Girl On the Spectrum Manifesto, no. 1
We hide in plain sight they say, as if something sinister
à la RFK Jr. to Trump, Asperger to Hitler. So many
girls & women unnamed. Boys & men four times
more likely to get a diagnosis. But this is not a disease,
not something only boys who love trains & walk on their toes
can have, though I, a girl/woman, did walk on my toes.
When I read of that symptom in a book, I gasped;
I was just figuring it out & over the age of 40,
remembering my parents took me to the doctor
for toe-walking beyond when a toddler would stop
& though none of my children toe-walked,
each have their uniqueness & one of my sons
as he struggled young, ADHD, I was questioning, reading
like so many mothers, a light started to glow,
go off in my brain & when one magnificent female student
of mine, student who wore a lanyard brightly stating
I am autistic & was her whole self in my classroom
when she folded paper into intricate shapes & fidgeted
all through class, when she wore sunglasses
in the awful florescent light, when she brought me
a houseplant she propagated when we found
we shared a special interest, when she shared
her other interest was keeping roly-polies as pets
in a box in her window well, I was reminded of myself
as a child & the toads in my window well I kept as pets
& she wrote the best poems out of everyone in the class
& when she sat underneath her desk during lecture
without fanfare or apparent shame & which I didn’t think odd,
instead, I felt . . . envy, seeing my secret behavior on display.
Not only as a child, but as an adult, in my apartment
I would sit underneath my desk after coming home
from some social thing, when feeling overwhelmed,
I felt the little cave the desk made could hold the world,
keep it from crushing me, the glass shell around me,
& in that remembering, the message on her lanyard
glowed bright & with sunflowers surrounding the words,
I am autistic. That word autistic familiar, thrown around
about my eccentric, engineer father throughout my childhood
when my mother heard about Aspergers, but I thought
because I didn’t like math, didn’t build computers,
it couldn’t be me. Never mind how I didn’t, couldn’t
talk in school until fourth grade, I was labeled gifted
& shy. Never mind my anxiety & depression &
obsessions, how even now, after I participate
in some poetry event, I can’t sleep, dissect it all night
& friends say I’d never know. Here I am, writing poems.
Eugenicists take note, my autistic student was the most
talented student in the room & though the label is not
magic, it’s a way of living in this brain,
fuck a cure for who we are,
after forty years of What Is Wrong With Me?,
this was my answer, bright sunflower.
Girl On The Spectrum Manifesto, no. 2
We are diagnosed General Anxiety
We are diagnosed Panic Disorder
& at least three Phobias (wind, flying, food in restaurants)
We are not a monolith (the ‘we’ is me
& maybe you)
We are diagnosed Depression, Suicidal Ideation.
You don’t think we are autistic
& feel very free to tell us so.
Wearing tights & dresses sent us into fits as children.
(you could sustain a crying fit longer than anyone
I had ever seen, Mother says.)
Yes, our mothers caused trauma, were angry
at what we were, weren’t.
But they had no idea & no help. Especially for those of us
invisible, labeled just shy, gifted.
(No one else’s children ran away and hid during their birthday parties,
didn’t want to be looked at, Mother says,
You fell down crying in the kitchen every day after school
for all of first grade, but couldn’t say why)
We didn’t know why, could not articulate out loud.
Very early on, we wondered why we had to be born.
We started writing down what we couldn’t speak.
We rehearsed before we spoke.
We know you cannot imagine this now
unless you knew us when
in the time before masks we mastered.
Girl On The Spectrum Manifesto, no. 3
A misguided man who swims in muck
states, your cure is coming—no vaccines,
food coloring. Not knowing
my genes (Or does he know?
Which is more frightening?)
Paternal side—cousin, brother, father,
Maybe the grandfather who struggled,
drank, unalived. Ironically he was born
in Vienna, birthplace of the diagnosis,
and Asperger’s base. What good
intentions A. may have started with
ended with the evil whims of
a regime. America, where
are we going? My grandfather
was still lucky to leave Austria
before the war. Never mind his other
failures—through him, I am here.
“Too much like a Solmer,”
my mother used to despair
for me when I wanted to unalive.
Psychic mediums were more helpful
than therapists. I had a kick-ass one
for twenty years; we’d talk annually.
She kept me alive, my “spiritual counselor,”
and the poems and the people
who would let me talk, “info dump”
(I didn’t know there was a word for that)
without judgment, a couple best friends
we labeled ourselves “weird” and “crazy,”
lovingly, not once knowing the word
“neurodivergent.” You will not eradicate us
with a lack of vaccine, food coloring.
In the spectrum-y world, we will continue
To keep saving ourselves.
Girl On The Spectrum Manifesto, no. 4
We will wear blanket hoodies unironically.
We will wear what you’ve called “weird outfits,” colorful,
unmatched, our favorite childhood cartoons.
When we feel comfortable with you, we will look
off in the distance when talking and try not to notice
how you turn your head to see what we’re looking at.
We might bring out our fidgets around you
and at work, especially the squishy ones.
We will even explain the issue with the fluorescent lights
and sit in the dark room with headphones while grading.
We will look back on our lives—a mess—and understand it.
We used to feel shame after graduating cum laude
and working 13 years in the grocery store.
And then checking the Master’s Degree box
on the welfare papers for so many years.
We were paying our taxes, don’t worry, and working full time
but for those who cannot, please use my tax money for them.
Stop dropping bombs, kidnapping, deporting.
It literally hurts to watch the news.
The anxiety gets worse unless we’re too low to feel.
We fight it every day, leave the house, deal with the
disassociation when we meet friends at the museum.
Let the panic pass and wash over us
when we feel we’re not real.
Don’t get me started on romance.
We will self-diagnose, join autistic women
groups online, and understand all of our relationships
finally.
Natalie Solmer was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana, and is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Indianapolis Review. Before becoming an Associate Professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College, she was a horticulturalist and grocery store florist for 13 years. Her poetry has been featured in Verse Daily and published in places such as North American Review, Pleiades, Notre Dame Review, Mom Egg Review, and The Glacier. Find her at nataliesolmer.com.
BACK TO ISSUE