I wish I could adequately express the severity of the simultaneous swirling thoughts that consume my mind at any one given moment. To be painfully aware at all times is compulsory. I can’t just switch it off. In a full room, everything is of equal urgency and importance — the sound, the temperature, the conversation unfolding in front of me, the itch on the bottom of my foot inside my shoe, the discomfort in my lower back from this shitty chair, my mouth becoming dry and parched, and it all has to be addressed NOW. It frazzles me, freezes me up, and makes me want to both Fight and Flight.
Now imagine that for 30 years, I didn’t know why I was like this. When I’d try bringing it up to people in my life, without being equipped with the proper language, I was blatantly dismissed, mocked, punished, called dramatic and over-sensitive, and highly discouraged from being “too much” for people.
Imagine how broken a lifetime of that would make you feel. How lost, alone, ridiculous you’d always feel. You don’t know how to describe your existence, but you know that you’re not safe to do it around most of the people in your life. You resign to a lifetime of suffering and drowning in silence, using humor and self-deprecation as your makeshift shields through the hellish arrow storm of your peers. You feel out of the loop — everyone seems to know something you don’t. They seem to be tapped into this unspoken rule book that you’ve never seen. Hanging on by a thread, always one minor mishap away from a complete shutdown, people’s sideways looks make you feel like a ticking time bomb. What the hell is wrong with you and why can’t you fix it?
There are an immeasurable amount of people who suffer in silence their entire lives. Without the right language to articulate what they’re experiencing, no one understands them.
Imagine then, how refreshing, rejuvenating, validating, vindicating it feels to be seen for the first time. Seen by someone who’s been suffering in silence just like you. You don’t have to contort your sentences to fit inside a box that could never accommodate you in the first place. You can just… be. Your shoulders relax from the lifetime of weighted shame being lifted with every validating word.
You begin learning language for your innermost experiences — the ones you never so much as uttered out loud. You start the process of forgiving all your past selves that, until now, had fallen short. You start to realize that nothing was ever “broken” about you — you’re just different. Different in ways you didn’t even fathom or entertain until you learned about this reality. You grieve your childhood. You had to grow up too fast, but it wasn’t your fault. You start sprouting. You begin growing magnificent buds and blooms. You become the source of love that you never had — that unconditional, radical compassion that you were never truly afforded.
You begin making retroactive realizations. All the dots start to connect. Previously unknown questions emerge, arm-in-arm with the answer. Your mind is blown multiple times a day… for days. Weeks. Months. Years. With a plot twist that explains your entire existence, were you really expecting a smooth transition?
Because Rage would like a fucking word.
You get pummeled and thrashed by cold, hard truths — some of the people in your life used you on purpose. Knowingly. Willingly. They took advantage of your naivety and trust. They exploited your kindness and abused your forgiveness. You were sabotaged and manipulated into cramming your soul into a lockbox that was far too small. You couldn’t exist for you. They harmed you… because of what makes you different. Suddenly, you start to realize that the people who decree “live laugh love” the loudest, those who would “never make fun of someone for being different”… did just exactly that. To you. What the fuck? And they just got away with it? I need coffee and a machete. I have scores to settle.
Wait, something’s coming back. Oh, cool. It’s Grief again. Did it leave its car keys? Why is it back? It must’ve not gotten the memo — We’re raging now.
Grief has been doing some powerlifting, and knew you’d say that. You get throttled with cyclical grief for several more months. Rage tags in at random to give you a double-pounding of a fucking lifetime.
You come to terms with your new reality and grieve for the futures you’ll never see. The Could’ve and Should’ve Beens. The What Ifs and Why Nots. You weren’t prepared to take a human-sized wrench to the dome, but this is a bell that can never be unrung. You can’t un-know this truth about yourself. It’s a truth that explains your life completely. Every perceived shortcoming, mistake, weakness, and failure has a genuine and legitimate explanation that doesn’t mean you’re a piece of shit at the end of the day. You’re not lazy. You’re not stupid or slow. You’re not dumb or cold. You’re not bossy or bitchy. You’re not dramatic. You’re not too sensitive, too direct, too anything.
You’re autistic.
