Elsa, "Into the Unknown" Power of Not Being Normal

When Disney released Frozen in 2013, it was more than just a family-friendly box office hit. It created a firestorm about the stories we tell and the characters we value. And Elsa, the central character, became an instant icon of the Disney canon. While the Snow Queen of the original Hans Christen Anderson tale was a villain, Elsa in Frozen makes a powerful journey from shutting people out because she feared how she affected them to opening up to those she loves and accepting her inner nature. Even in the conception of the film, “Let It Go” transformed from a villain song to an empowerment anthem worthy of celebration. (Not to mention the go-to song for so many toddlers it created feelings of overkill on James Cameron’s Titanic-levels.) And in the end, the true villains were the fear and demonization of the different.

A lot has been said about Elsa as a character. A rare Disney female character without a love interest. A rare Disney female character who is defined by her relationship with family, particularly the women. An even rarer Disney female queen who isn’t some kind of evil. Many people have taken Elsa to heart as a personal heroine and power media figure. Google “Elsa Frozen thinkpieces” and there will be a bazillion articles about her being a stand in for the LGBTQ experience. I understand and respect that take, although the original didn’t affect me in some profound way upon its release.

The 2019 sequel though? That hit me to the core of my very being.

The last time a film did that to me was the 2016 Pixar movie Finding Dory. Like Finding Dory, I spent the entirety of Frozen 2 with tears streaking my face. Like Finding Dory, it spoke to my experience as an autistic person. And like Finding Dory, I felt the immediate urge to write about the millions of feels I had about what this movie meant to me.

So like Elsa, let us journey “Into the Unknown” together. (And of course, spoilers here on out.)

I'm a Complex Human Being, Dammit! or Identity- vs Person-First Language

Of all the things making up human beings, I'd say a strong identity is the most important. Psychologist Erik Erikson agrees, making that the crucial stage in his theory of psychosocial development. Erikson argues that while adolescents are growing and changing into physical adults, they have to grapple with what social roles they'll take and how they'll define themselves in the world. This leads to someone either developing a strong sense of self or causing major uncertainty of where they fit in, known as "role confusion", that could lead to an "identity crisis" of who they are. All of this is dependent on if that person is encouraged or discouraged by their family, peers, and society at large allowing them to explore different possible identities and accepting their conclusion.

I bring this up because there's a lot of controversy over what people call those on the autism spectrum. Autism is a neurological condition that affects social development, making Erikson's psychosocial development model a lot more complicated over how to recognize autism being a part of one's identity. It could be said autism as a concept is in the adolescent years of "identity vs role confusion", as people argue over whether it should be considered an social identity (aka "identity-first") or something separate from one's overall characteristics (aka "person-first").

Again, I would like to reiterate that my feelings on my use of language concerning autism are my own and I won't dictate what others should do. I'm only using these posts on autism language to express why I feel that way I do and why I do what I do. I'm not gonna tell anyone how they should talk about autism because it's not my place to do so and I don't want people angry with me over it. This is just how I personally feel.

With that in mind, let me explain why I prefer "autistic people" over "people with autism".

The Curious Case of Autistic Impostor Syndrome

When I first learned I have autism, it felt like a simultaneous blessing and a curse. As I have previously wrote, I spent most of my childhood feeling like an outsider due to things I couldn't control and figured I was slowly going mad because no one would give me a straight answer of why I was the way I was. So it's easy to imagine that the news of my diagnosis was a huge relief in the sense that all my questions were answered. It was, but it also came with the cost of learning that I was not and never will be "normal" because of all the challenges I had. And with not being "normal", my life would always be harder than most people's.

In spite of this, I'm often told I'm a "success story". I made my way through school being fully mainstreamed into honors and AP classes, graduated from college in four years, and received a Masters in Social Work from a prestigious university. I have a good steady job where people appreciate my contributions and have made headway into participating in the disability community of Los Angeles. I live on my own, I don't excessively struggle with money management, and I have good friends and family I can depend on. At the risk of sounding arrogant, it does seem like I am a "success".

So why do I constantly feel like I'm barely keeping it together and what I do isn't nearly enough?

