Throughout my life, I have accomplished many things. Oftentimes, I have had a hard time seeing and being proud of the accomplishments that I have achieved. I just did what I did because I either wanted to or needed to. I am never one to receive great fanfare for what I can do, even if it may be challenging for me. I know I need to celebrate more, but it is not always easy to do.

When you see autism from the spectrum that it is, you see a lot of what cannot be done. Ironically, I have done many things that many people who have known me for decades had doubts about me being able to accomplish. Many times, achieving something comes secondary to the task at hand because it seems minor to celebrate something because I cannot realize that even though I accomplish something, it can be hard to realize the obstacles in the way of getting there.

When there have been obstacles in my path of completing something, I have always worked at finding ways to get over those obstacles or barriers to getting things done. That is just how I was raised with two parents who made sure that unless it was too challenging for me and there was no potential for achieving something, then I did what I had to do, even if it was challenging in the process. It was just something that we did as family.

Even though I have accomplished many things in my life, it can be hard to see that not everyone who has similar challenges as mine may never have the potential to accomplish the things that I have. I often see them as things that I take for granted without realizing the path and the barriers that I had to get through to get where I needed to be. It may seem easy to be, but in fact to those who thought even getting into adulthood was impossible, it brightens their day to know that I have accomplished so much when there was great doubt of what I have accomplished being possible.

I am grateful for the things that I have been able to accomplish and the opportunities that have been handed to me. Even today, as we are nearing the four-year anniversary of my current apartment, something that I feel was a rare opportunity would have been possible if I had gone out and pounded the pavement on my own when supports had been failing me and I was in a desperate situation. I honestly doubt I would be in this situation if I were not able to get the apartment and be out of the cusp of my parents’ home as it was a challenging and toxic environment for me and those around me.

To that, I realized that I needed to be more grateful of where I am today and to be grateful of those who believed in me when I had my own doubts that I could even do what others who believed in me knew I could do. If it were not for them, I would not have the quality of life that I have known to expect to have today. One thing though has been that I have been determined even though many times that I wanted to give up on things, but now I know I must stay strong and continue to fight the fight for those that I know have fought for me to be where I am today.