Being an "Autism Support Officer"

What is an Autism Support Officer?

What is done by an Autism Support Officer?

This should firstly be said of it, that it is a role…

…filled by a ladling who prefers the title of Bits-n-Bobs Guy.

In the place of, “Guy”, “dude” is a viable synonym, as is “man”, “bloke”, “lad” – any word is viable candidate for surrogacy if that word has with it a semantic connotation of being unextraordinary in an exceedingly ironic sense, for there is little about the work that I do which is truly unextraordinary; but I do so adore sarcasm and self-deprecating irony and there is fun in going around and saying that I am the Bits-n-Bobs Guy of Nelle Frances.

Such is my role – the varied assortment of unnameable tasks that Nelle can defer to others are thus surely deferred to me. In doing such, it is thus feasible for her effort to be allocated more thoroughly to her offered consultation. I, as well as others in our team, are a basis wherefrom she can be kept standing to serve people.

But it is not strictly Nelle that I am helping. Help is offered to myself in what knowledge I can glean. And help is offered to others as Nelle employs the abilities of her team as a service to those who come to us. It is the format of this help and the principles embedded on its circumference wherefrom I can define, for the inquisitive, what I do, why I do it, and the depth of its meaning.

And an illustration is playing on my mind and in the deed of writing it here, I shall achieve success for my intent to offer a definition. And it begins with myself amidst my team beneath our office in The Cave, and a young girl with whom I ate pizza that I should not have been eating, and I played a game of Chess that I should not have been playing for the sake of my own frail pride and fear of defeat by anyone who is fore me in their years upon this Earth. And amidst eating and playing, we talked.

It was mostly about Minecraft.

Though I truly give thanks for such a blessing each day, that it was not Fortnite. Minecraft is eternal, and Fortnite is trendy – and I do despise trends with a resentment that is ferociously wielded. I am deathly afraid that I will awaken upon a day to learn that wearing waistcoats will become a trend and everyone will go about adorned therewith; and I shall then cry aloud as I roam despairingly in the streets, “Damn it, society – this was my thing!”

Trends represent a desire in humans to appear different in a uniform manner that betrays the effort. With myself, and with this girl, we were different by nature. “Quirky” is an adjective that can be ascribed to us to define the jumble wherewith we cloth ourselves, for our minds often are a jumble in each and every feasibly right way that it may be so. And we learn, in our spree of youthful entanglements, to apply order to it. And it is with this learnedness that we can earnestly give a worthwhile and fulfilling life for ourselves and for this world.

This potential does not show itself in ways that can encourage utter faith high from the masses. But I believe that I saw such in this young girl when she spoke and spoke some more, ardently about the intricacies of this simply-seeming game about blocks – and her words came to be jumbled and, without any loss placed upon her enthusiasm, she struggled with a might, therein bereft of any likelihood of ever ending even if her elders dragged her away and to her home, to find the words to persist and finish with what she was sharing.

Her mind was caught on a thought, I do truly think. And it was such a fascinating little thought, and in her mind it was visualised so utterly, that seconds would go on by before this alignment of her processes and her articulation was reformed. It is disorderly – those existent ‘neath the liberty of developmental ordinality assuredly are unaffected by difficulties of such sorts.

But it is, for me, my normal – and such is so for her, too.

“Um” was said again and again, and the start of a sentence was said repeatedly prior to its continuation onwards and upwards to its climax. Again and again, this happened – and I watched. I saw someone, a truly charming and clever girl, who was doing so well in the exploration of her mind.

And I saw the tiniest bits of myself – that struggle as the mind slows to overthink a thought endlessly while the words go on ahead or fully halt. Speaking and then hearing myself is achieved triumphantly only when I sustain, upon my words and speech, my utter attention for their manner.

Hearing her seemed like hearing myself. And it is like so with many of the children and adults who visit our bastion of peculiarity. In all of them, I do see a little of myself. As I am alike each and every other member of our species, each and every member of our species thus has within them a little, tiny bit of myself to be seen. But I see the most of myself in those who, alike me, are diagnosed as disorderly, yet who possess oxymoronically a penchant for orderly behaviour. We are the disordinated ordinators.

Or so say’th the world and its imposed paradigm of normal and abnormal. There is an immodest portion of me which offers my courtesy to the deprivation from me of the status of, “normal”. I look and I see how normal folks do so poorly in their tending – and I think, “I am glad to be unalike that silly lot and their silly silliness”.

