BWW Blog: A Lifetime of T-Shirts

On the first day of Kindergarten, I strutted into the classroom, ready to take it by storm. I was wearing the most fantastic t-shirt and expecting to see a gaggle of kids just like me. They would be adorned in t-shirts that celebrated their favorite interests. Because I defined myself so heavily on something I loved so much, it was only logical that my peers, who were just like me, did the same. I was ready to talk all day, every day, about what I loved with people who loved it just as much and as intensely as I did. Something that, when it was on my mind, I couldn't tear myself away from until it was out of my system. To celebrate my love, a t-shirt was always my item of choice.

Instead, I was met with relatively normal outfits and judgment directed toward the giant Pikachu I displayed on my chest and knapsack.

Interestingly, we label things so quickly as "normal" or "different" even at such a young age. I chose to remain hopeful that I had missed the memo that the first day of school was "let your parents pick your outfit day," but the days trickled by, barren. There were no Pikachus, Barbies, Thomas the Trains, or Digimons; it finally set in: there was something wrong with me. I was different (and that word is just as bad as all the curse words combined into one mega-ultra explicit word.)

I always had difficulty understanding the abstract concept of "being who you are." So, to help make sense of it, I became obsessed with the things I wanted to be. The problem was that nothing I could get my hands on reflected who I already was AND who I wanted to be.

"I want to be the very best like no one ever was." Boy, is that true. When I found Pokémon at a young age, I thought I had it all figured out - that I had "discovered" myself. But, the love was gone as almost soon as it came - and I mourned the loss of it like I had lost my best friend. Without a piece of media to immerse myself in wholly, for hours on end, and know every little thing about, I was lost. I had to let it go because I felt that I wasn't allowed to love it.

The unforgiving public school experience made it more challenging to publicly embrace what I loved so dearly. My "special interest" in high school was Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. It was so all-consuming that I had the entire script and score memorized at one point. After being told by my theater teacher I couldn't do it, I taught myself to play my favorite song from the score on the piano, "Beautiful." I had never touched a piano before in my life. I ended up performing the piece at BroadwayCon 2020, and I wrote an essay about how the song changed my life that was given the stamp of approval from the national Scholastic Book Company's Art and Writing Awards. (More importantly to me, Carole King herself loved it, too. I remember being teary-eyed when I found out that she had read it. I was wearing my Carole King t-shirt as PJs.)

"You're beautiful as you feel." That's the line I sang out loud over and over and over until my throat demanded I stop. I only felt happy studying an interest, because what was I without it? A high school senior who couldn't fit in no matter how hard she tried and given the eye roll and ignored whenever she wanted to talk about what she loved?

When each era ended, it was a death of sorts-a loss of deep love. When they left, it was abrupt and sudden. All my t-shirts related to that era were promptly donated and pushed out of my sight as I insisted. I searched for something within these forms of media, and I didn't know it. I needed a character - someone, something - to tell me that I wasn't broken.

Every day I asked myself why I was brought to tears by too much noise or why I felt like I could stop performing only when I was home in my room with the door shut. With every person I met, I ran through the scripts in my head. I gave them the vocal intonation they wanted to hear (which I had determined by studying what my peers did and mirroring it). I didn't understand vague direction, and I didn't understand why stating facts made people upset. I was constantly misinterpret -ing and -ed. There was unbelievable guilt when my interests would consume me so fully. I wouldn't be able to take care of my responsibilities, and forgetting to eat, sleep, and take care of myself was painful. Yet, without these sessions of intense focus on my interest, I felt just as much pain, if not more. Most of all, I didn't understand any subtext and longed for a "social rule book" to explain it all to me, so that maybe then I'd be at peace.

When I discovered Marvel Studios and its superheroes, there was something there that I hadn't felt with any of my other personality-defining obsessions. The message their stories told wasn't as vague as what I had experienced before. The films were straightforward, easy to understand, and followed a formula that ended with a universal truth that you carry with you throughout the rest of your life. This is what I had been begging the universe for and what I wish society could be. Superheroes survived the test of "interest time" because I finally saw glimpses of myself in the stories I held close to my heart.

Superheroes have to disguise their identity because, if revealed, they run the risk of being rejected and shunned by society. This is layered on top of their "hero's journey," which involves completing a task to make life a bit better for someone else. They have abilities that are special and unique to their superpowers. Not better, just different. And those abilities are the reason their quests are successful.

I was wearing an Iron Man t-shirt when I received my autism diagnosis at age 19. It felt like I had been holding my breath and didn't know it, and then I was finally able to let it go. I finally got what I wished for: someone told me that I wasn't broken.

Through research (in between Marvel movie marathons), I learned that autistic women could go their entire life without a diagnosis because of autism stereotypes and stigmas. "Masking" is mirroring behavior and scripting conversations so that you "fit in" as neurotypical. Because of how good women are at it, combined with how many people don't realize it's a trait of autism, many autistic women pay the price of going without a diagnosis. In addition, clinically impairing obsessions, called "special interests," also show the possibility of being on the spectrum.

It's a double-edged sword, too; you're diagnosed, but do you say anything and perhaps join the disturbing statistics? 80% of autistic individuals are unemployed and three times more likely to commit suicide than the general population (in that group, autistic women are four times more likely). Bullying and rejection are big words that we all seem to shut out when they, in reality, can hugely impact your life.

"Autism is a superpower" is an unbelievably cliched and demeaning phrase. Perhaps it makes sense when we look at it differently. The neurodiversity movement supports autism being a normal variation in brain development, an evolutionary leap in humankind. The phrase was coined initially to present the idea that autism is a disease and to be degrading. It's time to reclaim this phrase - neurodiversity is, unironically and genuinely, a superpower of sorts based on the construction and chemistry of the brain. To clarify, autism is not elite, but perhaps it exists to bring diversity and new concepts and ideas that only certain brains can create. That is beautiful.

Through my autism diagnosis and, in turn, taking everything literally, I finally discovered "who I am." A vague concept can be understood and defined not by what you are but by the choices you make. The day I was given my diagnosis, I began my "hero's journey": to increase the telling of autistic stories so that there is education on what autism looks like in girls, acceptance, and, most importantly, girls and women like me understand that, with autism diagnoses, that they are NOT broken. A love for a special interest demonstrates the power of stories. We deserve not just glimpses of ourselves in media that we have to dig for but clear, proud representations of our stories, struggles, and strengths.

Through understanding my brain and Marvel superheroes, I was given a purpose: to make life a bit better for someone else. I was also given a priceless gift: I finally love who I am, and I want others to be able to exhale, too. In the end, we all want to be loved and acknowledged. When we see our stories on screen, there is nothing more validating than a shared experience, and it's my mission to make that happen. Looking back, each of my special interests - past and current - contributed to who I am, and that is truly something to be thankful for.

On the first day of college, I strutted into the classroom, ready to take it by storm. Only this time, I had something else that I didn't have in Kindergarten: I knew who I was. Autism is central to who I am. To celebrate, of course, I wore the most fantastic Iron Man t-shirt you've ever seen in your life.