Model Citizen

After following directions down gravel roads in Maine, the picturesque house nestled in the woods almost looked out of place. This house had  perfectly manicured flower beds weaving around the lawn, beckoning people to come closer. No cars could be heard from the nearby roads so the soundtrack was only of nature. The song birds were singing their stereotypical pretty songs as I parked my car behind other cars and walked into the house.

The door was open and a friendly voice called me into the living room where people were setting up. Up and up the narrow staircase went as my feet carried me to the bathroom door. Once inside, I could hear and see the workmen dotting the backyard with their tools and ladders. The bathroom door locked with a 'click' and I began to disrobe. Naked inside the beautifully decorated bathroom, there was a moment of hesitation. The insecurities of my body tried to bubble up to the surface but were quickly muted by the draping of my silk robe over my body. 

Down and down the narrow stairs my bare feet carried me back to the living room where I was expected. Placing my purse by the draped chaise lounge, a purse which had the important things like my car keys and my clothes, the only thing left to do was lose the robe. With all eyes on me, I removed my robe and reclined into the gorgeous piece of furniture in the center of everyone.

"Your left elbow was higher."
"The head was a little more to the right. Yes, there."
"That foot does not look right."
"Can someone move those books of the table, they are blocking me."
"Your hair was... oh yes... like that."
"Is everyone good? Let's go for 20. Okay?"

Hearing the ticking of the egg timer, I focused my eyes on a grand antique clock directly in front of me as every muscle in my body began to try to relax. The sound of papers, pencils, paints, canvas, easels, and water blocked out the pounding noise of the workmen just feet away. Never making eye contact, I scanned the room as people fell into their own rhythm. 

So began my first nude modeling session.

************

Growing up with an artist for a mother, modeling started before learning to walk. She would take photos and create drawings based on those pictures. Being the first born, I had a baby book with hand drawn pictures of me being an adorable child. When I became old enough to understand the phrase "don't move" my mother upgraded to sketching me directly. Lounging in a way I felt comfortable looked 'artistic' or 'stylized' so more and more the sketchbook would come out. The only downside to modeling would be the occasions I'd read a book and come to the end of it when my mother had just begun to sketch.

During the difficult time of battling the forces of darkness, my father, the sketching stopped. If someone compiled all the sketches my mother has ever done of me there would be a sharp transition from a chubby cheeked blonde child to a tall red headed 20 year old; the cheeks and eyes always stayed the same. Unlike child stars, I was fortunate enough to go through puberty without it being recorded in any way. My hiatus from modeling ended midway through college. My mother, the one who started me years before, was the restart of my modeling. Her drawing groups were in need of models and I was in need of cash. She had been an artist model before and thought I would be perfect for the position.

My hesitation came from the nudity part of the job. I've never been modest, truth be told, but those were situations with others in various states of undress. Nude modeling requires being naked while fully clothed people look at every detail of your body. I worried about imperfections like scars or blemishes or bruises. What would they think of me? It was the nakedness, being vulnerable in a room of strangers or peers, that terrified me.

I was terrified before I ever booked my first session.

My mother reassured me that artists care more about the model not moving than some physical attributes I thought important. They were not looking at my unshaven legs or if my roots were showing. They only wanted a model who would not move at all, which is surprisingly tricky for those who have never done it before. I was a form, an image for them to draw and nothing more. It didn't matter if it was a bowl of fruit or a cat or a nude, the artists were trying to capture an image. 

She was right, of course.

My body was a flesh colored bowl of fruit.

Since restarting modeling, my opinion of the human body has...shifted. The body is a beautiful thing. It is a vessel we have control over, for the most part. Our bodies tell our life story in pictures, shapes, and contours. You can tell a lot about a person by their body. It is not just what the body looks like, but how it moves and how it rests. The beauty of the stripped form has nothing to do with sexuality, it is just raw human essence. Across centuries and cultures, the human form connects all individuals who have lived or who ever will live. In a world where everyone is separate and distinct, it is so amazing that we share a basic template of appearance. 

Head

Hair

Eyes

Nose

Ears

Mouth

Torso

Legs

Arms

So many different combinations! It really is amazing if you stop to think about it.

The vulnerability of being nude never really hit me. Yes, I have been nude in rooms of strangers dozens of times so far but I have never been truly naked in those situations. My body is inspiration, a blueprint if you will. Some of the art created looks nothing like me because the artists made the choice to use a different face or different hair. I'm fine with nudity, but nakedness is something else entirely.

*************************

There were four of us in the car driving southbound on Interstate 95 in the evening after preforming in a show together. The car was warm with laughter and conversation between good friends. We all knew each other well and I considered these women sisters in my crazy Vaudeville life. We did not just get the social niceties afforded for passing acquaintances, we took interest in each others lives and shared the bond only other artists can have. The bond connecting the type of people who value beauty in the world and actively seek out ways to bring more beauty into the world. Artists who take 9-5 jobs to be able to live sequin dreams instead of only seeing others while wondering "What if".

After a good show and in the privacy of the darkness, also after a nice Rum, I talked.

My strongest medium so far is not with oils or with watercolor, but words.

So I talked about my father and I talked about myself.

The story I've told so many times, I sometimes forget it belongs to me and not someone else.



In a world where silence gives power to secrets it always was my mission to reclaim the power.
My power.

I wrap myself in stories, both good and bad, to cover my body. Some stories show my smile, in my eyes or with my mouth. Other stories let you see the scars, never noticed until pointed out. My modesty does kick in at times because not every can see me naked, most people I can't trust to see me like that. Some have run from my nakedness as they are startled to realize their own nakedness. Others become angry and think my nakedness vulgar. I take no offense as I redress before them. Nakedness is not for everyone.

The reason for my nakedness or nudity is the same; to give inspiration to others.


My friend reached over to hug me after I finished talking. The car was silent as the passengers in the front thanked me for sharing a piece of me. My hug continued as my friend had no words strong enough to give, but needing to let me know she felt my words. We drove on the fog covered roads towards our homes. There we would undress alone or with partners or with pets; our own stories written on our skin and in our movements.

Me?

Well I fell asleep in my bed wearing the same clothes I had preformed in and still wearing my makeup.

It was too cold to sleep naked that night.

Social Standards

"Prison Break."
"Well there is a show called that on TV."
"Do you want to check it out?"
"Sure."

This all took place awhile walking around in a space similar to what I imagine the brainspace of an ADHD 8 year old boy looks like; a Sega themed amusement park in Japan. I was currently venturing with another student from my College because we had a free day and this sounded like an interesting side trip. Located at one end of a giant mall in the town of Odaiba, Joypolis is filled with lights and sounds not recommended for anyone with a seizure disorder. There were floors of arcade games, rides, some interactive activities, and lots of colorful game-console-themed decorations. Almost of the attractions requiring active comprehension, like a 3D Sonic the Hedgehog movie, had English subtitles. It didn't matter if the arcade games were only in Japanese because some things like "Whack-a-(insert random character)" or any racing game is pretty universal. 

This brings us to one of the 'interactive' attractions, 'Prison Break'. Now the person I was venturing with spoke a little Japanese. She was able to understand the ride guides who warned us this attraction was only in Japanese. I, on the other hand, did not speak Japanese beyond knowing the names of my favorite Ninja Warrior (Sasuke) contestants. They let us join the queue for the ride after we assured them our language barrier wouldn't be a problem and we'd still enjoy the experience. When it was time for our group to go into the 'attraction', we had no idea what to expect because we had no idea what we agreed to. (Author's Note: If you can't tell by now the 'no idea what I'm agreeing to' thing happens to me more than the average person.)

Our group consisted of us, two girls from a small college in Iowa, and four other people who were Japanese. We stood along a fake barbwire fence as the leader, a man dressed in a grey prison uniform, told us directions. I'm also pretty sure he was telling us a story at one point because he became very animated. I tried my best to pick up some keywords, but he registered my confused expression and came to talk to us. Our conversation took place with pantomime and what simple words we could share between the language barrier. Instead of the detailed description given to the others in the group, our explanation of the attraction was pretty much "Follow and be quiet." As the person unofficially voted 'Most Likely To Not Understand Anything Going On', I gladly took my position as the last person in the single file line walking into the next room.

The next room began the 'Prison', a darkened labyrinth scattered with jail decorations straight out of a Halloween store. The path was dimmed but I could still see everyone in our group, including our leader. I paid attention to everyone ahead of me and copied what they were doing. We moved down the hallways braced against the walls in exaggerated creeping motions.  After each turn, our leader would turn around and talk to the group. Sometimes this would be about jail obstacles that were clearly obvious and easily comprehended by even...well...me. Other times I believed he was explaining the story unfolding because there were no visual hints to what he was talking about. Everything was going smoothly, as smoothly as pretending to escape a jail while not comprehending any verbal instructions can be: Until we reached a block in our path.