The "Normal" Versus The "Worthy" Autistic - A Response to "The Autism Matrix"

My autism seems to be a shock to anyone I meet. When I tell people I'm autistic, the most common response I get is "Really? I never would've guessed!" I want to believe that it comes from a well-meaning place of surprise, but I can't shake the feeling that it's slightly condescending to me. Autism affects people in different ways and yet we as a society seem to only accept a narrow affect as being truly autistic - you must either be a "quirky" personality easily fixated on certain subjects and have little to no understanding of basic social interactions or be completely non-verbal completely isolating yourself from people with little to no control over your physical actions. I'm neither of these things and seem to project a certain sense of "normal" where only the most attentive would identify something is notably different about me. That doesn't mean that my diagnosis is invalid, but rather I don't easily appear to be what people seem to think autism looks like.

Case in point, the Autism Society of San Francisco president Jill Escher recently wrote a piece for The Times of Israel (a Jewish Times subsidiary) attempting to make identifying how autism affects people "easier" rather than relying on problematic "functioning labels". In it, she maps out via a "matrix" where different autistic people would be based on things like IQ, social skills, verbal language, support needs, and more. The article has since been taken down from the Jewish Times from what I can assume was a barrage of angry comments disagreeing with Escher, but it still can be viewed on the Autism Society of San Francisco website here. There are lots of reasons why people find this "matrix" format troubling (my favorite pieces on it are written by my friend Christine and prominent parent advocate Shannon Des Roches Rosa), but I want to talk about one particular criticism that affects me greatly: the notion of the "worthy" and "needy" autistic.

Am I Thirty, Flirty, and Thriving Yet?

Come the 8th of April, I will enter my fourth decade on this planet we call Earth. The closer I get to that fateful day, I find myself thinking of the 2004 movie "13 Going on 30". In that thirteen year-old movie (ha), an awkward burgeoning teenager wishes she could be "thirty and flirty and thriving" and through the power of magical realism finds herself in a future thirty year-old self only to find what she wants as a teen isn't all that's cracked up to be. It's never been a movie I particularly enjoyed, but as I get older, the theme of wanting something for your future self and ending up in a place you didn't expect has been especially relevant to my life. What I wanted as a child didn't pan out and what I have now leaves me wondering how I got there and if it's the right place for me.

I guess you could say that as a kid, I too hoped I would be "thirty, flirty, and thriving". And while I didn't quite get what I wanted as a kid, maybe I ended up with something better.

Fishy Feels - How "Finding Dory" Does Disability Right

A few weeks ago, I wrote about disability in the media (or rather how disability is portrayed as a tragedy by media). In it, I said that stories about disability are mostly about how a disabled person affects others, and how all involved parties "struggle" with it and have to "persevere". And I wrote that the remedy to this is to tell stories from the disabled character's perspective and promote it like whoa.

I honestly didn't think that I'd see that kind of story would be done so soon. Nor would that story be hugely successful. And nor that that story would come from, of all places, Pixar.

My first thought upon hearing "Finding Nemo" would spawn a sequel called "Finding Dory" was the same as everyone else's - "Really? A sequel? Can't Hollywood come up with anything original?" It doesn't help that most sequels to movies tend to do nothing but spout the same story as the original without the original's magic and with nothing new to say. Even Pixar isn't immune to this rule: the sequels for "Cars" and "Monsters Inc." fell flat in comparison to their predecessors. And whenever a sequel happens to be good, it's because it expands on the first film and has its own story to tell.

"Finding Dory" succeeds for those reasons indeed, but it does something more. It tells of living with a disability and all the complications and strengths within it. And it did something that very few movies do - it made me profoundly relate to it and sob by the closing credits.

Why? To explain, there will be spoilers from here on out.

Me Before "Me Before You", Or Disability Doesn't Always Need to be Tragic

I'm not a big fan of sappy romantic dramas. While I will admit to being among the many who sobbed at the end "The Notebook" when I first saw it as a teenager, stories of people falling in love while something "greater" than themselves try to keep them from being together just feels tired to me. There aren't many ways to make this Romeo and Juliet narrative new and innovative, and the onslaught of these films in recent years (more often than not adapted from Nicholas Sparks books) just reinforce how tired this trope has become.

The recent entry into this genre, "Me Before You", initially looks the same. Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, but will their love survive something neither of them can control? And like its contemporaries, it received mixed reviews upon release. But what makes this film different from its boring, tepid ilk is the "tragic" thing that complicates the boring couple's love:

The boy is a recent quadriplegic, and the girl is trying to prevent him from pursuing assisted suicide through the power of love.

