Thinking in Words

Hyperlexia.

Overactive imagination.

Autism.

For me, those three things tie together very tightly. Those three terms describe my whole life.

I am Arianna.

I am Arianna, an autistic teenager with an eidetic memory. I am Arianna, a girl who has written novels in her spare time. I am Arianna, the girl the whole school knows of as the genius.

I am Arianna, the girl who wishes she wasn't so different.

Even as a young child, I was different. My whole family could tell. I never cried after my mom started teaching me American Sign Language at two weeks old. I was signing myself a few months later, and by three years old, I knew about eighty signs, not including the alphabet. In preschool and kindergarten, I was in a grade of my own, one might say. I was doing sixth-grade spelling lists and getting the sixth-grade averages. My teachers pointed it out to my parents. But for the next seven years I continued to blend in well enough. And because of that, they didn't realize what the negatives of my intelligence were.

Finally, in July 2012, my cousin realized what it was about me. I had Asperger's syndrome, mild autism. When taken into perspective, it explained the bullying that had followed me through two schools. It explained the difficulties that had come into play as I transitioned into middle school three years before. It even explained how the struggles my parents had grown to consider normal after my ADD brother had been passed down to me.

Going into high school this coming fall will most likely be the most important transition of my life so far. It will be the first major change after the discovery of my autism. And it will be the first time I must call myself autistic, thanks to the DSM-V.

But high school will also be the time when I can learn to cope. Everything around me right now seems to be at least a million times more powerful than it should be. My tears tend to spill on a daily basis. I hope that I can learn what I need to learn in the coming years. I hope that I can continue to be me.

Because I am Arianna, a girl who thinks in words.