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Autism is and isn't-a poem by autisticaplanet

Autism 

It isn't over in 30 days
It doesn't only affect the male sex, children, teens or white people.
It isn't just a different way of thinking.

It is meltdowns and shutdowns from sensory overload.
It is often expressing oneself better through writing than words.
It is often too loud, bright, smelly, rough and itchy.
Eye contact creates panic.
It is needing safe places
In which to process and recover.
It is helped by people listening instead of judging.

Sleep can be fleeting
Bowels inflamed
Head banging, flapping or rocking

Chewing or spinning stim jewelry to alleviate anxiety
Noise canceling headphones, sunglasses and hats
Sometimes medication

It can mean marriage and kids
It can mean one, both or neither

It is a vast spectrum
In which women are being treated as the newcomers
There all along
Diagnosed in middle age

All too often it means 
poverty
isolation
persecution
unemployment
and saddest of all, much talent and creativity remaining stagnant.

It isn't always low IQ or absence of speech.
It is thinking in pictures, patterns or words

It brings out the worst in bad people and the best in good.
It predates 20th century diagnosis
There is no magic bullet cure
Some don't want one. Some do.

All too often, autism is a political and cultural war.

Autism is-- it isn't going anywhere.
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Read blog posts and books by autistic authors.
Listen to and take seriously the autistic people in your life.

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