*le sigh*

Despite Everything, I Don't Hate April

The month of April has always held a special place in my heart. Spring is fresh in the air, it's still early in the year but not too much so, and the weather is pretty cooperative in the not-too-hot-but-not-too-cold way. But it's most likely due to the fact that it's my birth month, as I was born on the eighth. In fact, April holds a lot of birthdays of people I love - one of my closest friends' birthday is four days before mine, my father's is towards the end of the month, and my late grandmother's was six days after mine. It's always been a month of celebration in my life, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

But since becoming more involved in the autism world, I see people who don't like April as much as I have. That's because April has somehow been deigned "Autism Awareness Month" and with it comes a lot of feelings on how it's handled. But in spite of all the issues that come with the concept of "autism awareness", I honestly can't bring myself to hate April because of it.

I know that looks like a controversial statement from an autistic person. Just hear me out.

Autism Does Speak, But Who Exactly Is Talking?

I'm relatively new to the autism world. Having only recently begun to accept my diagnosis, I can't claim a long history of sharing my autistic life story let alone advocating for myself on a large scale. And sharing my diagnosis with people is still somewhat tough for me - I don't know whether or not they'll A) believe me, B) not believe me, or C) judge me harshly for it. I'm playing a brave but dangerous game in disclosing my autism because I don't know what the outcome will be. And if there's anything I fear most in the world, it's uncertainty.

I should feel like this is a baseless fear. Life has taught me that when I tell someone I'm autistic, they tend to take me at my word. I'm not entirely sure why this is - is it because I come off just quirky enough for someone to think something's up with me? Is it because I've developed enough language skills to pinpoint my condition? Am I perpetually surrounded by liberally-minded people? Or is it because I've come up with a basic script for explaining my autism:

"I'm autistic. This basically means I have trouble socializing, looking people in the eye, and can be an overall socially awkward penguin."

Whatever it may be, it's seemed to work out well for me. My entire family knows and has been supportive of me and my efforts. My friends are all eager to learn from me about autism and show complete understanding. And most remarkably, I've gotten opportunities at work because of my open disclosure of my diagnosis - I write for my workplace's blog, participate in community meetings around laws and services affecting autistic people, and have recently joined and publicly presented on behalf of my local regional center's Board of Directors. To say I've gotten extremely lucky is an understatement - I've largely been met with nothing but support for being autistic. And I'm forever grateful that people in my day-to-day life presume that I know what I'm talking about when I talk about autism.

So why is this generally not the case in public conversation about autism?

There's No One "Right" Brain in Neurodiversity

Growing up autistic in a non-autistic world often meant feeling perpetually alone. Once I knew I was different, I felt separate from everyone else and nothing would ever make me like anyone else.  I felt no one would ever understand me, much less help me shed my shitty self-esteem. If no one else was like me, how could anyone "get" me? And no matter what I was ever told by anyone, I felt that being autistic was akin to being lesser. Being autistic meant being more trouble to everyone else. And worst of all, being autistic was wrong.

In other words, I really, really wish I knew about neurodiversity a lot sooner than I did.

The "Unlikely" Combination of Autism, Social Work, and Empathy

I almost ruined this past Thanksgiving because of a news story.

The day itself was fine - all the guests showed up, the food was good, nobody got in each others' faces about hot-button issues (a miracle considering the Ferguson protests dominated the news cycle at the time), and I managed to get along with everyone perfectly well. As far as family events went, it was a good one.

Bu after the meal was over and the guests left, I checked my Tumblr feed and saw a  story about two British policemen facing charges for chasing and assaulting an autistic Pakistani man.

My entire demeanor changed from being okay to sobbing beyond belief. I couldn't believe the cruelty these men had afflicted on a person I didn't even know. That story combined with the Ferguson coverage made me upset at people's cruelty and it all spilled out in tears. A family member found me crying and while she understood how I could be affected by such a story, she was perturbed that I would let a news story would make me break down.

In short, I may have let my empathy take over to the point of unhealthy display.

For Autism Acceptance Month, I'm Learning to Self-Accept My Autism

Each year, the month of April is "reserved" for autism. It's often used to raise awareness (autism exists - congratulations, awareness has now been achieved!) but I see a growing movement for people to accept autism as it is, appropriately named Autism Acceptance Month. There's more information on it here, but I like the idea of autism acceptance. It's a positive way to show people what autism is from the autistic perspective, thus perpetuating love, respect, and a real understanding for autism as a whole. In a world full of misinformation about mental health and disabilities, I welcome Autism Acceptance Month with open arms. We need to hear and value autistic people's own stories as a legitimate source of what autism is like beyond brain neurology and blue lightbulbs.

So it's with that in mind that I talk about my personal process of autism acceptance. Or as I call it, how I'm accepting being autistic.