an update on the 'tism

Am I "officially" autistic yet?

Hey all, as I was trying to finish this post I learned about the shootings in Colorado Springs, CO. Unfortunately, Colorado Springs is one of my special interests because it is the home of the evangelical juggernaut Focus on the Family. I’ve had a podcast for 6 years now where my husband and I dissect evangelical pop culture for damaging theology. A few years ago we did an entire season on some Adventures in Odyssey episodes that were incredibly homophobic¹. FoTF has been virulently anti-LGBTQIA+ for years, and their theology plus political activism (and their large media empire) means they are directly responsible for the uptick in violent rhetoric against queer people and trans people specifically—and I place the blame for the senseless deaths at the Q nightclub squarely in their hands. 

Thank you to David Dark for pointing me to an on-the-ground reporter who is covering this hate crime/mass shooting event. In September, the same reporter covered an anti-gay Christian conference held just 15 miles away. As a former evangelical, I will now make it my life’s work to ensure queer people have safe spaces, and have access to full human rights. 

Today’s full essay is for paid subscribers only, but if anyone signs up in the next week for this newsletter, I will be donating the entire proceeds to organizations supporting the victims of the Club Q shooting. If you would like to donate yourself, this is a good place to start. 

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Photo by Varvara Grabova on Unsplash

Remember how in the past year or so I had a lot of imposter syndrome when it came to calling myself autistic? And then remember how at the end of 2021 Spotify told me that I listened to the same classical song on repeat like a million billion times? Spotify Wrapped almost seemed like it was worried about me. Like: You ok, babe? You obsessively listened to a single Claude Debussy song² while frantically working on your magnum opus about a leftist radical anarchist Catholic figure in the 1930s . . . just checking in to see how you are doing, sweetie.

It’s funny for me to think about stuff like this now (repetitive behaviors—listening to the same song on repeat—and restricted interests—only wanting to read/write/talk about Dorothy Day—are the literal definition of autism as defined in the DSM V), but it wasn’t all that funny when I was in the throes of self-diagnosis. I was suffering so much, yet I felt like my pain paled in comparison to others (therefore I could never actually engage with how my own body was feeling, or the depth of my depression). I was overwhelmed by the past few years of researching autism in order to help my child, and then I was overwhelmed by researching late-diagnosed autism, because I knew that I would be fighting a huge wave of ignorance and outdated stereotypes if I ever claimed that identity for myself³. Part of my own trauma response of being undiagnosed autistic for decades is that I tend to over explain myself in the hopes of being understood or even making a difference in the world⁴. I just didn’t have the energy to do that when it came to autism and the general population. But I didn’t really have a framework for undergoing these huge shifts in my worldview/perception of myself and NOT talking/writing about it in public.

I was changing and learning so much, yet also preemptively mourning how much harder it would be to explain this shift to the world. Especially since my public facing self had clung so tightly to being a hyper religious person obsessed with justice as a way of being a person. My private self was all that too, just with additional heaping amounts of shame, anxiety, suicidal ideation, disassociation, disordered thinking, religious OCD, and existential OCD. 

I’ve lost a lot of my hesitation around thinking of myself as autistic. The people closest to me get it, and any autistic person I have met in person or interacted with online clocks me as one of them within seconds. But still. I haven’t been “officially diagnosed,” and it kinda bugs me. Makes me feel a tiny bit insecure, especially as I write and talk about these things publicly. So, a few weeks/months ago I asked my therapist when we would officially start the diagnosis process for me.