‘Sup. Now, how’d you find your way here? No matter. I’m not entirely sure how I found a way, myself. Who am I? Well, now, I guess that’s why I’m here, too. So, here’s some of what I know.
I’m autistic, diagnosed in adulthood. I’m still learning what it means, what it means for me, how it impacts my sense of identity, all of those things. The diagnosis was something of an offshore earthquake. A little destabilizing, but just wait till those waves come rolling in. It wiggles something foundational, and the whole rest of one’s existence wobbles. Unlike such a quake, things have mostly clicked into place, rather than out.
I’m a writer and a reader. Always have been. I lost writing for a while, there, between college and work turning my solace into a prison. I’d divorced myself from the keyboard and, without knowing it, cut myself off from the only way I am able to comfortably and confidently communicate. It, uh, didn’t end well. (Or perhaps it was my saving grace, because I finally flailed around hard enough that I knocked loose a diagnosis.)
Who am I? I was told a story that encapsulates it: I was around 3 and strapped into a stroller at a Renaissance Fair. I’m wheeled past a stall of books and my parent hears this little voice pipe out from the stroller: “Cheeeeeese-making. Can I see?” Confounded that their 3 year-old just sight-read a complex title from a passing book (and they walk fast), my parent asked what on earth could I want with a book about how to home-make cheese, of all things. I responded, big eyes earnest, “I just want to know.”
That’s who I am, who I’ve always been. I just want to know.