This 'Block' was a dead end of sorts and made us turn back in the direction we came from. So we all turned around as the leader went to the 'new' front of the single file line. This lovely little turning business meant I was now directly behind the leader at the front of the line. We continued to sneak along the walls until we came to a giant open room. With a serious expression on his face, the leader turned and gave us directions. Now he could have been telling the others about his very uncomfortable underwear he had to wear today because it was laundry day and nothing else was clean: I had no clue what was going on as he walked on. I knew the game was "follow the leader", something children and ants do on a daily basis so I continued to follow him into the room.

Very quickly there were spotlights in the middle of the room focused on our fearless leader.

And me right behind him.

Not everyone else, just me.

Apparently the serious face was not about his underwear choice but actually instructions to wait at the edge of the room while he "went ahead to make sure it was safe".

The colloquial abbreviation FML seemed very appropriate at that moment.

Quickly processing what was going on, I raced back to the group. The group was entertained by the HIGHLY exaggerated motions of our leader as he tried to dodge the spotlights while comically avoiding the 'bullets' dotting the wall around him. No one could see my face burning with embarrassment at not understanding the simple directions everyone else understood clearly. After it was 'safe' to pass, we quickly moved on to the next hallway. A voice sounded from a speaker as a dummy in a electric chair twitched and howled in pain. We ran out a set of doors and we were 'free'.

 

 

**********************

As social creatures, we tend to fixate on language when we communicate. How many times have you heard a person said they were concerned they had "said the wrong thing"? There are right words to say in certain situations and to certain people. People would also agree that there are also totally wrong things to say in certain situations. Care to take a guess what a person with a disability characterized by difficulties with social interactions does on a semi-regular basis? If you guessed "say the wrong thing", you should pat yourself on the back.


I can say with complete authority that 92.4% of my anxiety comes from social interactions: specifically being misunderstood or misunderstanding people.


I grew up being misunderstood from a young age. It was not just others who didn't understand what I was trying to communicate, I didn't know how to verbalize what I wanted to communicate! So it began with colors. Colors were emotions. Emotions are those things that make your face move in different ways to match the feelings in your stomach. This is how a child with Autism learns to communicate with the world outside of our head. We assign invisible labels to everything while cross-referencing, cataloging, and storing for later use. Every single second of the day begins as a constant struggle between the safe world in our heads and the scary real world where there are so many rules when talking to other people.

As a kid, I hid my Autism by playing a game similar to "follow the leader"; I was an echolalic mimic. Watching T.V. and Movies, I learn not just what people were saying but how they were saying it. I assigned labels to characters and studied the jumbled mess laid before me. Communication was learning scripts of what to say and when to say it. This was what people did, they talked about specific things. As a child, the subject of conversations were limited and the scripts were repetitive. I enjoyed the company of my mom's friends because they talked about fun things and I got to play with new scripts.

The scripts grew as I encountered more situations and needed something to say. I needed to say the right thing. Life became more stressful as the situations grew exponentially and I had school work to do as well.  Somewhere it stopped being about just knowing the words, I needed to learn social cues and body language played a huge part in what was the 'right' thing to say. Going to an all-girl High School, I became a constantly anxious about saying the wrong thing. This continued in College when the addition of romance brought communication barriers to a whole new level. The anxiety affected my health to such an extreme degree, I have not really been 'healthy' until 2012.

Last year is when I stopped constantly having the chest pains from anxiety. I was hooked up to heart monitors as a child because my panic attacks lead doctors to believe I had a heart condition.

For the first time in my entire life, I did not get strep throat once in twelve whole months. The immunologist said I had my own dormant type of Strep that was not contagious, but only affected me when my body became too overwhelmed with stress. Getting strep happened to me on an average of four times a year.

I wasn't constantly in pain. My back stopped being tense and my muscles could relax for once. I would grind my teeth so badly from stress, there was noticeable damage and constant jaw pain from the time I was 12 to 17. No more jaw pain and a recovery plan from a dentist with "marked improvement".



My Secret?
I'd like to say it was years ago, but truthfully it was only very recently I fully understood.


The words you say don't always matter.


