Autistic: Invisible Human

Do you see that six-foot-three, 280-pound, 22 year-old man coasting through the parking lot on a shopping cart? He has Ace Ventura hair and an unshaven freckly face. His much too tight Godzilla T-shirt is almost a blur as he whizzes by. He is smiling, blissful, unaware, free.

And now, as I predicted, he is flipping backward, a pancake on the asphalt—I knew the cart would hit the curb. That’s my brother Chris. He never was one to plan things out. That was always my job.

We are Chris and Tori; Phil and Lawrence; Yin and Yang. If that doesn’t make sense, you’re right it, doesn’t. But the cool thing about life is it doesn’t have to. Chris and Tori. We always have been and we always will be—I won’t ever forget that again.

My brother has autism. We only found out six years ago. He looks normal. He doesn’t stutter. He doesn’t have any physical deformities. He can get dressed, bathe, comb his hair, get himself meals, and follow routines. The only thing you might notice about him is that he acts like a goofball. A little quirky, but that’s it. But that’s what makes him invisible.

Chris and I exist in a world similar to childhood. Let’s face it: this world is childhood, but this shouldn’t make it less important. In childhood, the older we get, the less we can do. We can’t run screaming and laughing through a grocery store. We can’t hide in the center of clothing racks in department stores and jump out to surprise unsuspecting customers. People look at you weird. That may seem funny, but people make fun of each other as means to discourage one’s behavior and promote another. But, we aren’t kids anymore. We look different, so we have to act different.

A typical older brother is supposed to play sports, date girls, drive cars, and protect their little sisters.That’s who my cousins grew up to be. That’s how Chris was expected to be. He was a high school student who acted like a five year old.

People were mean, because he was different. I was mean.

I hurt him. I hurt him because people were hurting me. I saw people treat him like dirt: teachers, church members, my aunts, my cousins, my father. I saw people make fun of him. I saw people dehumanized him. It made me feel like dirt. He was me. It was always me and him. But nobody wanted him, so nobody wanted a big part of who I was; of who I had loved myself as.

So, I hated that he watched cartoons. I hated that he played with action figures. I hated that he blurted out inappropriate things. I hated that he wore juvenile T-shirts like those that have a picture of a milk carton next to a cow saying “MILK, I AM YOUR FATHER!”

I hated that people always looked at him weird. I hated that they looked at me this way. But what I really hated was that we weren’t in the same world anymore. I hurt him when I rejected toys, videogames, and cartoons. I hurt him when rejected laughing for no reason. I hurt him when I rejected making funny noises and being goofy. I hurt him when I let people devalue our world. I hurt him when I let people define who we were supposed to be. I hurt him when I rejected being myself. I hurt him when I rejected my brother.

When we found out Chris had autism, he made sense. He was defined. We had an excuse for him. When people would raise an eyebrow, I could say, “My brother is autistic.” It was a label that could be stuck on him, so people could leave him alone, and so I didn’t have to watch people hurt him.

But now I realize much further than that. When I said, “My brother is autistic,” I was detaching myself from the long winded explanations, so in one word I could answer their question. In one word I could say “Yes, he isn’t normal; he isn’t human.”

Really? This is what the world has come to? Is this what I have allowed? I let people degrade my brother. I let people change how I viewed my brother. I let myself forget Chris and Tori.

Chris was never my “older” brother, because we were siblings—one of us was never better than the other. Chris was never my protector, because I was never a victim; I was never a fragile girl that needed to be saved. I was happy. I had a happy world with my brother because we weren’t defined by stupid concepts like gender, age, or mental capacities. We never expected each other to play a certain role or fill a certain mold. We were taught to be kind, to share, to respect, to be just, to love, to be happy. This was how we were, and I let myself forget.

My brother has autism, but he is not autistic. He is not a victim. He is not a thing to be pitied. He is not a thing to fear, or to judge, or to dehumanize. He is my brother. We are different, but this does not make us any more or any less human. We are equal because we choose to be equal.

What we choose in life is how we define ourselves. We have the power to choose what to wear, how to act, who to love, how to treat others, what to live for, and how to be. I choose to wear what is comfortable. I choose to act like myself. I choose to love my brother unconditionally. I choose to treat everyone with dignity. I choose to live my life for the world.

And I choose to be happy.