Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
You can't tell from looking that I'm Māori,
but I am.
You can't tell from looking that I'm autistic,
but I am.
You can't tell who's who by looking anymore.
There is no 'normal'.
There is no 'real world';
only the one we decide and the one we create.
You know what you never hear?
Conversations that go, 'How's your kid doing at school?'
'Oh, she's ordinary! We're so proud!'
Or, 'Have a great day at school, son.
Be normal.'
No one is excited about 'normal',
and yet, we're still so scared of 'different'.
For every nine boys diagnosed with high-functioning autism,
there's one girl.
But we're not rare; we're hidden.
Our ability to camouflage our symptoms and mimic normal
makes us a challenge to identify and diagnose.
Like me, many autistics are only diagnosed as adults,
either due to their own child's diagnosis or a crisis too big to camouflage.
When I was diagnosed as an adult,
I suddenly saw my whole life through a different filter.
I was okay.
Some of my weaknesses were strengths!
Some of my strengths were superpowers.
Suddenly I was not weird, I was not alone.
(Māori) Ānei angiau.
This is me.
I've always been different.
As a baby, I cried at sad TV commercials.
As a child, I wrote horror scripts
but passed out at school when I heard the crucifixion story.
I was super clever, but super weird;
oversensitive, too sensitive.
On the outside,
I did well at school,
I had the required number of friends, I blended,
but on the inside, I knew I was different, alien.
I wasn't real.
I wasn't like the others; I wasn't like anyone.
As humans, we look for sameness.
Biologically, it's how we're designed.
It's survival,
because the opposite of normal is different,
and different is death.
You know how you can tell when someone's different,
a little bit off?
Well, we can tell that you can tell.
You give it away with changes in your body language,
your micro-expressions, the words that you use,
all the little signs of rejection
that I've been reading and adapting to since I was a child
so you don't know how weird I am,
so you think I'm normal.
And it's exhausting!
I aced my schoolwork,
I aced my driver's licence -
the theory -
and I failed the practical exam over and over and over.
If I had known that autistics either don't drive,
restrict their driving,
or get their licence later in life,
would I have gone for my licence?
Would I have kept going until I got it?
The job where I got fired for pacing,
the job where I cried under my desk,
the job where I was defiant with authority,
the job where I had a physical reaction to the lying -
If I had known these were common signs of autism,
if I had known more than 80% of us don't work,
would I have been kinder to myself while I figured out where I fit?
So now, I'm crying in the phone box.
I was a teenager,
and I had just bowled into a Toastmasters meeting for the first time.
It did not go well.
I was waiting for Mum to come and pick me up,
and at that meeting,
people I had never met patted me on the back and said,
'There, there.'
I had spoken so quickly, so erratically and so self-consciously
they thought I was never coming back -
they were so right.
How did another thing feel so wrong to me?
I was having a good cry.
And then it hit me:
'I don't want there to be any more things that feel so wrong to me.'
I knew that if I wanted to be something amazing,
if I wanted to do anything amazing in this world,
I'd at least need to be able to speak.
Sixty seconds of normal shouldn't be too much to ask.
I'd go back to Toastmasters,
I'd keep going back as long as it took, no matter what it took, and make it work.
I was underage when I joined.
Toastmasters is R 18.
Who knew?
No one expected a kid to want to join.
No one asked, so every week, I went along to the meetings.
Every week, I hoped for a car accident.
(Laughter)
Not a big one.
Just enough for a quick check-in at the hospital,
back to my day, public-speaking-free.
I never got the car accident,
but I did get better.
I still feel completely stuck before I speak,
but the texture of the feeling is more like excitement than dread now.
Toastmasters was my university.
It was also a huge equalizer
because as Seinfeld says,
'No matter who you are or what you do,
nearly everyone would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy.'
(Laughter)
Neurodiversity is the understanding
that humans are diverse in their brain function.
This includes attention deficit and hyperactivity,
Tourette's, autism giftedness,
among others.
Neurodiversity is running on Windows when everyone else is on Mac.
It's not bad; it's just different.
But the thing with feeling different and not having a reason,
not having a diagnosis,
is you blame yourself.
Clearly, everyone else is coping with these perfectly normal human things.
No one else wants to puke when schedules change.
No one else would rather peel off their own skin
than wear rough, touchy jeans.
No one else is freaking out because the supermarket is a nightmare.
No one else is flinching at eye contact.
Although it kind of burns
like a sponge being dumped with a bucket full of water,
or an encyclopedia being flipped in the face of a speed reader,
it's a lot of information -
eye contact, the basic building block of human communication.
Clearly, I was defective.
I was weak, I was alone, and I would just have to work harder.
I trained myself to over-ride all the stress signals.
So, when my body said,
'Everyone else drives; I don't want to drive.'
'Do it!'
'Everyone else hangs around with people; I don't want to.'
'Do it!'
I trained myself to over-ride the stress signals.
And -
they built up.
Me coming out now and saying I'm autistic doesn't change who I am.
I was always autistic; I just didn't know it.
I can mimic normal,
but my autism isn't gone;
it's just no longer your problem.
So, I mimic normal.
I pretend that things don't hurt,
that they don't make my skin crawl:
lights too bright, too sudden;
sound too loud, too much;
monotonous greeting is creepy;
eye contact feels physical;
physical touch feels like an imprint.
And then, there's clothing, furniture, texture,
food -
As you can imagine, I am super fun to live with.
