Whether I’ve known it or not, my autism has shaped the geology of my existence for nearly as long as I’ve been alive. Starting Applied Behavior Analysis (or ABA)  at the age of three, I was a quiet child, having begun talking the year I was diagnosed, and rarely doing so in my early years of education. Despite this, I was beyond my years, as during a test screening in kindergarten, I demonstrated the vocabulary of a second grader, mentioning “garland” during a discussion of the upcoming holidays.

Although I struggled with social skills over the next several years, I didn’t know about my diagnosis until my mother told me about it at the age of 11. Before that, I’d known only of my attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis.  Although I have low support needs, I still demonstrate some core symptoms of autism, such as having special interests and an impaired ability to maintain relationships.

The main reason for this latter point lies in my deepest fear: judgment. As someone who holds their passions close to their heart, I feel somewhat ashamed whenever someone dislikes something that I enjoy, even if I know that’s not their intention. This makes it hard for me to open up to people, making it difficult to form friendships in turn. Sometimes, in my insecure moments, I feel as though I’ve built my emotional walls so high I might never see over them.

Once I entered high school, I decided to remedy this problem with a public persona. That way, my classmates could know a carefully curated version of myself without ever learning the details of my inner life. I became snarky and coy, and came to be known as something of a class clown.

Freshmen P.E. was a class where I often employed this persona. Sometimes I could get in trouble for going too far, but nothing compared to what was said to me one morning by a classmate of mine.

It was the spring of 2022, and we’d gone outside for class. Hanging around before our warm-up began, the tree belt behind the school radiated in the morning light, dewdrops on the grass glittering like diamonds in the sun. It was at this point that the boy turned to me and made a very derogatory comment.

I was reeling, profoundly disturbed by the implications of what he’d just said to me. Weeks later, while at a water park with my family, I broke down in tears, leading a woman with a Boston accent to think I was lost as I floated along the lazy river. 

In the following months, I reminded him of what he’d done at every turn, always with a sunny demeanor to mask my rage. The response was usually shocked laughter, though I did it out of a hope of finding camaraderie in my anger. Funny how I got that reaction the one time I wasn’t joking.

A year and a half after the incident, after making what one of my teachers perceived to be an insensitive joke, I took it upon myself to send him a trauma dump email about the incident. Later, I opened up about the motivations behind my behavior in his class, and the emotional validation I’d been seeking with my trauma dumps. I discussed it with the school guidance counselor, and while it was too late to do anything, I had finally found the validation I was looking for.

During that meeting with the guidance counselor, he suggested that when I grew up, I could start a blog about my experiences on the spectrum, and make others like me feel seen, since he knew I wanted to be a writer. 

After a good deal of time ruminating on it, I thought it was a great idea.