How I Realized I’m Actually Autistic and Why I’m Grateful
It was a long journey to get here but I’ve finally landed
In late 2019, my ex-husband and I started marriage counseling. During one of our last sessions, our therapist asked if she could speak with me alone. I suspected she was going to tell me to leave him, so when the door shut behind my ex-husband and the first thing she asked was ‘do you think you might be autistic?’ — I was shocked (she also said they’re not supposed to outright tell us to end a marriage).
Then the pandemic arrived, which brought about a comfortable isolation that made Tikok seem like a reasonable distraction from my reality. And at the time, I possessed the foresight in thinking I could use it to drum up new real estate leads for my business. Little did I know that the app was going to ensnare me and that I was only going to make one real estate video the entire time.
As it turns out, the TikTok algorithm is a finely engineered digital mirror, perfectly tailored to show you what you’re interested in. It’s almost as if our phones have become an extension of us, listening to our conversations and mining our data to curate a feed that feels as if it knows us better than we know ourselves.
Essentially, the TikTok algorithm is instant dopamine and confirmation bias in a convenient hand-held device.
In my case, my specific algorithm is a blend of cute animals, music production and songwriting, anti-capitalism, cooking videos… and autism in women. When I saw my first video about autism, I was floored. Why and how the hell is this showing up on my feed? How does it know? I hadn’t taken any of the tests yet, and I had only ever had one conversation about it ever. I knew I was socially awkward, but there was no way I can be so awkward that even my phone picks up on it.
I battled with denial for a time, denying my instincts and ignoring my inner wisdom. I used to quickly scroll past videos of women who would start with ‘you know you’re autistic when’, and I wrestled with that stubborn voice that insisted on watching videos about neurodivergence. Despite my refusal to watch videos about autism, they would continue to pop up on my ‘for you page’, as if I was being taunted. I even confided this to my best friend of twenty years and imagine my shock when she said to me, “Maria, I always knew you were autistic, and I never get any videos about autism on my feed”.
Still, I participated in a fun game of personal gaslighting and ableism until about a year later when I met my current partner.
On our first date, we stopped at a food truck that happened to be both of our favorite. Rather than eating our dinner at the truck with everyone else, we wanted to retreat to somewhere quiet. He asked if I wanted to eat our meal at his house and in a momentary lapse of judgment (we’re never supposed to go to a man’s home on the first date, right?) I said, “Sure!”.
We sat and happily ate our noodles, four feet of safety between us, and conversed non-stop about everything under the sun. About mid-way through our date, it was like I couldn’t sequester my impulsive curiosity for much longer. I blurted out “Are you autistic?”.
Without skipping a beat he answered “Yes”.
And that was it for us. It was as if the floodgates opened, and out we poured our deepest secrets and the messiest pieces of our lives as if confession was all it took for our liberation. A cathartic deluge for the both of us where we were free to be our weirdest, most unrestrained selves.
Throughout the course of our relationship, we’ve uncovered the multifaceted journey of understanding autism together, overcoming our own preconceived notions while discovering its subtle complexities. We’ve explored our individual traumas to recognize how they intersect with our comorbidities and our family backgrounds, and we’ve learned how embracing each other’s unique version of autism can enrich our relationship with ourselves and with the world around us. It’s been pretty great.
And it’s taken me several years to fully accept it, but here it is.
I’m autistic as fuck.
I’m autistic in the way that when you meet me, you might walk away thinking that something about me seems slightly off-kilter but because I’m conventionally attractive, you’re okay with it. I’m autistic in that I don’t fit the outdated lens of autism, which is often associated with cisgender white men — but you don’t see how at home I’m constantly shaking my leg, digging at my ear in a frenzy, tearing into my palm with my nails, how I rest with pressure on my hands, and how I need to be squeezed like a tube of toothpaste in order to sleep. I’m autistic in that on the surface I may seem like I have everything together, but my insides are relentlessly boiling from a maelstrom of stimuli that most people aren’t even aware of.
I’m autistic in that, in my naivety I’ve been taken advantage of more times than once, never mustering the courage to speak up against the abuse that both my body and mind have suffered over time. I’m autistic in that I’m gullible, and at times I can take things literally (even though I find my own jokes wickedly hilarious). And somehow I’ve always found myself on the receiving end of covert bullying because I’m ‘weird’. I’m autistic in that, because of my Mad Max childhood, I learned to mask well enough to develop a sample of friends from different groups, but I was never concretely embedded into a clique, and I’ve always felt like an outsider looking in. I’m autistic in that many times throughout my confusing high school experience, I self-isolated and found ways to eat lunch alone in a library, or sometimes even in a bathroom stall. I’m autistic in that I used to pretend to be sick so I could take a breather in the nurse’s room or skip a day of school just to escape the combination of excessive stimuli and my overwhelming emotions. I’m autistic in that my brain operates like Linux installed on a Mac, and it creates internal short circuits that cause me to end up with a debilitating migraine that knocks me out for days.
