Continuing to be autistic

So have you already made your New Year's resolutions? Perhaps one of the most common questions of the present. Maybe even more than, have you ever produced the Covid-19 booster vaccine?

Lose weight? Exercise? Do you spend more time with the family? Spend less time at work? Quitting smoking? Do you stop making unrealistic New Year's resolutions that are then not fulfilled and increase my frustration? There are many formulations. But although many of us do not comply with our New Year's resolutions at the end. Nevertheless, at the turning point of the year, we seem to be forced to do so. Maybe because we want to lead a better year or even a better life. And to give in to many of the resolutions, healthier. And there are many who think they are drafting these resolutions because they are important things to do. Though it is assumed that the joy of carrying out in the vast majority of people is the chosen fuel. But if we look at many of our resolutions, we realise that they will be important to be daily resolutions and not just a turn of the year. Not least because these are behaviours that must be carried out daily in order for them to occur.

This ritual of making New Year's resolutions may not make sense to some people, whether autistic or not autistic. As well as the reasons why they justify it. Either because the resolutions for a new year do not have to be left until the end of the year. And they can be perfectly realised at any time. Not least because the person concerned may not feel the need to take decisions at the end of the year, whatever he may be. Or think that this ritual is a social construction and that the person does not feel that he has to do it just because there are some people who do it. Not least because it usually does not give in to social pressure. I have been doing the same New Year's resolution for thirty-six years to know what's wrong with me? Alberto (fictitious name) says that he is still waiting to understand his diagnosis today.

Autistic people make resolutions every day, says Cristina (fictitious name). For example, when I was little, my resolution was that everything would go better at school, he adds. In my case, my resolution was to have friends, says Carlos (fictitious name). I also wanted to be like the others, he says. There were many people who said that I wanted to be special, but I was tired of being special, he concludes.

Most of the time I wanted to stop having tics or doing strange things, says Clara (fictitious name). Or to stop my thoughts that most of the time I wouldn't let myself be, he continues. In my case, I wish I could forget my life every year, says Raúl (fictitious name). He never knew how to wish for anything else in life, he says. I don't even know if I ever knew what the word wish means, continue.

Not that Raúl, Clara, Carlos, Cristina and Alberto didn't want any other things. But many of these negative experiences of him were forced on everyone else and filled more and more space in himself. They were part of the present and the past, and as such the future seemed to have no conditions to be anything other than the same. It's not because they didn't want any other things. But for all of them, it will be very difficult to make a transition to a new year by forgetting the things of the previous year.

For Raúl, Clara, Carlos, Cristina and Alberto, the most important and real solution of your life is this - continue to be autistic. More than this or that could be, they have all taken a path that makes them believe that the most important thing is to be themselves. Maybe other non-autistic people can summarise a New Year's resolution for this year - Start accepting and respecting autistic people! Clara says.