Why I Never Fit In

How finding out I’m autistic changed the story I’d been telling about myself.

I am angry today. Angry at the misunderstandings, the misinterpretations, the endless ways I have been misplaced in the world.

Mostly, I am angry at the world’s obsession with beauty, status, and performance, with what’s “good” and “acceptable,” with how much of this and how little of that, all the while we slowly suffocate under the pressure to conform, to produce, to smile politely as we burn out.

As I begin to fully accept that I have been on the autistic spectrum my entire life, without anyone having a damn clue, I am furious at how senseless my life has felt, and how much sense it could have made with a single diagnosis.

Parents, teachers, friends, colleagues, professors, clerks, doctors, all the strange “neurotypical” humans, were completely incomprehensible to me. I spent years trying to decode how they worked, as if there was a hidden instruction manual I had misplaced. There wasn’t. There never was. I will never fully understand them and that is not because I am doing something wrong.

Over time, I built a map, my own map, a painstakingly hand-drawn translation of a world that never felt native to me. It helped me survive and helped me feel a little less alone in the crushing silence of my childhood.

Realizing I am different is bittersweet. I am relieved that my experiences make sense. I grieve that no one saw it. If someone, anyone, had recognized this earlier, perhaps life would have been less frightening. Perhaps I wouldn’t have wasted so much time asking what was wrong with me. Perhaps I could have honoured my gifts instead of trying to force them into shapes that never fit.

I am angry because I spent so many years thinking I was broken, crazy, too traumatized to function. I am traumatized, yes, but that’s not why I struggle. I struggle because I function differently. And if I had known that, perhaps I could have lived instead of masked and rested instead of burning out.

I am not interested in the world’s obsessions. That doesn’t make me a weirdo. It makes me me. I value different things in this world. I value love above all things, and grace. I value cuddles, chocolate cake, a really nice cup of coffee, waking up beside my love (no matter whether he is feeling good or not), watching our apartment growing into a jungle, and other people’s dogs running up to me as if I am the best thing EVER!

I am a simple creature that does not know the first thing about how this human world works. I am completely alienated by social systems and we are currently going through a legal process that feels like literal hell on earth. We will make it through of course, but overwhelm is a real thing. It is extreme and creates a feeling that the only way out is death.

We don’t choose death, instead we look into each other’s eyes and find home again. There is someone who cares, there is someone who loves me, I also love them, and even though everything is uncertain we know we are not alone.

Autistic overwhelm will not go away, and I cannot force myself to be “normal” but now that I know this, I am grateful. From here, perhaps my life can finally unfold the way it was meant to, on my own terms, in my own rhythm, in a way that feels like freedom, with the good, bad, ugly, and beautiful.

This is where my real life will begin, I’ll keep you posted.

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Elsewhere in The Province of the Mind:

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