This is a world that shuns flaws and shames folks, whose minds have been born a’changed. And it is often merely that folks are so trapped by their own existential demands that they cannot ably allow their routine to be usurped by the needs of those of an atypical mind. Yet this rule has its many exceptions – for many neurotypes have afforded to me their acceptance and patience. They are my friends and their guidance is needed, or I will be preyed upon by the cruelties of this unforgiving and damning realm of life, wherein which we all are frolicking.

And the greatest joy of my duties in the role of this fanciful Autism Support Officer (or Bits-n-Bobs Guy, as I insist to be entitled), is the knowledge that I am working alongside others to try and be, for those who come to us, what many others have been for me.

And this notion of “helping” is hence reinstated as the central ideal amongst these paragraphs. And this deed of helping is thus done merely in showing, per example, that there is much about us with this diagnosis of Autism, that begets an oddness and weirdness and quirkiness from us all – and that naught about it can said to be wrong. No stigma can be imposed, nor can anybody ably proclaim themselves to be bearers of greater knowledge about the “if” of Autism being a form human imperfection, or the “if” of it as personal perfection.

Now, there does exist a proper manner and an improper manner for the offering of help to a possessor of this diagnosis. I derive my processes on this issue from how I was treated as a child. Help was never far and I ever had the support to sustain me. But I came to feel that help was all that I ever would need. And I applied a stigma to my diagnosis, and I did consider it to be a cause for diminishment. I had this destiny that I desired for myself, and all the obstacles that were a’laid before me were begotten from an inability to afford to myself any esteem. I never had many accomplishments as proof of any potential, and I erroneously placed culpability for this on those figures of authority in my life who I then thought to have helped me too much, and who never saw me as being one who can stand without help.

I possessed no esteem, for I possessed no accomplishment. And I alleged to myself that my diagnosis was the cause. Thus did I ignore it. To be Autistic was a fact of insignificance, for I deemed it to be a diminishing and disenfranchising fact. And so, I invested no awareness to my neurology. I did not dedicate myself to the study of the manner with which my traits manifest themselves if a burden comes to be too great. My anxiety was simply a stupid itch of unnecessary concern. I forcefully acted oppositionally and I afforded no analysis thereto.

And for a brief time, I became a hurtful and unfaithful person. Many of the characteristics that I resented then, and I yet resent, were embodied – and I was unaware of it all. And the hardships thereof are enduring to this day. But accomplishments arose afterwards. My esteem emboldened and I allowed for myself more understanding than I had before. And now I can read myself. I know what I want, and what I need – and I know what I need often belies what I want. And I thus rely on my friends to act as custodians of honesty and criticism to guide the development of my own comprehension of myself for each novel predicament that ever emerges.

And it is a worthwhile fare to devote myself to offering guidance to others. But the improper manner of this is to imply to them that there is the expectation that they are destined to be perpetually the vassals of help. For from this will arise the chance that a stigmatising mind towards themselves may form in their adolescence.

It is preferable for me to say to someone, that we are divergent, and that our potential is achieved per a journey which is dissimilar to this artificial construct of “normality”. For we have a more special and memorable offering to afford to this world and we are going to explore this together. In this, the implication is that I am a device for their use, whereby they can develop their comprehension per their own ability and per their own manner. All is deferred to them. They are active participants of the process of support, not passive recipients of support.

This amends the errors that allowed for me to feel that I was powerless and that people expected no grandeur from me. In this effort, grandeur is all that I expect of others, for those who possess ambition and the passion to pursue it ferociously often find something grand in where they head.

This is a need for children so that their minds grow and foster a belief in themselves and to place no doubts thereon. But I also hopefully aim to apply myself more with those in their teening years, for pestering doubts will yet appear and in this truth am I learned, that doubt of oneself impedes any impetus for one to be aware of their own psyche and the necessities that it will demand from them. And the aftereffects of acting without knowing oneself were verily learnt by me in a tush-wackingly harsh way.

The woes that life will pose are endless. But I am leastwise happier when I have no doubts in myself. And so, it seems to be me that it is right, that I should give wholeheartedly to this duty of standing aside others as they find themselves and prove their potential.

The depth of meaning for my duties begin here.

And it goes on with the fulfilment found by others in themselves.

And it ends with fulfilment that I thus find in myself through helping others.

©Nelle Frances 2020