The number 4 is blue: Musings of an autistic student

Let me start with a few facts.

The 18th of June is observed internationally as Autistic Pride Day.
The number 4 is blue.
It is also the age I first started exhibiting traits of autism.

Since then, I can hardly recall ever ‘experiencing’ what it’s like to be autistic; instead, it was always hushing up about it, suppressing my inherent wiring and conforming to society. Like a criminal cover-up where the felony was being functional enough to pass off as ‘normal’, yet not ‘normal’ enough to be functional in a world that was not made with people like me in mind. I’ve always felt disconnected from people around me, unable to relate to the struggles and pains they went through, and alone in the struggles and pains of my own. It wasn’t until I was 13 that my autism diagnosis was even revealed to me. Until then, I drove myself crazy trying to rationalise why I was the way I was.

I inevitably cried at every kid’s birthday party because I was jealous it was not mine.
Classmates who were forced to work with me on group projects cried to their parents about me because I was tyrannical and antisocial.
I refused hugs or forms of physical affection because I was cold-hearted and emotionless.
I was supposed to cry at funerals, even though I didn’t care about the person in the casket.
I was supposed to ask people, “How are you?” even if I knew they’d say “I’m fine.”
I was supposed to be smiling, even though the world was too bright, flashy, and noisy for me to handle.
The number 4 was not blue because numbers don’t have colours.
Sounds don’t have physical sensations.
Letters don’t have textures.
Normal people don’t think the way I do.

When most of my life I’ve been forced to suppress every part of my natural tendencies to the extent where I hesitate to say the word “autism” aloud, what does autistic pride mean?

The journey to college

As a child, I went straight to school in the morning, sat through classes, and came right back home. I used to spend all my time alone in my room, away from the noises and the commotion of the world, poring over books endlessly. I never ventured out of my house, never hung out with “friends” after school, or went out. I couldn’t eat food unless I had one specific spoon, I always sat on one specific sofa, I’d shut down if things got too loud, I was a straight-A student, except I froze when it came to interacting with people. I preferred words and numbers to hugs and emotions. Most of my experiences as a child were the musings and introspections I had in my head. I saw the world as patterns and algorithms, and I wanted to be able to speak in a language that made sense to me. When I realised it didn’t make sense to anyone else, I decided not to speak at all.

College had always been something I dreamed of, I obsessed over physics and technology and came to realise information and learning was something I considered my life purpose. I dreamt of being able to study and analyse the world around me, the more I understood, the more I felt seen, and this comprised not just learning but sharing, sharing my unique worldview and my ideas, my odd observations and strange deductions that nobody else seemed to be able to point out. I wanted to know and be known, and college seemed like the perfect place for that. However, there was a point where it seemed like an impossibility for me, and nobody around me could fathom it either. How could I survive with a roommate when, on vacations, my parents had to book a separate room for me? How could I eat food that did not fit into the pigeonholes of my very specific requirements? How could I present myself in front of so many people and not be an outcast for my expressionless gaze or my “precocious” articulation?

I was never one to shy away from a challenge, though. I devoured books on psychology, sociology, and the human mind until I had narrowed down human interactions to an exact science. Every interaction I had built a database in me and helped me formulate algorithms for navigating the complex matrix that was society. Perhaps one of the first algorithms I developed was the “How are you?” algorithm that determined the answer I was to give to the person, a simple table with two parameters: closeness and feasibility. Closeness: what position this person held in my life and how much they knew and cared about me, feasibility: the time we had to pursue the discussion, the setting, the mood, etc.

The closeness parameter controlled the honesty factor of the answer, and the feasibility controlled the depth of the answer. A teacher during a parent-teacher meeting: closeness and feasibility both at a low, warranting a simple “I’m fine, how are you?” A close friend in a group setting, closeness may be high, but feasibility undercuts closeness due to the exposed nature of the environment, warranting a similar answer to the previous scenario, but accompanied by a sort of knowing look that was understandable by the “close ones”™, indicating there was more to be discussed at a later time. The more I interacted, the more I gauged people’s reaction to the suitability of my answer, and the more I fine-tuned my algorithms until it was no longer a simple cross-referenced cell in a two-dimensional table, but a complex tesseract-esque structure with extremely elaborate conditions for inflection of voice, reading in between the lines, context.

I was now on the same playing field as everyone else. What came internalised for them was now highly mechanised and automated in my mind, so it seemed internalised to me as well. I had mastered the science of the mind to the point where I was better than my allistic peers at recognising emotions and giving advice. I took my shortcomings as a challenge, a game to win and by high school, I was able to make myself seem sociable enough to be fairly popular. People who knew me then would scoff at the thought that I’m autistic, when I seemed its antithesis.

This was autistic pride, I thought.

Being able to achieve levels of normalcy that elicited social validation.
I won.

It was not until I stepped foot in college that I realised I had had everything completely wrong.

