I am a Jedi

I used to “joke” that I had PTSD from working at a call center in high school. I used to do this to excuse my significant lack of skill at using phones. I don’t joke about it anymore. Firstly, because making a joke out of a serious condition is rude. Secondly, because it might actually be true.

Phones are horrible. I never understood why. It was just this vacuum of communication. I would speak and the recipient would not understand. My conversation partner would speak and I would maybe hear the first and last word. Huge gaping maws of silence would suck me in and seek to crush me. Stammering games of chicken played in stutters over who was supposed to speak next.

Having this difficulty with the primary tool for my job meant that in addition to the terror of having to constantly assess my adequacy relative to the pervasive metrics of performance endemic to commissions based phone sales, I had to remain hypervigillant that I would hear every word, not just the first and last, that I would use the right words, not just whatever my brain managed to find in the wreckage, that I would need to modulate my voice to be expressive and emotive and “real”…. I was not good at this job. And the “pep-talks” did not make it better.

I have understood for a little while now that part of this difficulty is because my auditory processing is slow. I need to see your face, your mouth specifically, in order to be able to simultaneously hear you and understand you in anything simulating real time.

So my ears are autistic. Knowing this has given me power. Agency over how I receive communication. Control over how I engage with others.

But I have only recently come to understand about my hands. My autistic hands.

I have had the great fortune to never be told that my hands were too loud. I’ve been told I’m very “animated” “expressive” “passionate” … I’ve been praised by family for being a “good Italian” for “talking with my hands”. It is quite amazing to evaluate the ways in which autistic behavior can be celebrated when it isn’t pathologized.

My hands, my hypermobile, hyperlocomotive hands facilitate my speech in ways I never appreciated before. I find that in person, I make sense to others. Over the phone I do not. It’s as if I am a Jedi. And the sweeping broad gestures of my fingers, hands, and arms, cast a spell over my audience, and they can truly hear me.

Perhaps it isn’t that my hands make me more comprehensible to others, but that my hands help me pull language out of myself. When I am free to twist my fingers, to flex and weave and tap and sweep – when I flap – I can find my authentic voice, and be heard.