"but don't you wish you could speak so you could..."

I keep being asked by people who want to push me to speak is "isn't AAC so much harder than speech" or "aren't there things you can't do with AAC?"

I'm often prompted things I might want to be able to do if only I could speak, saying aren't I worried I can't speak because that means I can't do these things. Every one of these things I can do, and have done. Oftentimes more effectively with AAC than speech, because typing to communicate is just so much more effective for me.

I'm told things I can't do with AAC under their assumptions, being "don't you wish you could speak so you could do these things". And yet, I do them. Effectively.

The ideas of what I can do, aren't "I can't speak", or "I can't do something because it directly needs speech" or even "I need to find an alternate route sometimes". It is "clearly this is impossible, clearly we need to push speech"

I'm a college-educated adult, who has been at least aware of autistic advocacy circles for over 15 years, and this is everyday interactions for me currently.

Fear mongering surrounding how speech is necessary for survival is huge, everywhere, and literally the biggest challenge that I am facing at the current moment - not indirect things caused because of it (I avoid enough people and places already for other reasons, I already have enough plans on how to do things myself in place because I've been working on this for long enough) - directly the exhaustion of needing to hear it, over, and over, and over again.

Society is that overwhelming about speech, hatred of even a moment without it.

Questions I have been asked have included things like "Don't you wish you could speak so you could ask for help if you needed it"

Ignoring that I literally am asking for help more effectively than I have ever before in memory, because I ask for help more effectively using AAC, am unlikely to ask for help in the first place even if I should, and if it is a situation that I am pushed to the point where I will need help immediately, I am unlikely to have ever been able to speak, there is absolutely no reason that asking for help is associated with speech anyways.

I have asked for help from people across the world because of the internet, and it didn't matter that I wasn't speaking. When in the same location, I have a tablet, that can vocalize, with multiple apps, depending on what my current communication needs are. In the past I have done things like using my medical alert bracelet to point out to people allergic reactions in order to get treatment. I can get help, I have got help, using all sorts of manners that aren't speech, and generally find them much more effective for me.

But, speech is viewed as necessary for things as simple as asking for help. The idea of communication, of doing things at all, in other manners, even when I am actively doing so, doesn't cross people's minds. Fear, pressure, those are how people are interacting with me. Trying to scare me into how dangerous it is to not speak, this is the normal interactions I'm having.

I'm not being asked how I teach with AAC. I'm being asked don't I want to speak again, so I can teach. Or told, I clearly need to be speaking because children would be afraid of my AAC. None of this has any relation to my reality, to what I do, have done for years. Saying children will be afraid of interacting with me because I'm disabled - I'm not less disabled when I'm speaking. I always have needed plans for suddenly switching to AAC, I have used it in the past, I've taught with AAC now, its not a huge challenge, it means somewhat different planning. It means planning that I need to put into things, in order to do anything, because others don't expect for someone like me to exist at all. So, when others realize, they don't as how, they assume its not possible, they assume I don't exist. Yet again. Like always.

I'm asked, told, had it assumed, that speech is always easier. That speech would always be easier. Had it pressured upon me how much of a burden it must be to not have speech for even a moment. My truth is that I have been finding it immensely helpful. I have been finding it a time I can learn communication I have never managed in my life, no matter how much I have struggled, because speech has been so prioritized, at the cost of everything else, at the cost of whatever it does to me. I have found it is a time to not only heal from a concussion and not be so overwhelmed by the world because speech makes things so much more overwhelming, but to find ways to communicate better, long term, not in terms of new AAC apps, but in terms of, better understanding myself. Because speech isn't always better, and I've known that, but I've not known how to respond to myself, how to respond to the world, when I have had speech pushed so hard.

I'm being told now, that speech is always easier, and yet, right now, when I'm not speaking, is the first time I'm being able to even start to think about making decisions about things like what I want to eat, what I want to do in the day, what makes sense to me rather than asking others what to do, because I am not so overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to say any ideas that might come to mind that I can't get to the figuring it out. And these things, while they aren't things I am consistent at, while they are difficult, while I am able to get bits and pieces out and not everything, are things that will help me later too, because I am finding other ways to communicate, even when those other ways are ways I have already known, because they are sorting, organizing, and having it make sense, the ways that things fit together. Because speech isn't always best. And not speaking is sometimes meaning I can do more.

I'm being asked about how much I can't do because I'm not speaking, and I can't come up with anything at all I can't do, besides speak. I can communicate. I have other ways. But there are so many other things I can do better now. Because neurodivergent brains are neurodivergent, because what is expected isn't always what is best, because speech is prioritized because it is what is easy for others, not because it is necessarily good for me.

Don't I wish I could speak? Not really. My speech will come back as it does, and by the time it does, I'll hope I'll have built enough routines, practiced enough, have enough people be little enough afraid of me, that my part-time AAC use will be a larger percentage of the time than it was. Because I don't wish I could speak right now. I wish that I knew all along how to use my AAC more efficiently, and I am so hopeful that this is finally how to let me do that.