It's not that you are saying the wrong words, but communication is not as simple as always knowing the right thing to say or understanding the precise meaning of every word you hear. Communication is a very complicated experience involving multiple people with the potential to get things jumbled purely by accident. There are people in my life I can look at and have entire conversations with our eyes. With other people I run out of words long before there is any hope of getting my point across. It's not that I don't have to sometimes work to be appropriately social, I just know what scripts to pull out at certain times and I know the times scripts don't matter.

I'm not going to completely destroy a friendship by accidentally saying something really stupid. I finally gave myself permission to relax an accept that fact. The difference between being alone and lonely is the choice. Having the choice to remove myself from the rest of the world is empowering. Being isolated due to my failing social skills was devastating. 

*********

In a different place and time I was a little blonde 8 year old in a sundress walking by a park in Seville, Spain with my family when I saw a group of children playing on the grass. They were laughing and having fun playing the same games I was excluded from on the recess yard. The craving to belong hurt on a level I hope most people never know.
It was my father, a many who to this day doesn't understand me, who told me to go to them.

"I can't speak Spanish."
"It's okay."
"They won't understand me."
"That's okay."

Walking up to the group of ten or so children, they all stopped to look at me.
I heard my heart race in my ears.
My hands became so sweaty that I was afraid to wipe them on my dress so I held them out to my sides.

"Hola"
"Hola" replied a little boy standing closest to me.
"Me llamo Brigid"
"Me llamo Jesus" replied the little boy as he moved to grab my hand.


We played in the park until the lightning bugs came out. Saying "Adios" to my new friends, my family left to find dinner and end our night with our regular walk around the illuminated city. I actually fell asleep in my dinner that night. It was not just exhaustion, it was happiness that overwhelmed me the most. The language barrier between me and the other kids did not hinder me, it made me not worry about saying the wrong thing so I could finally be a kid. A kid like everyone else.

Happiness is dollars and sense

Happiness, like love or hate or the perfect vanilla milk shake, is entirely subjective and is intangible. Like the ideal shake, there is not one correct recipe for happiness. (Sidenote: feel free to send me milk shake recipes to try to prove me wrong.) Some people like their shakes with more milk and others with more ice cream and other people are lactose intolerant so they don't know the awesomeness of a great vanilla milk shake. It can be hard to describe what an amazing shake tastes like to someone who has never had one. How do you describe happiness to someone who doesn't think they are happy?

When people ask me for advice, or just talk at me hoping I'll find an answer for them, I have been known to come up with weird analogies. I can't top my friend's classic rejection line, "We just aren't right for each other. It's like you're a koala and I'm an eel." But every once and awhile I say something really smart and it just makes sense of everything. As we finally change seasons, people begin the process of questioning what they really want in life. Awoken for their winter slumps and ready to change things, people really stress over what makes them happy. I often pose one question to my friends when they come to me with life queries.

If you could do anything in the world and money was not a factor, what would make you happy?

*****

The United States dollar can be divided in several different ways. It could be 4 quarters, 20 nickels, 10 dimes, 100 pennies, or any combination of those. It doesn't matter if you have 2 million dollars or 2 dollars, each dollar is worth the same monetary amount. Hugh Jackman can go buy a few packages of ramen and it would cost him the same amount as you However, if you only had 2 dollars you might value them a little more than if there was 2 million waiting for you back home in a safe under your bed.

Happiness is a dollar. It's a combination of our relationships, jobs, health, and dreams. Each piece has a value important to our daily lives. We can arrange the balance any which way, say 2 quarters or being in a loving relationship, but we need to get to a dollar. My combination of change and life values will be different from my friends and family. It's very personal how we balance our lives and I've seen way too much comparison of the change in our pockets. Just because someone else focuses on the nickels or their job, it doesn't mean you need to or should.

I've spent many years working to get to a dollar.
32...33...38...
Call it bad luck or tests of a divine nature, but I've been 'broke' too many times. I've owed the universe a few cents in some cases and have paid my debt with parts of myself.
2...3...4...
I got my sense of humor back when I started dreaming again and looking towards the future. Making plans for next year or even the next day helped to make me happy.
42...47...48...
When my health was bad and I was missing school, my mother instilled in me the importance of maintaining my friendships. She knew if I locked myself away from the world I could never be happy. Even if one part of my life was not going my way, I had the power to compensate with another aspect of my life.
22...32....42...
Then I met some people and reconnected with some old friends who showed me where to find change. Like the bottom of the Trevi Fountain, I saw a town shining against the cool waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
98...99...100.
Everyone who has ever used money knows it can go in an instant. It's a constant job to not just get the dollar but also keep it.
100...100...100...

