Echoes

So many autistic people have spoken.  Spoken up, spoken out, spoken like a boss.  Spoken as though they know what they’re talking about–because they DO.

In the beginning, they gave me a gift: the window to my Within, the login and password to my operating system.

Now that I’ve leveled out my learning curve (for the most part, anyway), these people–and others–come forth and speak for me, too.   They’re not meaning to.  They’re intending to speak for themselves.   But their words and their stories echo and mirror mine.

For a long time, there was a canyon.  I stood on one side.  The world stood on the other.   I could never figure out how to cross it, or even to build a bridge.

But even the Grand Canyon has an “Echo Point”, a place in which you can perch and shout and be heard throughout the land, as far as the ear can hear.

It turns out that not the whole world is on the other side of this canyon, inaccessible to me.   It turns out that there are plenty of people on my side, too.  And collectively, we’re finding our echo point.

Light travels faster than sound, though.  We think at the speed of light, the speed at which one brain cell can transmit electrical signal to another in a coordinated handoff.  So we may think and dream and imagine, but our voices only carry so fast at once.

And then there’s sleep; we all have to do it sometime.

So we can take turns standing at the Echo Point, probably several of us at a time.  And we’ll echo each other’s voices when applicable (which, often, it is), and even when we go to sleep or engage in another activity, our voices will echo and ring.

So many of you, by speaking for yourselves, are speaking for so many others.  Whatever you have to say, there’ll always be someone else out there nodding, me too.  You never know whose life you saved or whose game-changing turning point you spurred just by reaching out. 

I’ve come across blog posts that were written 4-5 years ago.  They still spoke to me in the spring of 2016, and they still speak to me now, and I imagine that they will probably speak to me my whole life.

By speaking “for”, I mean that they’re expressing what I could not, naming what I could not, explaining the mysteries, and solving the puzzles.

I’m eternally grateful for those people.  And I’m equally grateful to all who have come forth and thrown their hat in the blogging ring since then.  And I’m grateful in advance for those who will in the future.

Grab your microphone and tell your story.  Don’t worry too much about the first-person singular or plural forms.  I’ve noticed that those who pour out their hearts and minds are generally those of genuine intentions.  Your voice matters.  Sing it loud.  ❤

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