The Autistic Experience

“You bid farewell in autumn and left me craving for spring. I yearned for your presence, but you never came.”

In a world of lost connections, we often find ourselves, trying to fill the void. Lovers, friends, and God. We replace the gaping hole left in us by our families and the world by fitting in things that are meaningless. Sex, money, and drugs. While it may be true for most people, neurodivergent people are sidelined not just by their families but by the society we grow up in. Just like growing up queer is becoming easier in some parts of the world, I hope being autistic will be equally understood. But perhaps not in my lifetime, and the damage is already done. I am driven to fill an endless void that was left by my family and friends.

I remember my first friend, when I was 5 years old. As an imaginative child, I told him to look at the trees and created an image of a fantasy world. When it felt real, he started crying and ran to my class teacher who slapped me and told me to stand outside the class bent down holding my ears for 2 hours. My strangeness was marked from the very beginning, and I was punished for it. Later it was my hyperactivity that landed me a few hefty belts. I was a quiet child and learned to tolerate everything. While some children act out, I took it in and developed a world of paracosm. I found myself saving people with powers and gifts that made me different, where my uniqueness was praised and not hated. My strangeness not deemed a curse. I found a way to shape the darkness in my life and think of light. I knew I was different and while my body remembered the scars of hate felt, my mind thought of the light of my uniqueness.

I tolerated all the pain and never said a word, my mystique was normalcy which I did not have an ounce of. I pretended to understand them. I acted like them and found myself a fraud. All my life I played the part of someone who I am not and now even when I achieve greatness I feel like an imposter because I did all that being whatever was needed. Every success was owed to the masking exterior who hid my vulnerable soul. It is impossible for people to see my weakness and often I don’t recognize when my diamond shell cracks. It is all carbon inside. The coveted shell hides an interior of suffering, pain, and darkness. People only accept me because all my life I have pretended to be more like them and in my adaptability lost my own identity. While it is hard for most people to look within, it is especially hard when you are autistic because you are punished and forced to hide what lays within.