Bleak beginnings

No matter how many pretty words I use to dress up my differences or romanticise my loneliness, the truth is that growing up autistic wasn’t poetic or aesthetic. It was characterised by some of the darkest moments I’ve experienced. It was more than feeling left out or being forced to “conform”. Abuse, discrimination, depression, unethical therapists, isolation and ostracisation, the crippling fear of never being able to envision living a happy life. Spending half my life not knowing why, and the other half hiding it. When people around me would take out their anger and frustration at my being different, sometimes physically, sometimes verbally, but always cruelly. When people always said you wouldn’t be able to, when being smart was overlooked because I couldn’t look people in the eye while talking about Bell’s theorem or evolution. When I repressed a lot of the memories I had of a child, because so many of them were filled with a sort of pain that I couldn’t bear to remember.

The number 4 was blue; that’s something I always knew. Blue was used to express sadness, and that was something I learnt. After learning this, I’d paint a lot of my childhood blue. Autistic pride is not being able to pretend successfully. Autistic pride is not glorifying the struggles of being different; it’s not popularising exaggerated human calculators on TV in the name of representation. Autistic pride is being able to voice the ugly truths and the harsh reality of being autistic without it seeming too much, too dark. It’s being able to say the word without feeling shame or disgust, maybe even being able to write an article with my name under the heading in bold. It’s the privilege to live without pain. My journey to college was a tumultuous one, but my journey in college has been a redemption of those bleak beginnings.

Headphones in my handbag

The first time I attended a concert was in college, and I carried my headphones in my handbag because I knew it would be too loud for me to handle. I braced myself for questions and awkward scrambling to explain, but to my surprise, nobody asked me why I brought them. I would dread seeing my classmates outside school for they would see me with my headphones almost always around my neck and find some way to use that weakness against me, although here, it seemed like I could scream my identity out to the entire college population and they’d reply with a silence that reverberated, “We don’t care.” The same nonchalance and indifference that adults criticise in the youth was now an impetus for me to slowly unwrap the cocoon of normalcy I had woven around me. College was an environment that had always seemed like an autistic person’s nightmare, at least that’s the way it was portrayed to me growing up. Yet somehow, I managed to be myself most in this chaos.

I could eat in my own peculiar way, I could wait to find the perfect spoon, I could shut down in public and go quiet, and nobody would bat an eye; I was just another eccentric person who had made my way into this college. Was this autistic pride? Being able to be oneself without having labels thrust onto oneself? Being looked at as normal even while expressing my innermost autistic desires?

Well, not quite, but we’re almost there.

To be known

My friends often joke around with me, in conversations involving sarcasm, they often specify they’re being sarcastic, insinuating that my autism wouldn’t pick up on it. While I outwardly roll my eyes and dismiss their taunts, internally I felt grateful (yes, I mastered the art of expressing something and feeling something else). I was grateful because I knew that they not only accepted me for who I am, but also acknowledged it. I am not just different or quirky, I am autistic. Acceptance without acknowledgement is a prettier version of conforming, and I think I truly felt like myself when I was able to admit to myself and people around me that I was different beyond the standard deviation of “normal”. My brain worked differently; I pathologically possessed different reactions and processed things differently, and that was unusual, but it was also okay. The people I met in college helped me learn the meaning of autistic pride without them realising. The offers to move to a quieter place or the patience while explaining social norms and emotions, the silent glances of understanding, the fierce protectiveness and solidarity that was extended to me made me realise that the number 4 was blue, but friendship was soft golden. People were not all bad, and human connection was indeed as precious as society had made it out to be.

The friends I made here I will forever owe for the comfort I feel in my own brain. In some way, my autistic pride will always comprise a love letter for the people who made me feel I was interesting rather than weird. To my brother, who recognised I was different and loved me for it, not despite it. To my parents, though it was bleak in the beginning, they eventually grew to be proud of who I am and cherished it. To a few teachers in high school who recognized my potential and encouraged me to be myself. To my friends who never once made me feel like I had to be someone else and who showed me the purest love I’ve experienced. And to college. Definitely to college.

The environment at IIITH let me think the way I thought, process the world the way I did as a child before I was taught to suppress the patterns that formed in my mind. I’m grateful for college not just for making me the person I am, but for helping me rebecome the person I was. The little girl who built an aircraft with Legos when she was separated from the other kids for being “hostile” and “unfriendly”.

College means many things to many people, a new, scary environment perhaps, an impetus to an earning and a livelihood, and freedom perhaps. For me, college was the birthplace of my truth.

I inevitably cried at every kid’s birthday party because it was too noisy and unpredictable.
Classmates who were forced to work with me on group projects cried to their parents about me because I expressed myself in a way they hadn’t seen before.
I refused hugs or forms of physical affection because physical touch was uncomfortable, and I expressed love with little scribbled portraits or random facts about space.
I was supposed to cry at funerals, but I didn’t because for me, tears were revered for true emotions, for the loss of people I cared about.
I was supposed to ask people, “How are you?” and I do, except around the people I call my own because they know how I communicate.”
I was supposed to be smiling, but I smiled with my eyes.
The number 4 is blue because numbers have colours.
High-pitched noises hurt because sounds do have physical sensations.
The letter Q is purple, gummy bears and frosted glass because letters do have colors, flavors, and textures.
Normal people don’t think the way I do, because I am autistic.