"All I did was eat cigarette butts and ornaments"

Every time I hear Emer Maguire sing “Ah Ooh… I’m perfect too… I’ve just a different point of view,” in Perfectly Autistic, a tune aimed at dispelling some of the myths around autism, I get a lump in my throat.

Sometimes there’s even a tear or two threatening to pop out because the song perfectly captures many of the emotions I’ve felt since realising I’m autistic. Understanding yourself and others’ attitudes towards autism takes a lot of getting used to. So whether it’s lines like “I’m me, that’s cool” that reflect what many people who are autistic are either saying about ourselves (or are on a journey to start believing it); or lyrics like “but you seem kinda normal, you say quite confused”, it really captures a lot of emotions. The latter, just in case you’re wondering is one of the things which is likely on a Buzzfeed list somewhere of ‘top ten things not to say to someone who is autistic”. The whole song made me feel like it isn’t just me. That I'm me and that's cool.

Maguire, one of the brightest comedy talents in Northern Ireland, grew up with people making comments in a "playful manner" about her being autistic, but it wasn’t until her 20s that she was actually diagnosed.

“People have always, my whole life, made jokes like ‘you're so autistic’. Maybe because they thought I was quirky or a wee bit different or a wee bit unique, but they obviously didn’t really think it, or they wouldn't have made a joke about it,” says Emer, talking to me from her office in Belfast. 

That office, by happenstance, sits above Lancefield Private Clinic, which offers autism diagnostic assessments for children and adults and also happens to be owned by her best friend, Michaela Reavey. 

“Even at uni, they gave me the nickname Autismo because they were like, 'you’re so on the spectrum’, but it was all very kind of jokey and playful.

“I always had quite strong OCD symptoms from childhood, but never spoke to anybody about it, and they worsened at key areas of my life like going to uni. And then when I was in my early 20s, the OCD issues got really, really severe. I think, looking back, I was probably essentially having a breakdown with the OCD. So I eventually had to go and see someone and do something about it.”

Later stage diagnoses

Emer found CBT did little to help with her OCD but after her friend (and autism specialist) Michaela was at a conference one day and heard the phrase 'hyper empathy' for the first time, the pair started to talk about a potential autism diagnosis more seriously. From that she went for autism and OCD assessments in tandem and was diagnosed with both, which came in her 20s. Emer reflects on how people have preconceptions on autism, especially given her role as a comedian involves being on stage making  hundreds of people laugh.

“People think ‘oh you're a comedian, you're on a stage’, how can you do that and be autistic? 

“I try to explain, being on stage in front of hundreds of people, that's a performance. There's no one-on-one social communication. I have a script on stage and even if there is interaction with the audience, I'm in character. Whereas if I was one-on-one and maybe had a doctor's appointment or needed to make a phone call, I'd find that incredibly difficult. So it's trying to get around people's misconceptions of what autism actually looks like.”

Looking in from the outside

We discuss both our childhoods - growing up in working class areas in a time when there was a lack of understanding of autism - and both feeling like we didn’t fit in at school. Me from West Belfast, Maguire from Strabane, both having that same feeling when younger that we were always on the periphery or the outside. Not knowing what to do in situations that seemed intuitive to others and having to work much harder at it. I moved school multiple times during my childhood and teenage years, which, in a way, allowed me to reset, but the outcomes always became the same. When Maguire moved from primary school in Strabane to secondary school in Derry, she said it was a totally different environment but that “it just felt the same”.

“It's nothing to do with background, where you're from, and all that. It's everywhere, you know, it’s… you don't fit in anywhere.

“I think when you look back, though, well, if you get diagnosed as an adult, it's healthy because there's a huge difference growing up thinking you’re like an alien, that you don't think the same as anyone else. If you grow up thinking ‘there’s something wrong with me, I don't fit in anywhere’… there's a difference thinking that and then looking back from a point of view of, oh, I was just autistic. It’s a reason, and it's not that you didn't fit in, but it might just be that there weren't people suitable for you.”

It was only as an adult that she came into her own with friendship. Although she had a handful of friends at school (but not friend friends), at 25 she grew into herself and now has lots of really close friends. All of those friends are older than her and she points to it being “quite an autistic thing” to not click with your peers. Today she now has that understanding she never had at school - what it’s like to have a connection with friends.

“I don't understand how people like my sister still has all her school friends. I don't have any friends from school now, but it's because I hadn't come into my own yet from a social point of view, and hadn't met people suited to me. So I think looking back you can give yourself a bit of slack and just think, well, I was on a different timeline, or I wasn't quite ready, so no wonder I couldn't excel.”

Cigarette butts and ornaments

Looking back on childhood, Emer can now see things that would, today, be quickly flagged, like her relationship with food. In particular the fact that when younger she tried to eat a lot of non-food items.

