Molds and Sad Faces — A Beast Graduates

by Sarah Stup

©2009 Sarah Stup. All rights reserved in all media.

School planned to award me with a diploma turning me into a normal person, but instead the naughty beast called autism is still inside the gold cap and gown.  Schools are open to students with developmental disabilities, but when they ask us to play the parts of normal students they are not really letting us in their spaces.  We are planning ways to be with you and be peaceful, but we cannot be you.  With words typed I hope to make school a better place for students living inside bodies that work differently.

To play with new ideas and learn about our world pleases me.  Wishing to find ways to cure myself and be a good citizen, I need a good education. But I also need a peaceful place for typing and reading.  With too much noise in school I could hardly breathe, and I needed the naughty beast called autism to protect me from hearing and seeing too much.  When too many voices are sounding, pain rips through my body because your world is too much for me.  I need to tune into my autism and do weird actions like rub my ears and eyes and nose.  Other times I need to touch items or scratch paper.  When I look at your faces they are shiny with lights and shadows that move making me feel dizzy.  My beast shields me from pain and confusion, but school hoped to tame the naughty animal with their sad faces.  Rudeness is not my intent.  Autists like me can’t tell our bodies what to do.

School has patterns and molds, but with my diploma I will be feeling free to be Sarah the typer with autism.  When autism hid you were happy, but I was in pain without my shield.  Playing with words from my world makes me feel hopeful and authentic, but teachers killed the autism voice so I needed to be speaking in normal writing to please them.  With school I mostly did my work following normal methods because quick ways I know to do math and fast reading are not used by school.  My body works differently, and I like to use my own paths and patterns.

I was foolish to try to wear a mask of normalcy, and quitting when I graduate is making me feel genuine.  Wishing to be without autism, I killed my beast who is not acting nicely to fit in a normal world.  People tried to help me into your spaces of learning and playing and dreaming, but you weren’t fooled.  I saw your stares and heard your words that built walls to keep imperfection from trespassing. 

You were wise to keep me out since I was an imposter.  I can’t return to your space again pretending to not have a disability.  Please forgive my posing as one of you.  Meet the real Sarah Stup, the typer who is disabled.  The girl who is waiting for you to stop pretending that I need to hide my autism to be in your space.  To pretend is painful.  Some day the wall may begin to crack as my lots mighty words keep bombarding it.

I’ll be waiting on the other side with autism and a diploma.

Please forward this piece or reprint it as a handout or newsletter article, so that others may better understand and support individuals with autism and other developmental disabilities.

Sarah’s request is that this piece be used for non-commercial purposes and that it remain in its entirety, with full attribution given.