It's easy to say we shouldn't compare ourselves to one another, but that doesn't mean we always listen. Some people we meet in life will be blessed with an abundance of dollars. We shouldn't feel jealous of them,  as we clutch our own dollar in fear of them only seeing the assortment of change and a rogue button, because we don't know what their dollars are made of. They may have dollars composed entirely of first edition shiny State quarters, but they may never have even seen a button like the one you hold in your hand.

*****

I'm happy, I truly am. I have wonderful friends, blessed with good health right now, a good job, and technicolor dreams for the future. I'd like a bit of extra change from my work, but that's normal. My dollar is in many different pieces. Some of it is Pennies, Yen, Pesos, Lira, Euros, and random things gathered in the corners of pockets. Like reaching into a pocket, the shapes of coins are so familiar I can identify them without looking.

One of the biggest problems with finding the "perfect" milkshake is the need to compare it to other milkshakes. How do you know it is the most perfect one in the entire universe until you try a few different ones? Well there in lies the problem, you can't know it's perfect until you taste a mud shake with booger sprinkles. People sometimes get stuck looking for their next shake and they forget to enjoy the one they have. That's not to say our tastes won't change as we grow. I'm positive I can't stand the sugar drenched shakes of my youth; covered in syrups and sprinkles. I crave a simple shake perfectly blended with whip cream on top. What's the whip cream in this whole big analogy? To basterdize a quote from Sigmund Freud, "sometimes whip cream is just whip cream."

The Slushie and The Toy Store

When I visited the city as a little kid, we would go to a magical place called F.A.O. Schwartz. It was a multi-level toy store where instead of all the pretty things just sitting nicely on shelves, you were able to play with them. Walking around in a giant toy box, which is basically what the store was, made everyone smile and think of positive things. So when I walked into a bar in Savannah with beautiful swirling colors adorning entire wall, I felt like a kid back in the toy box.

"What's the blue one" I asked to the young guy standing behind the counter.
"Blue Lightning. It's blue curacao with vodka and moonshine."
I was caught up in the hypnotizing swirl of the alcoholic slushie machines in every color imaginable.
"What's the green one?"
"It's Sour Apple martini with moonshine."
"Well... which would you recommend?"
"You can get them both swirled together."
In a cup about the size of a kid's drink at any fast food place, I found solace from the horrible karaoke going on in the rest of the bar. This would be my first time hearing drunken people belt out Shania Twain, but not my last.

I had always had a connection to Savannah and wanted to visit it since I first read a book called Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The book painted the town as an other-worldly place filled with cobble stone streets, characters of all natures, and weeping willows. It was really those trees, those giants reaching up and covering the town in a bubble of moss that have stayed with me. I spent the earlier part of the day taking a ghost tour and getting to know the local history of the town. Now I was going to relax before heading back to my 'hotel'. My 'hotel' was just the nearest Walmart parking lot so I could sleep in my Prius for another night.

I was newly 21 on this trip and because I didn't drink until I was 20, I was still figuring out this whole alcohol thing. I had choices besides warm PBR and "jungle juice" made of whatever we could get our hands on. The whole reason for this trip was because I had lost my grandfather a month before. He raised me with my mother and will always be the model for what a perfect man should look like. Losing him was hard and as I said to my mother, "Escapism is more entertaining than therapy". So I ran away, or drove away, to see the places I always wanted to go because life was too short to wait for 'someday'. I pondered all this as the singing started giving me less of a headache and more of a desire to sing along.
Oh shit.
I was drunk.
I was drunk off one cup of moonshine slushie and alone in a town I had never been to. Oh yeah, and it was almost 1am. So with my last minutes of cell phone life I called my mom and bestie Angela to tell them my plan for the night because I couldn't drive.

"I'm going drunk ghost hunting by myself for awhile until I sober up. Love you!" BEEP BEEP BEEP as the phone died.

Armed with only my camera and stupidity, I made my way through the empty streets. The gas lights placed around town were separate enough so there were pockets of darkness underneath the willow adorned courtyards. The wooden benches I had passed hours before now seem to be waiting for someone, as if they were in an active state of being ready for something next. Like a sprinter waiting for the gun to go off, the benches were waiting for something to happen.