(Laughter)
If I had known that only 9% of autistics are married,
would I have believed a relationship was possible?
Who decides what feelings are normal or appropriate?
I still cry at some TV ads, because to me, some are sad.
But divorce, to me, is not sad.
Grown-up people grow apart.
They're different, they're happy on their own.
Funerals, beautiful;
a whole bunch of people connected by love in one room,
telling stories about how awesome their friend is -
ah, it's so beautiful, I love it.
Who decides what's appropriate and what's not appropriate?
What led to diagnosis for me was a shutdown.
I was at a shopping centre when it happened.
So now, on top of years of working too much,
pretending too much, being too much,
now here are the lights, the sounds, the voices, the smells -
I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move,
I couldn't speak.
My bones felt heavy; I was numb.
I got to a seat, but I wasn't there;
I was way down in the quiet.
I don't remember how I got home.
Thank you, husband.
But I remember waking up a few days later and being really scared.
My body was done with being dragged around by my brain.
It was over.
Here's the deal:
shutdown is a result of sensory overload,
and it can come on all of a sudden or over a long period of time.
It can either be a shutdown, as it was with me,
or it could me a meltdown.
Lots of people are familiar with meltdowns.
This is a temporary loss of control, and it can be a physical outburst:
crying, screaming, kicking.
It's not the same as a tantrum.
It's not being spoiled or naughty.
It's not a kid's bad parents or an adult's lack of self-control.
It is a physical reaction.
Like sneezing, like smiling, it is a breaking point after a buildup.
Give someone having a tantrum what they want, and they'll stop,
but for an autistic, once you reach meltdown or shutdown point,
you're already gone.
For our loved ones, it's just a matter of riding out the storm
in the best ways they can.
We have a shout-out to the loved ones;
the sisters, the siblings, the brothers, the partners, the children,
who change their lives -
They honour our sensitivities even though they don't feel them.
They cut the scratchy tags out of clothes,
they limit their activities, they lower their volume.
You guys change hundreds of things about your lives
so we can be in it,
and it's everything.
The diagnosis came in:
'Autistic!'
'Well, that can't be right!
I know autism; I've seen Rain Man.'
(Laughter)
'I am not like that.
Autism is a disability.
It is a disorder.'
Hum, hum.
Autism is a way
of processing the world,
and I am exactly like that.
My diagnosis classifies me as 'high-functioning'!
That sucks!
As much as saying someone is 'low-functioning'
totally dismisses their strengths,
saying I'm 'high-functioning' discounts my shutdowns.
It ignores all the ways I've rigged up my life to cope with the stress.
It totally overlooks the millions of little decisions
and steps and techniques I used
to survive by passing as normal.
'High-functioning' is as natural for me
as asking anyone to rewire who they really are
for the comfort of the majority.
It's as easy as sending Ellen to conversion camp
or as easy as making everyone left-handed.
When you break a bone, nobody says, 'Walk it off! Get hard!'
They know that in a moment,
you can cause physical damage that takes weeks to undo.
Same with autistic shutdown.
I can look normal.
I can use my desensitized brain to drag my body around -
I can smile, and nod, and speak,
but I will go home and sleep for two days -
five, after this.
I can push through.
But should I?
I would be broken for longer
because everything in me fights my body telling me to slow down.
The best thing about being diagnosed late is I wasn't raised with a disability.
I didn't have the prejudice, I didn't have the label -
But also no understanding,
no self-awareness,
no idea of how to slow down or protect myself.
And no special car park.
(Laughter)
I'm sorry.
I can keep hiding in plain sight, but I don't want to anymore.
So this is it, I am out.
I'm still figuring it out;
I'm getting used to the language.
For me, I don't have autism,
I do not suffer from autism;
I'm (Māori) tangata wai takiwatanga -
an autistic person.
It's who I am; it's how I'm wired.
Until now, I haven't told many people.
I don't want to be treated differently; I don't want to be babied, or tolerated.
But I want the label
because the label will come with freedom
to be who I am and to know that anything is possible
despite and because of my wiring.
I've been pretending to be normal for a long time,
and I am used to being weird.
I'm not used to having people accept the weirdness.
I'm used to fighting all my instincts to appear normal to others.
Obviously, I'm not nailing it.
When I tell people I'm autistic,
there's far less shock and awe than I would like.
(Laughter)
But what there is is relief in me.
I can breathe!
And I want to be out.
Not literally; I'm still going to stay inside a fair bit.
But I want that freedom, I want that label.
I think anything is possible, no matter which way that you work.
I also want everyone to know
that just because you feel weird and just because you feel different -
it might just mean you're in the wrong place.
You may not belong in your workplace, your classroom, your city, your family,
but you belong in this world.
Just because someone's autistic, it doesn't mean they have a special gift.
They have a special gift - special gifts - because they're human.
We all are.
That's your ticket!
You were born, you're here, you made it!
You fit and you belong in this world.
(Māori) He waka eke noa -
we're all in this together.
There's so much we can do
when we funnel this energy out of pretending to be normal
and into doing what we love and what we're good at.
You can't tell from looking that I'm Māori,
but I am.
You can't tell from looking that I'm autistic,
but I am.
You can't tell anything about anyone by looking, anymore.
There is no normal.
There is no real world,
only the one we decide and the one we create.
You may be weird and you may be different,
but you belong here.
Your existence, our existence rewrites normal.
(Applause)
(Cheers) (Applause)