I’m autistic in that I feel so deeply, and I’m hyper-sensitive to not only my own feelings but the feelings of others around me. I’m autistic in that sometimes I don’t even know if I’m feeling my own emotions or if I’m absorbing someone else’s as if I accidentally woke up in their body. I feel so strongly about social justice issues and helping the “underdog” that I fondly remember how as a child I could never keep quiet about how unfair the world was, much to my parent's annoyance of me. I’m autistic in that my body feels like a walking antenna, where I can pick up on barometric changes in the atmosphere and even the slightest tension between people. I’m autistic in that my emotions feel like a bottomless abyss, and phrases like “love youuuu” hold such a deep well of weight to me that saying it passively between friends is something I’ve never understood. I’m autistic in that I didn’t start speaking until I was five years old. My parents have a home video of my mom at the hospital, while holding onto her newborn baby, she’s yelling at me “Maria! You need to watch more cartoons and learn how to speak!” and I wasn’t sure if she meant to speak English or not.
I’m autistic in that my mind is in a constant state of chatter about the meaning of life, our human existence, and my place in the world. I’m autistic in that I don’t just philosophize some of the time, I philosophize about everything and anything all the time. I’m autistic in that I don’t have an off switch to turn the noise off. I can be conversing with someone about the metaphorical meanings of an elevated horror film we just watched, while in the background of my mind I’m simultaneously dissecting your tone and your body language, thinking about how loud the airplane is flying over our heads, feeling every annoying tickle of my hair as a breeze passes through, whether or not I’m making too much eye contact or too little of it, whether or not I’m blinking at a normal pace but also what even is normal and who were the first group of people that decided what normal social behavior would be and why was it decided that way, why are my pants and my bra suffocating me, why we wear the clothes that we wear to conform to societal constructs of labels that fit the perception of how we want others to perceive us, how we’ve strayed so far from the eastern philosophical roots of community and collectivism, how we’ve adopted puritanical constructs to form our patriarchal and capitalist society, how and why the Gregorian calendar set our new year in the middle of winter when our bodies biologically need to hibernate, how I swear I can talk to my dog at times and…
Someone may read this and think to themselves “Oh, she just has a social anxiety disorder”. But they don’t see my strengths and how quickly I can learn and pick up on anything, especially if it’s a hands-on learning environment. They don’t see how I can easily remember phone numbers or addresses, or how great I am at organizing and collecting my special interest items (I have a shell collection that is just as precious to me as my own kids). They don’t see how I have the most vivid hyperphantasia imagination, and the ability to create beautiful fantasy realms in my mind like I’m watching an entire movie come to life before me. They don’t see my optimistic, loving heart and how I’ve never had a bone of ill intention in my body. They don’t see how I’m drawn to language; how words are a blanket of comfort that offers solace and peace during a cold winter day, as soft snowflakes mute the world around me. They don’t see how the rhythm of poetry feels like home, how its pull is irresistible, and how it warms me on even my coldest days. And because of all the current misinformation surrounding autism, they don’t see how these traits tend to be common among autistic women.
I’m autistic in that I feel music on every vibrational level of my being. I can hear every layer of sound and how each note is like a kaleidoscope of fireworks, bursting into vibrant colors on the backs of my eyelids. I’m autistic in that music is my passport to an unencumbered world, one where I actually belong in. I’m autistic in how a certain rhythmic blend of chords can take me soaring above the clouds and into an unknown realm of boundless possibility, one where I can feel different sensations through different parts of my body, and how every vibration shakes through my soul. I’m autistic in that music and art are so profoundly moving to me, that specific melodies send an invisible wave to wrap around every inch of my body, and that music is the healing embrace that I desperately sought as a child.
I’m autistic in that I live in a 30-something-year-old woman’s body, but I still feel like a teenager — fresh to the world of possibility where my far-off dreams don’t feel as delusional as they seem to others. I’m autistic in that my soul and my youth-like heart defy the concept of time’s linearity.
I’m autistic in that I could easily keep going on and on with this because writing is an infinitely easier way of expressing myself than trying to articulate in person what it’s like to be autistic.
But for the sake of brevity, I’ll end with acknowledging how navigating the world for this long — feeling lost in both the physical and emotional senses — has ended up being a gift I didn’t know I needed.
As the saying goes “to know thyself, is to heal thyself”.
Learning to truly embrace my diagnosis is an intimacy I’ve surprisingly come to appreciate.
In 2022, I cut the cord and fully embraced my inward state. I learned how to set boundaries and verbalize my needs, and I cut ties with friends and family who either judged me or wouldn’t accept my newfound reverence.
I won’t sugarcoat it, it hasn’t been easy. Autism is not a cute and quirky thing to be lightly thrown into a conversation, ‘teehee, it’s just my autism’, as many do with other cognitive differences like ADHD and OCD. And there are many dark parts of my past that have made this acceptance a hard pill to swallow.
I’ve had to wholly acknowledge that my mind is full of turbulence, but it’s through these challenges that have allowed the insight to recognize and cherish who I am at my core. The more I step away from the familiar comforts of my past and embrace this part of me, the more I start to understand that I’m simply showing up for my own homecoming.
I’m finally returning to who I’ve always been.
