Uncovering Myself, A Memoir

Growing up, I never knew I was autistic.

How is that possible? Well, to be honest: my particular brain malfunction is pretty rare, very high-functioning, and can be—and in fact, was—mistaken for the typical social awkwardness of someone much too smart for his own damn good.

I'd started reading at an unbelievably young age, but had serious problems dealing with my own age group. I couldn't figure how to fit in, and eventually stopped trying; I became sarcastic, insensitive and often quite hurtful—traits which, as one can imagine, didn't exactly get me invited to a lot of parties. My parents chalked it up to my having my nose pressed into a book all the time, and figured I would grow out of it when I was older.

(I did, though not in a way that anyone would've predicted. But that's a story for another time.)

When I was in second grade, my mother decided to go back to college. She brought me in with her once; it happened to have been on the day her psychology class was discussing a book called Dibs: In Search of Self, a doctor's account of her work with an autistic seven-year-old.

I was seven years old; to me, it made perfect sense to participate in the class discussion.

When we got home, my mother gave me the book. I devoured it in less than two days, and over the years found myself returning to it every so often. Even though it had been written from the doctor's perspective, I always felt more of an affinity for young Dibs; like me, the kids his own age couldn't figure him out—but there was at least one adult who did.

And so it went until college, at which point I wound up packing away the majority of my books, intending to come back for them once I had the room.

Fast forward twelve years. One of my friends had finally managed to convince me to split the cost of renting half a house, which in turn allowed me to retrieve my by-then rather dusty collection. By that point, my experiences with various headshrinkers had begun to head toward a surprising diagnosis: hyperlexia, an autism spectrum disorder so rare that even today, my spellchecker still thinks I'm making the word up.

Talk about a paradigm shift! I hadn't been socially inept growing up; I'd been autistic.

And just as I was starting to wrap my mind around that concept, guess which book got unpacked.

But this time around, Dibs—and Dibs—carried a much deeper meaning. The young boy I'd rooted for, the one who had fought so hard to fit in, turned out to have been my brother in spirit all along.

I still thumb through the book from time to time, whenever I need a reminder that being 'different' is not a defect, nor an insurmountable obstacle. After all, if his disability could be overcome through determination, then there's nothing to stand in my own way.