The cemetery was once a lot bigger. When the town started expanding, relatives would have to call up to have the town move the deceased to a new location or the town would just pave over the graves. Not everyone called. So as I made my way to the cemetery walls, because where else is the perfect place to go ghost hunting, I said a silent prayer for those who may be under my feet. There is a ghost said to be living in the cemetery called Rene. He was a large man who was said to have murdered animals while alive and the town rallied against the 'Demon' to purge him from their town. The children were said to taunt him when he was alive by calling out "Rene Rene come out and play." The guide I had for my ghost tour viewed the stories as the town's prejudice against a handicapped person who was misunderstood and feared for being different.

After many Halloweens of watching ghost shows on ABC Family, I knew if you took a photo with a flash spirit 'orbs' would show up. Walking along the stone wall whispering "Rene Rene come out and play" is not my smartest moment, I'll admit that. So I clicked my camera with the promise I'd only look at the photos later, when I got safely away from any possible ghosts.
I lied to myself.
I began to click and look, only not seeing just faint orbs in the background. There was almost a solid one to the left of the last photo I took. It was almost out of frame, so I sped up and shut up. But I didn't stop clicking my camera. 20 feet from the last photo I stopped to take another picture. The orb was still there but more in the picture. Nothing was on my camera lens, but I began to freak out.
Faster and faster I walked until I was almost at the end of the cemetery.
I took one last photo, hoping to ease my fears and it did.
In the photo, where the orb was, I could see.... a fingerprint.

It was my finger in the shots.

Laughing to myself, I made my way back to my car. It was almost 3am and there was nothing more appealing than the sleeping bag in the backseat of my car. When I looked at the photos the next day, after calling people to let them know I was not dead in a ditch somewhere, I laughed at myself for many reasons. I laughed because it was easier than crying. I had taken some orb photos, but I didn't get the afterlife communication I was looking for. I didn't want to believe that once a person dies, they are gone forever.

I believe people do leave a mark after they leave this world and sometimes they can communicate with us. My grandfather was a funny guy who loved to tell stories about his life. Every time I have a story, somewhere out there he's watching. He's laughing at me and pointing me out to the other angels like a proud parent. Just like all those years ago in the toy store, he's standing on the edge with a smile on his face. When the other parents would ask if I was with him, he would look at the person and say "Yes she is. She's a good kid like myself."

Autism Awareness Month: My month

Morgan Freeman caused a lot of stir during a 60 Minutes interview when he talked about not liking Black history month because "Black history is American History." April is Autism Awareness month and it's my Black history month. I can't walk through a mall or watch TV without seeing the word Autism. Awareness isn't a bad thing, it's just the loads of miscommunication and division in the Autism community that upsets me.
Full disclosure: I have Autism.
Surprise! Or not really if I've ever said anything not 100% appropriate around you or if I've ever been completely oblivious to anything around you.

I'm a single 24 year old woman with Autism who gets told on a regular basis that people want to cure me. Being the "high functioning" person I am, I also get parents who are angry at me because I can't give them easy answers to all their questions. I only went to one Autism support meeting when I was in college. I had to leave early because a father almost jumped over a table at me because he was so upset I dared to say I have Autism when his 4 year old daughter could barely talk.

I live in a divided community.

I've met parents who want to remove any trace of Autism from their child, sometimes through dangerous alternative methods.
I've also met parents who do their best to foster their children's special interest and accept the child they have been blessed with.
I also see adults on the Autism Spectrum who have to fight for jobs, housing, relationships, and understanding because they don't fit into the stereotypic image the public has for Autism.
And I've heard the cries of children born into a world too loud and too bright with people listening to them but not hearing what they need.

I don't want Autism Awareness as much as I want Autism Acceptance.
When we reach a point where people will accept the social flaws that come with Autism, we can begin to work together to create a brighter future for our children. Yes, dietary changes do help some people and therapies will help people, too. You know what doesn't help? Telling your children you wish they were "normal" and making them feel like they need to be just like everyone else in the world.

I've traveled the world a little bit and I've seen Autism in many different cultures. Autism is not going away and Autism existed before people were getting vaccinated against things. Why is Autism more diagnosed now than at any other point in human history? I have my theories.

Yesterday was World Autism Day and I'm proud to say I know some of the individuals who presented at the United Nations. Yesterday I hung out with a bunch of friends, picked up a new car from the dealership, and acted like a goofball. My label didn't matter, but I was still the same person. I'm always going to have Autism and will have struggles my friends sometimes don't know how to relate to.
That's okay.
This is me.
This is Autism, every day and every month.