“For a few years of my life, all I did was eat cigarette butts and ornaments and and all this kind of stuff. I always remember the story that my aunt was babysitting me and she couldn't find me and went up to her room. I was sitting on her bed eating like a full ornament and blood was running down my face, but I didn't even care. I was so against eating food, but I had three siblings who are very adventurous eaters, who always have been. And if you think about it, that’s not normal, a child eating mobile phone aerials and ornaments and cigarette butts like, that's not typical.

“At the same time, my mum was looking at me and thinking but actually she's very bright, and was very quick to develop. So back then, I think it was just people didn't have the same information. Whereas now, if a child came in and started eating the desk, you'd be like ‘we need to get them assessed’. But I think back then if you have four kids and one's a wee bit unusual… and they're eating stuff, but they're very bright, and they're grand, and the teachers say they're brilliant at school, you just think ‘they're maybe just a wee bit quirky’. So I think there's so many things looking back now are so, so obvious, but I think at the time, people didn't really know any better.”

Food, not so glorious food

Even at six months old in her high chair she’d spit out food that had tiny bits in it. And as she started growing up, she had the same desire for dinner every day - chicken and ketchup. But with three siblings who were great eaters, her primary school teacher mum thought it was strange but not that it was an indicator of anything - just that she was a “picky eater”. 

It was a different time when parents didn’t have the same luxury of education and understanding that many do today. With both her parents working full time, four kids under the age of five and Facebook, TikTok and other social media yet to exist, it’s understandable to not have been picked up.

“There was nowhere to be reading memes about autism. Back then if you’d four kids and one of them is eating the wall, you’d just be like, aye work away, knock yourself out. You're not doing any harm. So I think it's very, very different now. At the start, when I first was diagnosed, I actually, and I feel quite bad saying this, but I nearly felt… I felt a bit resentful, or a bit bitter, that I wasn't recognised as a child when looking back, I clearly had many issues. 

“Because you do look back and you think if I had known, maybe it would have saved a lot of heartache. But then you just look back and think, but sure, nobody knew, and that's nobody's fault. That's just a symptom of whatever time you grew up in, do you know? And you can't, you can't really help that.”

'Wise up, you're wasting our time'

Our conversation turns to the thought of feeling like a fraud as you go through the diagnosis process as an adult. I mention that the first dozen articles or so I wrote on this website had me wrecked with fear that somehow I’d be found out as fraudulent by a psychiatrist or you, the reader, before I got my official diagnosis.

“Oh my God… everybody thinks that. People need to know that it’s normal. Because I think every functioning adult who's going through it, will think, oh, geez, any minute now, they're going to be like wise up – you’re wasting our time. You're not autistic, you're just looking for attention, or you're just x, y or z. Everybody thinks that, and I also think it's okay for people to know that maybe some people, when they got their diagnosis, weren't happy about it.”

She points to the fact that when her friend Michaela first brought up autism as a serious option she was angry because it felt to her, at the time, like it was some sort of negative slight that her friend was bringing to Maguire’s attention.

“I felt, oh my God, like someone has realised that I'm actually a bit shit, that I'm actually not as fully functional an adult as I pretend to be. I think people should know that it's okay to be a bit kind of pissed off about it, and that it might take you time to come around to it. I saw a thing on Tiktok where this person got an autism diagnosis, and then they came home and their family had made them a cake. And I was like, that's great… but that’s not everybody's experience. I didn't even want to tell my parents, and then I only told my mum because I was going to a gig that was about autism and I was going to mention it. So I thought, Jesus, I better tell my mother.

“It wasn't a positive response, but again, that was lack of education. So I think it's good for people to know that there's a whole range of different responses, and you don't have to be delighted about it at first, but that eventually you'll realise that it is a positive to know, but it's a hard journey when you run through it.”

Observational autism and comedy

Maguire didn't grow up wanting to be a comedian. Having previously worked as a speech and language therapist and science communicator, comedy came around by accident, but it’s clear she’s found her home. Over the multiple times we’ve met in person and our call for this interview it’s clear she’s naturally funny. The Daily Mirror called Emer “one of the most unique comedy prospects in the country”. Her 2019 debut show at the Edinburgh Fringe sold out. The same fate was met multiple times at the Mac in Belfast and her forthcoming tour, Socially Awkward, looks set to be just as successful (in the time between us talking and this going live, her date at Mandela Hall has sold out). And she points to autism as one of the reasons why she has been such a success in the world of comedy.

