The Disclosure Moment

I’m trying something new today and typing directly into the WordPress editor, so bear with me. I don’t know if I ever wrote about it publicly on my blog, but the editor changed on me probably about two months back, and it’s really thrown me off my rhythm. This is why some of my links are no longer lavender. I can’t figure out how to pre-set a custom color and use it through all my posts. I’m fully part of the technology generation, and yet I am so tech-illiterate. My apologies.

Anyway, that’s not relevant, except for when you think about how easily I’m thrown off by change. Since you’re not seeing the behind the scenes of me writing this blog, you don’t realize that the entire way it has me set up a post has changed, but just trust me that it has. I guess if you also use WordPress, you’ll understand. This is my fault for setting up an amateur blog on a free site, but this medium, on the whole, has worked well for me, and I’m definitely not going to bring more change into my blogging process, two years into it.

Which, also, wow. Two years of blogging! I fully blew by my two-year blog anniversary last month, but it was sometime in the latter half of September, so I guess this is our belated celebration.

Again, not relevant. Let’s get to the actual topic for today!

I had one of those rare but coveted blog-inspiring moments recently. I guess they’re not that rare, but it’s always sort of helpful for my blogging process when something happens and I immediately know I could make an entire post out of it. Such was the case last Sunday, the 27th. I didn’t set this post up for that coming Tuesday because I’d already planned to do the humming post on that day. Now that it is the following Tuesday, I will take you through the story.

It’s really not a long story. Last Sunday, I cantored at mass on campus, which is just Catholic speak for I was the one who does all the singing during church. If you know the John Mulaney psalm bit, I was that guy. It was not my first time cantoring, but it was my first time since maybe last fall, due to the busy nature and general weirdness of last spring semester. This meant I was nervous.

I don’t usually get that nervous to sing or otherwise go on the spot in front of people, at least when I’m hiding behind music. (Class presentations are a whole different story, and we can talk about that sometime.) Last Sunday was an anomaly, and I think my nerves were more because I hadn’t done it in awhile and a lot of people I know were going to be watching/listening to me than anything else.

I know this is the part where I should be getting to the point. I will now do so. I was nervous, so I was fidgeting a lot. This is something I do, and usually helps as a calming mechanism. It must have been noticeable enough to the external onlooker to be notable, because the organ player asked me if I was okay.

I had actually already told him that I was nervous, so repeating myself would’ve felt weird. Instead, I chose to do something I don’t do that often: I said, oh, yeah, sorry, I have autism and it makes it hard to sit still.

The organ player was, as most people are, super surprised. He’s known me through school choir for the past two years and some change, and I guess it makes sense that he wouldn’t know this about me, because, again, it’s not information I necessarily volunteer. His surprise was the moment that made me think maybe I should do a blog post about it, and here we are.

That wasn’t actually the only time in the past month or so that I had the disclosure moment with somebody. I was on a video call with some fellow assistants for my literary internship, which I realize I have not written about much on here, but it’s an internship and that’s pretty much the only necessary information. On the video call, I could feel myself being a little loud and a little awkward, and at one point I accidentally spoke over somebody else. I have a habit, especially in new social situations, of being ultra-masked and just speaking up for the sake of making noise, even when I don’t have all that much to say. I over-compensate for my own feeling of awkwardness, and then I wind up cringing at myself.

To avoid cringing at myself in that moment, I chose instead to apologize, and tell the others on the call, sorry, I’m autistic, and sometimes I don’t make much sense.

Writing this out, I think it sounds like I tell people I’m autistic as an excuse or an explanation for being awkward, but in actuality, it feels really good to say it in those moments. It alleviates a lot of awkwardness, because I know that people are sort of categorizing me, and maybe not judging me as much, since they have that explanation? I know I don’t need to worry about being judged by other people, but trust me, I do worry about it. A lot.

Randomly saying I’m autistic in conversation is a new thing for me. I don’t think that many people in my life, outside of people who are in my family or who read this blog, actually know that about me. There are certain people with whom I consider myself really close who I’m pretty sure don’t know that about me. I don’t consider it necessary information, but it is most definitely helpful to say it when I feel awkward. I can’t describe how much less awkward it makes me feel when I know people aren’t trying to figure out what my ‘deal’ is.

I wrote a pretty heated blog post awhile back about this concept, but from the perspective of the version of myself who was way too into autistic Twitter and couldn’t keep up with their gatekeeping and new terminology. People there like to refer to this moment as ‘coming out of the autism closet,’ which I still think is weird terminology to use when you’re not talking about being part of the LGBT+ community. I like ‘the disclosure moment’ a lot better, for myself. If you haven’t noticed, I do not care at all on this blog what people on social media think of me or my opinions about my own disability.

So to summarize: I don’t necessarily have to overshare about autism to everyone I embarrass myself in front of. But as long as it feels good to do so, I might start doing it a little more often.

Here’s where else you can find me.

Next Time: On sensory overload.