Many people speculate about the reason behind autism, but let’s just pretend for a second that it’s not a disease. What if it were just another way of being? What if all people had autism and the different people were the ones who didn’t? That could very well be the case, then the world would be a very different place with the struggles flipped upside down for those not born with autism. At that point, we would be looking to cure non-autistic people.

Let’s start with some basic traits of people with autism, like myself. Sensitive to light, fabrics, touch, sound, etc. Now we are sensitive to those things like a wool sweater or tight-fitting clothing, which is weird compared to most of society. But there are textures that most people are sensitive to, like sandpaper. The difference is how drastic it seems a sweater and sandpaper are, but they are both textures.

Sensitive to light, that is something most people have issues with if you come out of a dark movie theatre in the afternoon or you were developing photos and you exit the dark room. It’s harsh and blinding until your eyes adjust. People with autism just have a different limit of that sensitivity.

We all experience sensitivity to the things I mentioned above, no matter to what degree it takes for us to realize it. What I’m getting at is that people with autism are no different, they just experience the stress more keenly and sooner than most of society because society is geared towards those with a higher tolerance.