“All the ways I know to ask for help slip through my fingers and I watch them as they fall. Pain makes me ‘authentically’ autistic, it strips back my mask and my connections, and it sits me down; silent and alone.”

Some autistics can ‘pass for normal.’ I can. It’s exhausting, and by the end of a day of still hands and social conversations and watching people’s mouths in an attempt to demonstrate my interest in their words, I am physically sick and sometimes totally incapable of speaking a word. 

I lay quietly beside you when you tell me that you are the wrong sort of special and the wrong sort of different and you want to die.