Embrace it.
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.
