My best friend has autism
Sometimes life throws you a curveball, and then sometimes life throws you autism. Most people don’t have a best friend with autism, or anyone that is not “typical.” But my best friend does and is not.
When you come across someone with autism, it’s hard to look past it. Who could blame you? The ticks, the repeated phrases, the noises; it’s hard to see through all that and find their personality. It’s like when we come across an immaculately beautiful man or woman, we can’t see past their perfect jawline or breasts and see that they are actually a complete douchebag.
People often ask me, “What’s that like?” After they find out that both my brothers have autism. Truth is, it’s like your experience with your own brother and sister; it’s reality. Everyone’s is different, and maybe because it’s simply my reality that I am able to see the personality of people with autism. And since I’ve spent more of my life with non-typical children and adults than I have with people we would consider “normal,” I find that question to be a strange one.
However, while that is my reality, there is not a day I wish my reality were different. Seeing how my brother bops his head on beat when I blast hip-hop in the car, how he attentively sits and watches football when I have the game on, or how he has impeccable timing when it comes to knowing when to flash a smile around women; it makes me wonder what could have been.
My reality growing up should have been Josh and I covering for each other when our Mom wonders why it’s past curfew and one of us isn’t home. I should have been the guy to pick him up when he’s underage and drunk off his face. He should have been the young homie I brought around when my friends and I went to house parties.
Even so, we still have our bonding activities. Whenever ESPN is on the TV, his world stops to catch up on highlights, just like mine does. As a youngster he couldn’t fly, as he’d burst into the worst screaming you’ve ever heard on the worst flight you’ve ever been on. Now though, he gets disappointed when he goes to the airport and DOESN’T get on a plane.
He’s been to Spain, France and all over the States in the last few years. As such, we have been able to share the incredible experiences we have had in those places outside our nest in the Pacific Northwest; the only thing is, we haven’t been able to talk about it with each other.
What the biggest pain is though, is even though we’re only three years apart, which in a perfect world would mean that when I tell new people, “we’re as close as can be,” it wouldn’t be conditional. It should mean what they think it means.
It should mean that we are able to knock back beers together while reminiscing about our trips around the world, sneaking out of the house and bullshit about sports. For now though I’ll take the spontaneous smiling and laughing at each other.
They say when someone is blind or deaf their remaining senses are augmented to compensate for their lack of that fifth sense. Growing up with siblings with autism does the same for communication.
With a lack of words comes the necessity to pick up on other cues, body language, emotions, facial expressions. It’s a skill that’s often taken for granted, and is often a gift as much as it is a curse. Knowing what a person is feeling with more accuracy is often TMI, and ignorance is in fact bliss.
But it’s necessary when your best friend can’t verbally communicate their feelings to you. It’s the only way they can share their excitement, their happiness, their concern, their pain.
Josh and I would have been partners in crime. It’s a phrase that hurts to say because I know that’s how it would have been. Call it sibling intuition, but Josh exudes charisma, and he’s not the only person with autism that does. Though I can’t blame others for failing to recognize it, because if we can’t even see past something as trivial as the color of one another’s skin, how can we expect to see the actual person behind the façade that is autism, or Asperger’s, or down syndrome, or __(enter condition here)__?
Too long I’ve dwelled on what a typical sibling relationship would have been like, all the things we missed out on. To keep on wondering would be too easy, after all Josh is a vibrant, wonderful human being, with or without all the unprompted jumping and noises.
God might have thought he could took away the best man at my wedding, the godfather to my kids; but guess who will be there walking my bride down the aisle and at my child’s baptism? Josh will be there, jumping and hollering as always, and I know it will be out of excitement for me, because that’s what a best friend does.