My life has been devoted to breaking barriers; Now I'm in college

This guest post is by Jeanine Castagna who is currently a freshman in college. Her whole life has been devoted to breaking barriers, and she says her college experience so far has been no different.

The first shutdown

Imagine you are hanging out with your friends. You are doing filming for a movie your friend created for fun. As always, you mess around between takes, and your other friends start making comments on how you and the friend who created the movie should be a couple, and started making sexual jokes with that in mind. That’s been happening for a few days at this point. You’re unsure whether they are joking or are serious, or how your other friend involved feels about it. It is getting late at night, everyone wants to get the remaining filming done and get back to their rooms for the night. They start getting irritable and cranky. You have no idea what’s going on. The surroundings of bickering and your prior feelings overwhelm you, so you go off to the side of the room and sit down.

After you get into a seated position, you stare immensely into the floor, and freeze. You lose control of your body and cannot move an inch. A tear starts coming down, but all you can do is blink so it rolls down your cheek. After what feels like forever, your friends start to notice. They come over to you and crowd you trying to help. All you want to say is “give me space” but the words won’t come out. You open your mouth, and all that can come out is some stammers. It isn’t until a close friend of yours finally steps in and says, “Guys, give her some space. I’ll take care of it,” that your friends leave you alone. He comforts you and talks you out of it, asking you what was on your mind and having you take deep breaths. These experiences are known as autistic shutdowns, and this was my first one since college started. After this incident, I knew it was time to tell my new college friends about my diagnosis, and now they have a better understanding of what to do when other incidents like this come up.

Disclosing to my new friends

Choosing this path was not an easy decision to make. I’ve been always stuck in this controversy between the fact that I will be admired more because being autistic adds more value to all of my accomplishments, and the idea that it will be demeaning because I won’t be viewed as equal to my peers. One thing I learned from college and this experience is that I am an individual, and a very unique one at that. I felt it would be better for both parties for me to tell them about my autism, and explain to them what that means. Now, my friends admire me more because of it, and it inspired my friends to come to me and open up about their depression, anxiety, and other conditions they may have. They’ve learned that I am understanding and, more importantly, that I get it. I’ve never been happier in my life, the weight of worry has finally been lifted off of my shoulders.