“I fell in to comedy by accident, like it would have been the last thing on my list. I think maybe if you're autistic, you've kind of been practicing that your whole life, because you've been watching people. You watch how they react. They react like this when I say this, they don't like it when I say this. You can't quite figure out why, but you know here's how you should act. Here's how you make people laugh, here's how you fit in, here's how you make people like you. So I think you've kind of been in training for that your whole life. You know the versions of yourself that people maybe don't like. So they maybe don't like it when you're blunt, or they maybe don't like it when you’re too concrete.”

She points to it all really coming back to masking. Figuring out what people do like and then picking and choosing what to put out there, just like her on stage comedy.

“If you're observant, I think from that, you kind of learn how then to be sarcastic and how to be funny and what people find witty and how other people read you. I really like clothes, for example. This office is basically all women, they all come in and I'm like, 'I love your shoes’ or ‘I love your dress’. But lots of them will ask if I’m being sarcastic. I never am. But then you kind of learn the parameters of how sarcasm works, and what things people take the wrong way. I think that's maybe why I'm a comedian, because people would say I have a very dry wit. I think that's common in Northern Ireland and even more common in the Northwest, but I think I've spent a lot of time from childhood saying things and then people saying, ‘oh, you're really funny’, and me thinking I wasn't trying to be funny. 

“So I think you pick up how to be funny from all those kind of miscommunications and just watching how people react to you, and obviously masking you're trying to learn how to fit in so you can also learn being funny and what makes people react.”

People have been telling her she’s funny her whole life. That, she believes, comes from one of her biggest strengths in terms of humour - being very observant and quick.

“To me, that's because of autism, you know, like, I'm excessively observant about some things. If you're autistic, you're constantly observing people, observing how they act, what they do, you know, so you can learn to do it as well. And I feel like you're just getting so much information at once that you can learn to use that. When I was doing shows at the start, I was incredibly anxious, so I would never go off my script at all. 

“When I started comedy I had really severe stage fright and wasn't confident at all, and that made me find it really difficult, but also I didn't know I was autistic at the time.

“Whereas now I'm not nervous, so I always go off script. I do loads of stuff with the audience. And people always say, like, you're just so quick. But I really think it's because so much is coming in. And I honestly, I think if you're autistic, your mind just goes a million miles a minute. You might be two or three jokes in, and people are laughing at the jokes behind because everything's going quite fast. But I think that's all a strength, and I think that's definitely autism.”

I'm Perfectly Autistic

We chat about her OCD and circle back to one of the themes of the song Perfectly Autistic, how people, well-intentioned or not, can invalidate your experiences by saying things like 'everyone is on the spectrum'.

“With autism, there's a big incidence of OCD, particularly in women. And for me, when I think about OCD, I honestly think, from my experience, it is the worst thing you can have. Autism is nothing in comparison to me… autism is just who you are whereas OCD is just a really horrible, negative thing. When people say, ‘I'm a wee bit OCD’ I just think, yeah. You have no idea… that's such an awful thing to say, because you don't say, ‘I'm a wee bit diabetic’, or ‘I have a wee touch of cancer’ when you don’t, do you?

“When you're not medicated and treated for OCD, I honestly think it's the hardest thing you can have, like it’s really, really difficult. So when people say ‘I'm a wee bit OCD’, it drives me crazy, and I'm like, to me, it's more dangerous than the likes of diabetes and stuff, because there's such an increased suicide risk especially if you're autistic on top of that.

“The suicide risk is worse for adults with normal to high IQ and it's worse again for women with normal or high IQ. So it's like 13 times the amount of the neurotypical population, which people don't understand.”

Domestic violence

We also discuss domestic violence and later-diagnosed autistic women. It’s still an area that’s under researched but papers like this, for example, show that about 30 per cent of the general population of women have experienced sexual assault. The research shows that the figure for autistic women is close to three times that with nearly 9 out of 10 experiencing it in their lifetime.

“It's important for people to know that women who are later diagnosed as autistic are so much more at risk of domestic violence or of partner violence or whatever. So a lot of these people actually have trauma as well and go through their lives thinking it's their own fault. But actually it's that their brain happens to be different, and people see that and take advantage of it. 

“I think it's just educating people as much as possible about all aspects of it is really important. And it's helpful for yourself too, because you think, if there was ever a situation where you were maybe in a vulnerable position, or if you were, you know, bullied, or whatever, you can kind of think… well, this is why, and then it can help your self worth and all that can make you feel less bad about yourself as well.”

Emer Maguire’s new tour, Socially Awkward, explores life’s highs and lows including talking openly about her diagnoses of autism and OCD. Tickets are on sale here for Island Arts Centre and here for the Courthouse in Bangor. Tickets for Mandela Hall are now sold out.

You can follow Emer on socials at TikTok, Facebook, X, Instagram and watch her TEDx talk 'Science of Love' on YouTube here.