Don't Panic: The Coleman Cooler and Fire.

"Don't Panic?"
"It's from Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" replied my father.
"Ah."

I walked away as he finished applying the bumper sticker to our family van. This was one of the last ditch efforts to relate to me my father would ever make. He thought it was a cute bumper sticker and my prius was sporting a bumper sticker too. Mine was more for shock value than anything else. I got a huge kick out of parking my car at the front of the all girl's catholic high school with a "Sorry I missed church, I was busy practicing witchcraft and being a lesbian" bumper sticker.

Why yes, I am a smart ass. Thanks for noticing.

Like all bumper stickers, they fade and wear away. After we kicked my father out of the house, the bumper sticker became a twisted joke. The man who had terrorized my family for years left behind the words "don't panic" as his last statement. A few years later, the sticker came off in a way so it just said "PANIC".

My mother drove around in a big clunky van that had broken electrical system, no automatic steering, busted taillights, and a "PANIC" bumper sticker. Well, until one day.

I was sitting in our living room and I get a call from my mother.
"The car just blew up."
Not knowing what a normal person would say in this situation, I asked "are my cds okay?"
I could hear the laughter of the firemen in the background as my mother told me to come pick her up.

My mother had driven exactly 50 miles and made her way to Portland for a meeting with my father. She was out doing errands before and it was a hot summer day. She always takes a cooler of drinks wherever she goes because she always likes to be hydrated.

I'd like you to picture my mother as she is, a petite Irish woman with the grace and style of Jackie O. Growing up in Woburn, MA in the 60's she has the laid back and frank attitude of a person who can handle any trouble. So when she parked the car and flames immediately leapt up the windshield, with her lit cigarette in one hand and purse in the other, she calmly got out of the car moments before it blew up. She walked to the building, apologized for being late, and told the secretary to call the fire department because her car was in flames in the park lot.

After the firemen put it out, my mother asked to see if some of the items in the car were salvageable. She retrieved her glasses which were in a metal case that had melted to protect them. At first she laughed to see the Coleman cooler barely warped amidst the melted interior of the car, so she opened it. Inside that cooler were two Sprites and an ice pack, still cold. She offered one to one of the firemen, but they declined and thought the whole thing was strange.

When I arrived, I collected my Cds which were weirdly alright amongst the damage. Only my Panic at the Disco, still in the player, was lost. The cooler smelled of burnt plastic, smoke, and fear: we didn't take it with us.

As we took pictures of the mess, I fell into a fit of laughter when I got to the back of the van. My mother came over and she began to laugh too.

Still attached to the van and perfectly readable was the word "PANIC".

Age: just a state of mine

A wise man once said, "Nobody likes you when you're 23" and Blink 182 might not have been far off the mark.
Don't get me wrong, this has been an amazing year in so many ways, but I'm totally looking forward to 24.

First: A history of birthdays.

When I turned 21 I spent the day in Tokyo and took the bullet train to Kyoto with my college classmates.

When I turned 18 I bought lottery tickets because I was banned from preforming in my highschool's One Act theater competition.

When I turned 16 I had a fully body MRI and CAT scan to try to figure out what was wrong with me.

When I turned 11 I spent my birthday wandering around Vatican city and exploring castles.

When I was either 5  or 6 I went behind the circus stage and then got to ride a train around on stage in front of thousands of people.

This is the first year in a long time that I will be celebrating my birthday. Not on the day, but even celebrating my birthday is huge for me. I was talking to a friend, who I can guarantee is not reading this, who told me I should celebrate. My friend told me I should celebrate the fact that I've gotten to this point in my life. Period.
So I am.

I'm celebrating how excited and terrified I am of everything this year is going to bring. Just so you might get an idea of my life when I'm 24 I will:

-Present at a National Conference on the media's influence of the autistic stereotype. BY MYSELF.
- Run at least one (most likely 2 or 3) 5k obstacle course.
-Be in 2 feature length films.
-Take a more active role in the Dark Follies.
-and you know, co-author a book.

Yeah.
That's what being 24 will bring me.
I'm pumped.

It's my year in the Chinese zodiac and I've never felt more in control.
I'm praying to any deity so I'm not jinxing myself, but I'm feeling like it's going to be a wonderful year.