I’m Not A Freak

Alex Gentry
Jul 25, 2017 · 5 min read
Meanwhile here I am when I was eaten by a jade tiger in Beijing two years ago!

I’ll share a short little personal story today. It’s a bit of a ramble.

Last week I was seeing my therapist trying to figure out why I’ve had problems for the last six years with attaining stable well-paying employment. You see, I’ve had a lot of struggles in my life attaining many of the things that most people take for granted, while also excelling in skills that most would consider unattainable, all because of a little thing called high-functioning autism.

While I can claim a knowledge of over 17 different languages to various degrees, am writing an autobiography, have written many articles (some of which have got a lot of attention!), have an ESL teaching certificate to my name and have taught online, have attended several huge conferences, made lots of different connections both personally and professionally, and have traveled in three continents, I still struggle to find even a basic minimum wage job. That can take quite a toll on someone who’s nearly 26 years old and has had a lot of experience in many things but not the work world.

All the times I’ve attempted to apply for jobs, I applied for a lot of different jobs, went in to interview with several of them, then waited for a call that never came. I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t call back even though they promised me they would call me back. I consider that a deceitful practice that should universally be condemned. With the online jobs I applied for it was a similar story but the interviews were via Skype. Besides doing some office work for my mom when she had assignments for me, I successfully started an online English tutoring service of my own through italki. However I didn’t have a prepared teaching method and I felt overwhelmed, as the students I had were very numerous and while a few of them were very consistent, most of them were only one-time students and I couldn’t figure out why. Naturally this dampened my confidence in my ability to help people learn English, especially after I had two harshly critical students from China.

I’ve attempted before to start my own business, but I soon realized that without the financial capital to make this happen it was very difficult. I was a big-hearted creative with big visionary dreams for the world and I still am that way. On top of that I am multipassionate, which makes it very difficult to focus on one thing because I have all these ideas in my head and I have tried really hard to focus on one step at a time, which my friend Ramona and my therapist both recommended me to do. The first thing I’m focusing on is writing my first book, my autobiography.

In high school I learned I had autism, and when I found that out, I felt like I had understood why I acted in such a strange way. Unfortunately that meant that I thought that I was diseased, broken, dysfunctional, and a freak of nature. I felt so ashamed of revealing my autism to any0ne for fear of judgement and especially ostracism.

I have realized through my autism diagnosis that I will never have a conventional career, not that I want one anyway. Unconventional career choices attract me, especially if they enable me to travel and live around the world and work from anywhere, learn and use lots of languages, help lots of people achieve their full potential and find their purpose, write, and have work-life balance.

I feel like with my lack of a consistent employment history despite making a lot of connections and building my professional skillset that I’m still not seen for the exact skills I have to offer. I have teamwork experience from a startup that I worked with called Circuit Youth (you can see my writing in the publication Circuit Youth Salvo). I struggle with interpersonal skills and I do not deal well with stress so I would very strongly prefer remote work. That way I can work on my own schedule and feel more in control of my work environment and interact with colleagues online. In this article there is a section about people with cognitive and developmental disabilities such as myself and the problems they face in the job application process. The problem with “jobs for cognitive and developmental disabilities” is that they are only given to people with such disabilities out of sympathy rather than out of the actual need for employment.

I’ve been told that I was lazy and lacking initiative for not seeking out traditional employment when in fact I have worked far harder than most people will ever appreciate just to be able to function in society. Even that is sometimes difficult and extremely stressful. I want to be acknowledged as a minority and that I deserve equal rights and so do millions of others like me. I want to show that a person with autism can break stereotypes and statistics and do anything a neurotypical (AKA non-autistic) person can. I not only want to follow my dreams, but I want to help other autistic people follow theirs. I want to follow in the footsteps of Temple Grandin and be a shining example of the potential of autistic people and that we are people and have our own distinct way of being. However, while Grandin is more interested in animal science, I am more interested in online language education, professional coaching, and business.

I know for a fact that I’m not a freak and I have gifts that I can and will share with the world. It’s just that I have a very unique experience of the world that less than 1 percent of the world’s population will understand.

I am tired of my frustrations and the frustrations of others like me being constantly invalidated.

I want people with autism, especially people in the Millennial generation and beyond, to remove the stigma of being a person with autism. We do not deserve to be shamed just because of what we were born as. Like the LGBT movement, we’re coming out. I will stand for their rights!

I AM NOT A FREAK.

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