“But you don’t seem autistic…”

This guest post is by Noah Labrie, a young man with autism who attends Flagler College. Noah 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.

I never understood why exactly I never felt like anyone else. I mean, I was like any other kid growing up. I enjoyed playing outside, listening to music, dressing up, building things, and playing games; anything any young kid would be interested in. But, others didn’t see that. They saw me as someone who had something of an inability to socialize properly, and while I may have had trouble making friends, it’s not like I didn’t try. It just always seemed like other people didn’t have the patience to deal with me in return. I wish, at the time, that I realized that other people perceived me as different. Instead, I continued to branch out, time and time again, always being shot down, until I felt that there was really no need. This caused me to box myself in, something I still struggle with to this day. I never want to fully let those around me, and thus began my masking.

It started somewhere during my middle school years, hiding my full personality from view, so as to not “bother” anyone. Much to my dismay, however, my mask was like sandstone, porous, letting little bits and pieces of my true personality come out. I tended to entrust the wrong people, giving the benefit of the doubt to those who didn’t deserve it. The few friendships I was able to forge slipped, and I would be back to the beginning, wondering why I struggled so much with making healthy relationships with others, sort of crawling back into myself like a turtle. I attempted to perfect my ability to hide who I was: Don’t talk a little about your special interests a little bit… don’t talk about them at all. I changed who I was for the people around me. Doesn’t every middle schooler desperately want to fit in? I only added a layer by needing to fit in. I started to be able to be more social and step out of my comfort zones, getting to know new people. I channeled my ability to mask into acting, by joining the drama club at school and finding a new outlet for myself. When I was on stage I didn’t have to worry about anything relating to me. I wasn’t myself. I could be someone else. Suddenly the boy with a social phobia could be the loudest in the room. I was able to meet new people. I could branch out.

I eventually became so good at masking, that I was finally able to achieve what I had originally intended, being “normal.” By my freshman year of High School, I was a completely different person than I truly was around others. I became so separated from how I truly felt inside, that I slipped into a deep state of depression, prompting me to meet with a psychiatrist. Much to my horror, I did not have ADHD or a Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I had Autism. Wasn’t that a bad thing? Didn’t that make me so inherently different right off the bat- the opposite of what I wanted? I was shocked and upon my telling people of my diagnosis, I was met with the same reaction: “You don’t look Autistic…” I was deemed “too smart.” “Too normal.” “Too high functioning.”

At first, this seemed like what I wanted: to be told that I was “normal.” But I quickly felt bothered by this sentiment. If I didn’t “look” Autistic, then what did Autism look like? I swiftly realized that this spectrum disorder I had was truly a whole spectrum. Autism didn’t look like one race, gender, no ethnicity, or sexuality. There was nothing defining Autism other than the fact that I had it; and that made me realize… that was okay. It took some soul-searching, watching shows like Atypical, and reading books, to help me realize that my diagnosis wasn’t a bad thing. Autism wasn’t a bad thing. In my difference, I was completely normal. All I had was a different view of the world. My ideas weren’t “wrong” or “weird,” they were unique to me. I realized that I shouldn’t’ve tried to hide who I was all that time, because all my differences made me so much more “normal”. Autism made me who I am. I decided to make a change, I wanted to be proud of my diagnosis. I wanted to be myself and show people that who I was, was perfect. And so, now entering my Freshman year of college, majoring in Theatre Arts. I can be me. I am proud of me. I feel like how I am, and how I feel, is perfect. I am perfect. And to be quite honest, there isn’t a damn person in the world who truly is normal. So I won’t try to be “normal,” I’ll be the farthest thing from it; Autism and all.