Keedie Quotes

“I wish people could understand that masking is so much more than biting your tongue and forcing yourself to be as average as possible. It's about supressing basic physiological needs. It's about hiding the parts of yourself that come naturally, so they don't seem unnatural to others. It's physical. It's insidious.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“People who are not autistic tell themselves stories. They fill in the gaps of the people they meet, often with information that isn't correct. It's why they like horror so much. It's why they get so easily scared. They see a ghost and the ghost doesn't need to do a thing. They will complete the story, they will scare themselves.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“Being autistic is wonderful. (…) You can hear things they can’t, you can see more details in things, you can sense atoms of this planet and this world that they will never be able to find. It’s brain with extra stardust.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“I know what I should say. It’s a developmental disability which makes the worlds difficult to process sometimes. It’s sensory overload. It’s being on a different emotional plane to your non-autistic peers, which means you’re either three steps ahead or three steps behind but rarely on the same beat. It means having to predict people, their thoughts and reactions. It means rehearsing scripts in your head to get by more easily. It means finding sanity in routine, knowing it could all fall apart when that is altered or changed. It means your motor skills give you trouble. It means your handwriting can be poor. It means emotional outburst and meltdowns when it becomes one too many drops of water on your head.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“I always have these doubts in my head, they’re inevitable when you’re told you have a neurodevelopmental disability. I was informed my grasp of the world was an outnumbered view. I was told to acclimate, to learn all about other people and how they think and feel and love and hate and live. It makes me a stranger to them but, most of all, to myself.
I took the world at its word. When it said be kind, I was. Kindness is not a tight smile and waiting for the other person to leave the room before you say something horrible or degrading about them. Kindness must be there when the lights are off. It must be there when people are not looking.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“She's like the sunflower. She'll find the sun no matter how much darkness other people try to put her in.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“The shrieking and cackling of other students makes me flinch and dart around them, like a fish on the reef trying to avoid barracudas. Their volume and their nearness is completely undeliberate, they don't know what it's doing to me, but it feels cruel. It feels like they're doing it on purpose.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“I may be forced to mask, but they choose to wear numerous faces.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“Sometimes at night, I think about all of us. Every autistic person, the millions who came before the name was found in the twentieth century. I think of cavemen and women who were fascinated by a spark instead of gossip. I think of the early humans who chose order over chaos. I think of the ones who found that sitting in the shade with their family was enough. That life perhaps did not need to be more complicated. I think of the poets an artist and musicians, whose genius was perhaps off-putting to classmates but so remarkable on a page, canvas or stage. I think of the millions of people who just were. Who did not need lofty accomplishments to justify their existence. Who were there because they were always meant to be, made that way because they were always meant to exist exactly as they were. The mapmakers, the codebreakers and the ones who kept compasses in their heads. I think of the soldiers who felt the blast more powerfully than others but who knew they could push ahead because they’ve known war and getting back up again since they were born – it was only a little more noise and chaos in a world full of noise and chaos. I think of the mathematicians, the troubled souls, the people who just got on with it because the world would rather punish your difference than accommodate it. I think of the actors who put on the greatest performances of their lives every time they begrudgingly wear the mask. I feel the breath of a million past lives in my lungs and I know in that moment, she will never learn fear or shame from me.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“When you’re autistic, statistically you will be surrounded by non-autistic people. They, whether they realize it or not, have signed an invisible contract with one another. It is never spoken about, or even known, but it is there.
As an autistic, I often break the rules of that contract without meaning to. I miss signals. I take them at their word. And the more you break the contract, the harsh of the punishments become; exclusion turns to banishment, apathy turns to cruelty. They don’t understand what they’re doing; it’s an ancient contract that has developed over thousands of years. But it is there. And I’m always in violation of it.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“You have to be the cartographer of your own heart. Make it into a map.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“When bad things happen to good people, and they react, it doesn't change who they are. We all fall down. But you never stay down.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“Some people are just meant to be these loud, happy sounds. They wake other people up. And some will cover their ears. Others will find the sound inside themselvese because they've heard yours.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“Being autistic in a world of neurotypicals is hard. Being an autistic teenager is even harder.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“I turn away and find a corner to stand in. I sway to music in my head. I can do that. I can press play in my brain and an album plays. I can also watch films in my mind. I only need to see a film once or twice before its memorized, frame by frame. It makes long car jour easier.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“Some forms of bullying feel more like smoke than fire. They leave you gasping for air instead of burned. The damage is internal and harder to prove.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“I can't stand people who say they're good when they're not.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“Want to know the worst thing about being autistic? It's not the autism."
I throw the napkin down and push back my chair.
"It's people like you.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“Schools who say they're zero tolerance about bullies turning around to give said bullies badges that make them arbiters of good behaviour, that's hard. It's hypocritical. It scrambles my brain when I try to understand it.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“Sometimes masking can feel like you're dragging a chain across the ground. Being with people who are like me feels like someone unlocking the restraints.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“I want the sound of my yell to shake every leaf and every twig of this forest, and every brick of the villager that resides next to it. I want the Water of Leith to vibrate with the sound of it. I want my voice to travel deep down under the earth, to the roots of the trees, where it will make them change shape, growing up different and shooting into the air with a gasp. I want the landscape to move. I want the wind to rush through every front door, blowing away the old attitudes and the stares and the whispers and the snide remarks.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“True silence feels impossible to find when the manmade parts of the world have been designed by people whose senses are duller.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“Being a friend is more than just sharing a sense of humour or liking the same things. It means showing up and saving your friend, especially when they don't feel that they can do it for themselves.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“By the time people who are not autistic are telling me to ‘calm down’, it’s already too late. A meltdown or shutdown or some kind of implosion is imminent.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“I always have these doubts in my head, they’re inevitable when you’re told you have a neurodevelopmental disability. I was informed my my grasp of the world was an outnumbered view. I was told to acclimate, to learn all about other people and how they think and feel and love and hate and live. It makes me a stranger to them but, most of all, to myself.
I took the world at its word. When it said be kind, I was. Kindness is not a tight smile and waiting for the other person to leave the room before you say something horrible or degrading about them. Kindness must be there when the lights are off. It must be there when people are not looking.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“The idea of a bully being jittery is so backwards to me.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“Distraction is the enemy of anxiety. A meltdown is the body exploding after continuous attempts to override and suppress. It creates a naturally avoidant state. The world will insist that you keep moving. So I will insist on stillness.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“Distraction and no obligation. It's what I crave during an autistic shutdown. I want to be taken away from the moment when everything slipped out of my reach. When their opinions of me changed forever, when they finally see behind the curtain and the mask and you realize that all of the sacrifices you made to stay safe have just been washed away.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“I'm not really interested in being someone's practice dummy.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“It's always a bully playing the victim and their target being forced back into a situation that makes them feel trapped. In danger. Embarrassed and ashamed for even speaking out in the first place.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie