A tale of two people, low and high functioning autistics.

Let me tell you about two autistics. A and B.

A

A has a decade of experience working in engineering. He makes complex things easy for other engineers and always has in one way or another throughout his career. He’s married and has a few good friends. Lives with his wife. He’s great at engineering conferences where he can talk about his special interest and has quite a following though he’s never really understood why. People just seem to like him.

Anyone speaking to him quickly realises he’s deeply fluent at language even if they don’t always understand what he’s saying because it seems too high level. To top it all off he gets great sleep at night!

We’ll call this person a high functioning autistic.

B

B has always struggled in school, apart from a few subjects, his 10th marks were decidly average and 12th even lower. He dropped out of college. Sounds hurt him quite a lot, often knocking him into autistic shutdown where he can only sit in a dark room with earplugs and eye covers just waiting for the pain and brain freeze to pass. Lights were fine when he was younger and people only used incandescents.

He’d love to go on late night walks but the harsh 6500K color “cool daylight” lights used everywhere today make it hard for him to even step out at night. He sometimes has trouble cooking food for himself, going quite hungry at times before he can muster up enough energy to do it or just order from outside.

He doesn’t talk to a lot of people and his parents are always worried about that. Sometimes things get so overwhelming it’s hard to speak at all.

We could call this person a low functioning autistic. They’re both me.

What have functioning labels done?

When someone sees me as a “high functioning” autistic, when I needed support I was looked at like I’m lying. When I’m seen as a “low functioning” autistic they don’t value my opinions and try to decide what’s best for me.

These labels hurt everyone. Those called high functioning and low. Most of all they are inaccurate, because so many of us are both. It just depends on whether you saw us at our best or our worst.

But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”

― Marilyn Monroe