Welcome to April

Welcome to April. The month where when you're autistic, no matter where you turn you know you're not worth as much.

The month where it doesn't matter how hard you try to protect yourself, it seeps through, permeating your existence in ways you wouldn't imagine possible. You can't possibly think you are really worthy, can you? It's April. We call it "Autism Awareness Month", but it is actually "awareness of how much we hate you".

I'd say it was Autism Hatred Month if the hatred wasn't year round, with the surge in April of inability to avoid. Because that's what the awareness is of - how much of a burden we are, how much we shouldn't exist. How much an able person might be able to make a positive statement about an autistic person once, but only if it is speaking about how we are one of the good ones, saying someone is not really disabled.

It's the month where if you leave your home, there is blue, lighting up the streets, speaking about how much money should be spent on trying to find a cause so we can abort anyone who might possibly be like us.

It's the month where you don't need to leave your home to see the reminders of people trying to fix us or remove us, because they're plastered all over the internet. Autism awareness! Autism speaks! Blue! Donate money! Cure cure cure! ABA! Indistinguishable from Peers!

It's the month where you hear people speaking over and over about how much they do for autism, but none of these people stop and listen. And it's "for autism" rather than even "for autistic people". It's the month where autism is the latest way that people claim to be doing good but actually are just claiming attention while not actually helping any of the people they're claiming to help.

It's the month where if you're autistic, you know you're hated.

Because you see hatred all around. You don't have a choice.
You act autistic, and people have it in their minds, they are "aware", but that doesn't mean they are happy, they think autism and they think bad.
You see the people defending abuse in the name of "because the children are autistic", because the fights break out time after time, everywhere you go online.
You hear, time after time, that autistic words are wrong, acceptance is wrong.

Welcome to April. The time of people claiming superiority.
Because they're better,
And someone like me will never be good enough.
That's what awareness means.