To whom this may concern,

If you feel you are the only one with this mental illness, you are not alone. April is the month we tell others our stories and feel socially accepted in our society.

When you admit to someone you have Autism or your family tells their friends you have it, you and them probably get numerous amounts of reactions from "you have what?" to "what is that?" if they don't know what it is. If that person does know what it is, then you may get reactions from "really?" to "you're kidding right?" And when parents tell others they may get something like this:

Part of that might of been a sigh of relief to you, meaning you had that fresh start all along without anyone knowing ahead of time. Some of us aren't so lucky were the Autistic risk affects them the rest of their lives depending how severe the case is. With the number of us on the spectrum, we don't know who has the mildest or the worst case scenario, but that doesn't make any of us less intelligent than what people believe us to be.

All we can know from Autism is we learn much differently than others, aren't the best with our social skills and we are pretty delayed with most things. Once we're born we can't speak the year after we heard our parents say multiples words to us. Our brains aren't capable of processing this information to us making us take up so much time in our later years to make up for it.

Years will go by and God knows if we'll ever speak at all; only a few of us lucky ones get the chance. Since we are behind everyone else in our grade it makes it hard and they have no idea, only the teachers do. Without knowing how to say "hi," or "do you want to play," all the other kids can do is pick on you and defending yourself will be even harder. Even trying to be social around middle or high school may be slightly easier, but there's still a good chance someone will say something cruel.

Research-wise, we don't know what caused us to be who we are and all I have for you is this: keep pushing through it. No matter what case you have you just have to push through like you do with everything else in your life. Also, look at where you are at this point in time. You may not have overcame hearing loss with tubes in your ears for four years, a bunch of speech teachers, extra help centers and psychologists like I did; or even have as many pointless meltdowns as I have (shout out to all those parents out there).

However, your story and ways of dealing are never the same from anyone else. Who you are with Autism now does not change anything you have accomplished over the years. Whenever you get the chance, please, share your story to whoever you get the chance to tell; you will never know who are going to inspire next.

Sincerely,

A fellow Autistic member of society