I wish I had known that the exhaustion was not moral. That the way I fell apart after social events was not a character flaw, not introversion gone wrong, not a failure of willpower, but a nervous system paying its bill.
I wish I had known that my reactions to fluorescent lights were real. That the sound from the air conditioning was real. That the seam in the sock was real. That nobody was making it up about themselves, and that I was not making it up either.
I wish I had known that my way of making friends was valid. The friendships built on shared interest, running for years, occasionally, without the weekly catch-up, without the maintenance, still fully alive when we spoke again. I was told these were not real friendships. They were the realest ones I had.
I wish I had known that infodumping was love. That when I told you everything about the thing I cared about, I was giving you access to the inside of me. I stopped doing it because people kept telling me to stop. I wish I had kept doing it.
I wish I had known that my stims were the body regulating itself. That suppressing them did not make me better, it made me tired. That happy flapping was happiness. That rocking was not a symptom. That the fidgeting was focus, not distraction.
Things nobody told me
I wish I had known about masking before I had been doing it for thirty years. I wish I had known there was a word for the specific tiredness it produced. I wish I had known that the cost was going to come due eventually, and it did, on a Tuesday in winter, and the bill was big.
I wish I had known that I was not lazy. That the executive function difficulty was neurological, not disciplinary. That the reason I could work for fourteen hours on the thing I loved and not begin the thing I did not was not a failure of adulthood.
I wish I had known that other Autistic people existed. That finding them would change my life. That the loneliness I had called my personality was mostly a lack of access to my people.
I wish I had known that none of this meant there was anything wrong with me. That the system was the mismatch, not the self. That the feeling of being a faulty version of a normal thing was a story someone told me, and a wrong one.
If you are reading this and you are younger than I was when I learned all of this, please consider yourself told.
