Autistic

I will go to her too-white office, and she will smile from behind her desk of all-knowing. Then she will tell me I am Autistic. (Or something like it.)

I will say to her, I understand, and yes: I do believe I must be.

I will say I feel the world.

I will say the small child within me still remembers the nightly news; the drownings in the Yarra, the little bruised boy’s funeral song, the kidnappers and the murderers. Most people watched these things. I felt them. Just like I felt eggs. (Eggs have a nice feeling about them, although I never did much like the taste.)

Being Autistic would explain it all. And though hyper empathy is not typically seen as an autistic trait, it can be in women, and it certainly is in me.

There has always been an underlying discomfort to my existence.

A difference in what my brain seems to be telling me and what the brains of others seem to be telling them.

My Mum said I was unique and perfect, just the way I was. And perhaps I was. Perhaps I am. But my life was hard.

My life is hard because I live in a world not made for a sea as deep as me.

I have tried to be okay my whole-life-long.

I have tried alcohol and isolation to hide from the big wide world. I have tried avoiding all problems, by telling myself there are none. I’ve tried losing myself in chocolate, in books, in dreams, and in men who held my heart with eyes and whispers that soothed me.

But my soul has at last said, hush darling.

Let the others help you to understand their world. Only then will you fully understand your own.

So I will try to open, and I will try to trust.

And the rose shall bloom a petal and a day.