Rosie King may be a good decade younger than me, but she's my hero.

To say that Rosie King's laid back, yet powerful and emotional speech on Ted.com struck a chord with me would be the understatement of the year. I knew that for this particular blog post I would like to address an issue I’ve both struggled with and embraced, something that I do not want to be defined by, but something that has always been a huge part of me and lead me on the path I am on today, even why I enrolled at Full Sail University. Yes, I have autism. A mild degree of it that, I guess, qualifies as Asperger Syndrome, which has effectively altered my social skills and shaped a detailed internal world for me consisting mostly of films and television shows. It’s a world I want to integrate with my “real” surroundings, so a career in the film industry would help me merge the two worlds together.

Rosie King really reminds me of myself, however I was not as brave as she was at sixteen. I would never have openly admitted my autism in public, though I’m pretty sure most people suspected it anyway, even though they were never exactly sympathetic to my predicament. I am also somewhat envious of Rosie’s supportive family, because my parents are staunch believers that autism “doesn’t exist” and that I am just “looking for attention.” Since I don’t want to spoil my relationship with my parents, this is a topic I no longer discuss with them.

I liked that Rosie explained that autism does not fit into one particular stereo-type and not all of us behave like Dustin Hoffman in RainMan. Also, not all of us are math geniuses, I far one, abhor the subject and barely passed it. However, just like Rosie, my autism expresses itself with vivid daydreaming to escape mundane reality and wild creativity and that can barely find an outlet. Since I’m not making any films at the moment, I try to do it through writing, but it’s not enough, so my day-to-day life and schoolwork start suffering.