Before college I never had to share my bedroom with siblings. I also didn’t like sleepovers, just because I enjoyed my own space. I met my roommate on Instagram before we left for school and I instantly knew we were going to be besties. I didn’t know before living with her that they were autistic. This is how it’s going so far.
Autism spectrum disorder is quite common, every 1 in 44 to be exact. For my roommate, their autism was not as severe as other cases, though it does affect our dynamic and how we live together as roommates. It’s not like I had to change the way I live when we moved in, but I did have to do some things I wasn’t expecting. These are my experiences, please remember I am not a doctor or a specialist on ASD. I’m simply writing this article to show others how it affected me.
The first thing I wanted to talk about is the stuff that could be the “hard stuff.” By that I mean, the stuff that I wasn’t expecting when I first moved in. I’ll talk about the big stuff first (yes I’ve gotten permission to write about this). I once saw my roommate get very overstimulated when someone sat on their bed. She wasn’t jumping or trying to mess the bed up on purpose, but the blankets got crinkled and the pillows got out of place. This lead to a meltdown, meaning my roommate got so overstimulated that there was not a small way to express what they were feeling. Sometimes they have to have headphones on at all times to avoid all of the little sounds that they could be exposed to. The hardest part was knowing when I could help and when I couldn’t. People with ASD often have a hard time expressing their emotions as well as being able to read the emotions of others. My roommate couldn’t always tell me what was wrong, and sometimes guessing would make things worse. It can be hard to read situations because they all tend to be different.
My roommate also has a list of things that are safe. Places that are safe to be, things that are safe to eat, and people that are safe to be around when they get overstimulated. It tends to be, our room, pork ramen, and me. Sometimes being overstimulated means we have to watch a movie with the sound off. It can also mean that they need complete silence to be able to calm down. Sometimes the removal of specific textures is the problem and then the stimulation is gone. You want to know how I deal with it? I treat them like they’re a person, which a lot of people can mess up on, myself included.
People with ASD aren’t broken. My roommate doesn’t have mental deficiencies, in fact they’re very smart. They know more about bugs than I think any other person on the planet does. They’re caring and know how to deal with me when I’m having extreme anxiety. I know what calms them down and what doesn’t and the one thing I’ve seen others do (and I have been guilty of it myself) is treat the person like they’re incompetent. What I see most is talking to the person like they’re a child that can’t take care of themselves. I found myself in a situation where I did that, and it made the situation a lot worse. It made them feel like they were being talked down to and treated like they were having a tantrum, not a serious meltdown. I’ve learned along the way it’s better to treat the person like the adult they are instead of talking in any other way. The feelings the person has when having a breakdown feels like a wave of emotion that cannot be expressed in what would be socially “normal.” Meltdowns don’t always happen because the person is stressed or anxious. My roommate can meltdown from being over excited or too happy. Every person is different, but the main goal is to treat their feelings as real adult feelings.
Another thing to I’ve learned is to ask how the person would like to be identified. There are two main ways people like to be identified. Some people prefer “person-first” and others prefer “identity-first.” Person first means you would say they are a person with autism. Identity-first means they would prefer to be called an autistic person. My roommate prefers identity-first, so they are a person with autism. It doesn’t seem like it would be a super big thing to look at, but think of it as asking for a person’s pronouns. Again, it varies from person to person, but it should be respected like any other part of an identity.
Now, let’s talk about stimming. Stimming is (according to my roommate) a way to get emotions out physically. Everyone stims in their own way though autistic people tend to do it more. People with ASD have a harder time regulating their emotions which causes more stimming. My roommate stims in ways that neurotypical people would not be able to notice. They have vocal or tactile stimming. It is a way to help people with ASD calm down and sometimes they have a harder time controlling it. My roommate stims by saying some things multiple times or even jumping up and down. After living with them, I’m more used to how they stim and I’m more aware of when it can escalate and when it’s just a day to day stim.
These are just a couple things I learned over the past two semesters of living with my roommate. In conclusion, I learned that I did not know much of anything about how ASD worked until I moved in. I still have much I want to learn about ASD, but I know this: I love my roommate and they are one of my best friends. I couldn’t imagine my life without them. There were some times when I didn’t know how to respond to specific mannerisms or behaviors, but now I can say that I’ve had great experiences and I wouldn’t change anything about it!