The media’s portrayal of Asperger’s Syndrome is only partially right.
This piece was originally written as a post for my personal Facebook page in April 2019. I’m now 28 years old.
I was 20 years old when I was first told I have Asperger’s Syndrome, and that diagnosis was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual the following year. After choosing to have a formal evaluation with a neuropsychologist when I was 24, I was given the diagnosis of Social Pragmatic Communication Disorder. Both of these diagnoses are either part of, or similar to, the label of Autism Spectrum Disorder. While it’s no longer officially a diagnosis, I still most closely identify with the term Asperger’s Syndrome.
The media’s portrayal of Asperger’s Syndrome is only partially right. Characters like Temperance Brennan on Bones are suggested to have it. Bones creator Hart Hanson is quoted as saying, “If we were on cable, we would have said from the beginning that Brennan has Asperger’s.” Bones, as she is nicknamed, is quirky, awkward, and misses sarcasm and jokes. Still, she’s had a wildly successful career in the field of forensic anthropology and ends up marrying her colleague, FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth. She has it all: a successful career, friends, a loving husband, and children.
But Asperger’s is not just being humorously quirky. It’s getting a 28 on the ACT (88th percentile nationwide) but temporarily being at risk of failing my second semester of 12th grade AP English. It’s finishing a master’s degree in elementary education, getting good scores on formal classroom observations, but struggling to maintain a teaching job.
It’s the need for routine and consistency and the debilitating anxiety that comes from change. It’s jumping out of my skin upon being touched unexpectedly, while also wishing I was hugged more often. It’s being the butt of jokes I don’t even understand.
It’s becoming physically sick when I’m nervous or sad, bouncing around when I’m excited or happy, and a fierce commitment to honesty, fairness, and justice. It’s the rage I struggle to control when I feel that I or someone else is being taken advantage of. It’s doing and feeling everything with an intensity that is too much for some people.
It’s dealing with people who are either insensitive or just plain mean. It’s being asked if it’s really fair that my colleagues should have to accommodate me, as if I don’t spend my whole life accommodating and trying to understand people like them, and being told by an academic mentor that if she knew in advance that I had Asperger’s Syndrome, she would not have agreed to work with me. It’s the sudden and unexpected burning of bridges, the unfriendings and blocks.
You don’t get to flaunt your puzzle piece ribbon if you wouldn’t be willing to work with a qualified colleague who had autism or Asperger’s. Take off that Light It Up Blue shirt if you’d end a friendship over a communication error caused by a disability. But if you’re someone who can see past the disability to the loving, deeply loyal, intelligent person I am, and has stuck with me through the storms, then you, my friends, are deserving of all the ribbons and t-shirts.
