I have, several times, been asked to offer advice either directly to autistic kids or their relatives. For the longest time, I was reluctant to do so, because I just know too much that they won't want to hear. This isn't so much for the ones who are catatonic or otherwise so low-functioning that they're deemed mentally incompetent. For the ones like me though, who are deemed high-functioning, there's this thing that is with us our whole lives. Like the Greek myth of Tantalus, who was damned to Tartarus where he would always have a tree with fruit just out of reach and water that recedes just before he can take a drink, so too is the autistic to humanity. It is a life spent on the outside, looking in. To a degree, it is possible to reduce this sense of isolation, but only to a degree. Even the most patient, the most loving, and the most accommodating of friends and family can't remove it entirely. So you've got this nagging sense of loneliness always with you and that makes you very insecure about your contributions and whether you even deserve to be here. Compounding this issue, you've got social limitations, non-obvious physical handicaps (can't ride a bike, mop, snap your fingers, that sort of thing, but you look like you can), noise sensitivity, poor coordination (sporting activities lead to hearing the word, "retarded," a lot), and that's just off the top of my head. Depending on the particular traits that manifest themselves and how they do so, this can render an autistic virtually unemployable, friendless during childhood (even beyond without the right environment), tragically inept at relationships, and vulnerable to exploitation by friends, lovers, and business associates. From all this endless struggle and profound misery, what hope and constructive advice can I possibly offer? Well, I didn't have anything until recently. Like all advice and all answers, it is profoundly based in my own meandering experience and may not work for any autistics besides myself. However, it is what I have and it has taken me a long time to get the few answers I have to offer.
When you are a child, especially if you're not diagnosed and everyone, including you, is confused as all hell about what's going on, you're going to think you can be and do anything when you grow up. That's not true. Actually, that's not true for most kids. Some kids are virile, highly bright, and possessed of natural ambition. These people become high-level politicians, military officers, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, et cetera. Most people are not these people and these people are definitely not you. You're autistic and that means that achieving success the traditional way isn't going to work for you. You've probably got at least a couple of defining obsessions though, and your path to success probably won't come about regarding those either unless you find a way to make them marketable. If the traditional paths to success won't work for you, then you've got be clever. Invent a new path to success and fail until you don't. More specific instructions would, admittedly, be helpful, but the thing about cutting new paths is you have to figure out where to cut on your own.
Autistics spend their lives relying on neurotypicals to guide them through the world. There will come a point, however, where you've got to stop that. Having control over your own life is a quiet power. It doesn't have a lot of flash to it and it can seem scary and daunting. However, the time will come when listening to other people should stop and what you want your life to be should start. If you need legal work done, hire your own attorney, make sure you like and trust him and that he really works for you instead of some other interested party. The same thing applies to insurance people, CPAs, bankers, doctors, or any other professional that will have a great impact on your life. None of that will rid you of autism, but it will so something almost as good. It will mean that can have a life that is yours, that you like, and that matters to both you and other people. There will be resistance to this, to be sure, much of it coming from people who mean well. Especially if you went undiagnosed for a long time, like I did, there will be many people in your life that mistake your high-functioning autism for something equivalent to being mentally incompetent. These people can sometimes be reasoned with and other times not. Do whatever you have to get around them as obstacles because being in control over your own life, whatever danger it may present, will be better than being safely controlled by others.
These are the constructive things I've managed to come up with to tell autistic children. I know they feel like aliens and I know that that isn't going to change. What can be done is for them to live a worthwhile life among neurotypicals. Some autistics even find romantic love, but there are a great many who don't. Want to have every hopeful notion you've ever held for there being somebody for everybody dashed? Go to a autistic message board sometime and read the despair. Horror stories analogous to mine are present and you can feel the hope in young men, and sometimes women, dying out like the last flickering light of a firefly. So I wouldn't tell an autistic child that they'll definitely find someone. What I would say is that they may well not find someone and that they need to find a way to be happy without someone. Beyond the practical aspect of being prepared to sustain happiness without the cooperation of another hypothetical person, being happy being single actually makes one more attractive for mating. Confronting the very real possibility I'll never be coupled or reproduce did most of the work of turning me into an atheist, so I know it can be very hard to take. The only real advice I have for coping with the loneliness is that one should cultivate a philosophy of compassion. When the happiness in oneself comes from the knowledge that one made a positive difference in the life of others, one can take solace in the fact that one's life was a worthwhile one. Be as clever as possible, take control of your own life, and develop a philosophy of compassion and you can do great things. Great things are worth the tears, worth the nagging ever-present loneliness, and beat sitting about fretting about things that will never change.
-Frank
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