If you could see me now, you might not quite believe that it’s an older (and slightly wiser) version of yourself. As difficult as it is to imagine you’ll ever feel comfortable and confident when you’re out in the world, I can tell you without doubt that it’s possible.
That’s not to say it’s always easy. I still find it hard to understand how to speak to people, how to start a conversation, how to organise the chaos of thoughts into words. But now I know why – we’re autistic.
Your autism was never explained, because nobody realised it was part of you. But for now, you know you just don’t think or behave in the same cosy boxes as others. You wonder how anyone becomes part of a group of people who find it so easy to talk and share jokes with each other. You see them from the outside every day, but friendship never looks like that for you.
I feel so much hurt for how hard your school years have been because of the constant effort it takes to try and hide your neurodivergence. You wake up afraid, walk or take the bus afraid, sit down afraid in a room full of people whose thoughts and motivations you can’t decode. You always fight the fear, even though it’s unavoidable. You think if you could just break through it, maybe you’d find a way to be ‘normal’. But for now, you try your best to follow the steps of other people’s social lives, even when most of your attempts to be witty, fun or honest are met with cold stares or mocking laughter.
Your fear doesn’t mean you’re broken. It’s a social symptom, born of a deep awareness that others will catch on to this alien feeling you can’t name yet. Some of them fear it too, though nowhere near as much as you. When you burst out in an unexpected torrent of emotion, or give an unconventional answer, they struggle to rationalise how you behave. They worry the same way you do about making sense of what you are. And so they intimidate and isolate, to keep it at a distance.
They don’t realise there’s nothing that needs to be explained away, or made to fit in. You don’t have to stop being weird or frightened to be yourself. Your difficulty masking social awkwardness and anxiety means you are being yourself most of the time. But because it’s only a precious few people who accept you as you are, it feels like you’re the one who needs to change.
In a society that ignores the subtle wonders of our minds in fearing and pitying autistic folks, your bullies have fallen through the cracks of this miseducation too. You even care for some of the people who stand by and watch you being humiliated. If only you could talk to the people who might have been your friends, without worrying you’ll end up an embarrassment to them.
But you’re not an embarrassment, or a social failure. You keep all the intelligent, loving things you long to say like precious treasures locked up in your head. You’ve lost the key though, so you have to improvise. Sometimes the words come free with a lockpick. Other times it breaks, or gets dropped into the dizzying depths of your thought process. Sometimes you’re stuck fumbling with the lock so long that the moment to speak has passed you by.
Still, keep pushing yourself to speak from your heart and give the answers that surprise your teachers with their wisdom. Stick to the class projects you finish long after everyone else, losing track of time in your focus on every detail of the task. Listen in the lessons you love and see the stories beneath them gently play out inside your mind.
That’s dyspraxia slowing you down in every PE lesson, or the chase games where somehow you’re always ‘it’. Let them teach you the value of consistent effort over winning. As for your floating thoughts and tendency to daydream, your brain has a slower processing speed. Know that this boosts your gift for making others feel heard. When someone has your attention, they have it completely.
It isn’t your duty to apologise for who you are. But it is your responsibility, as it is anyone’s, to be kind. Try not to fall prey to the vicious cycle of cruelty to others. People finally laughed with you when you spat a snide remark of your own, but that validation was never worth chasing. You can find the strength to break that cycle. In the meantime, forgive how your mind shuts down when you so much as think about reporting the bullies – especially when those bullies are teachers. I know your vulnerability is scary enough without admitting it to others.
Being autistic and undiagnosed is sometimes compared to playing life on the hardest setting with no support. It might have been easier if you knew what support to ask for, or that you deserved it. Nobody ever told you that.
But now I’m here to tell you that you do deserve it. You deserve to be given the time you need to speak. When you speak, you deserve to be heard. And when dealing with people is so overwhelming the words won’t come, you deserve to be held and loved in quiet acceptance.
You’ll find the people who guard that space for you. In time, you yourself will become one of those people. When it gets too much, you already know that reading stories, and writing your own, gives comfort like nothing else can. There’s a long struggle ahead through anxiety and depression. But you’ll never once find yourself alone, and you’ll come out on the other side with more fire for life than you’ve ever thought possible.
I know who you are. I’m here to hold you and love you in all the ways you’re missing. It’s going to take a while for you to meet me. But I will always be here, waiting for you.
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