7-minute read
(masking, autistic burnout, special interests, autistic joy, self-discovery, authenticity, chronic illness)
For much of my life, I wasn't quite sure how to find my place among other people or fully participate in the world around me.
Growing up, my experience of the world felt strangely contradictory. I could feel profoundly unworthy and different, as though I were watching life from the outside rather than participating in it. And yet, at other times, I could experience such an intense connection to the world around me that I felt almost electrically alive.
I remember once asking someone for change for a vending machine and offering them a bill, only to ask for less change than I was actually entitled to. Even as a child, I felt that asking someone to help me was an inconvenience for which I needed to compensate them. Their time seemed more valuable than mine, and I felt guilty about taking up any of it.
There was also a persistent sense that I had somehow been dropped off on the wrong planet at birth. I often imagined wanting to return to the mothership, although I had no idea where it was or how I might find it.
And yet, there was another version of my childhood that feels almost impossible to reconcile with that one.
When nobody needed anything from me, when I could disappear outside into nature and become completely absorbed in my own inner world, I experienced something that felt almost sacred. The world seemed to open itself to me. I would become immersed in the colours, sounds, textures and rhythms of everything around me until the boundaries between myself and the natural world seemed to dissolve.
There was a kind of existential bliss in those moment, an almost electric feeling of being profoundly alive and connected to something I could feel but never quite name.
That feeling gradually disappeared around the age of ten, as the demands of the world grew and so did my efforts to adapt to them. I learned to suppress the parts of myself that felt different, accommodate expectations and push through discomfort.
The profound periods of burnout and increasingly severe autoimmune flare-ups became recurring reminders that I could not continue living indefinitely in opposition to my own needs.
So I began withdrawing from the world. I needed fewer demands, less sensory input and more time alone. But that created a painful contradiction: I needed connection with other people, while connection itself could leave me completely exhausted.
Eventually, though, I ran out of ways to do it alone.
Desperation has a strange way of opening doors we might never approach voluntarily, and mine led me into places I had never imagined going. I began working with a doctor who seemed to genuinely care, my specialist, an occupational therapist, a mental health therapist and even a spiritual healer. I asked for accommodations at work. I reached out to professionals who could help me with my business. And slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, something began to change.
They offered tools, perspectives and forms of support I could not have given myself. I began to understand that accepting help wasn't evidence that I was failing at independence. Perhaps it was simply another way of being human.
At the same time, I began setting firmer boundaries in my personal life and stopped treating the things that bring me joy as indulgences I needed to justify.
There is a phrase in the autistic community about getting a "ticket to the circus," describing those intense interests and passions that bring joy, focus, regulation and a sense of meaning. I'm learning that my own circus isn't something I need to feel guilty about attending. My interests, including the hobbies that have become part of my business, are not frivolous distractions from life. They are part of what makes life sustainable for me.
I've learned that I need nature every day—that the greens and blues of the natural world help me recalibrate. I've learned that periods of solitude and immersion aren't evidence that I'm withdrawing from life, but conditions that allow me to participate in it more fully.
And strangely, the more I have honoured those needs, the more genuine my connections with other people have become. I'm performing less. I'm spending less energy trying to convince the world that I am someone I'm not. There is more of me available when I do choose to connect.
And then, the other day, I felt it again.
That feeling I hadn't experienced since I was about ten years old came rushing back: the existential bliss, the sense of being completely connected to the world and profoundly alive within it.
But this time, I noticed something I couldn't have understood as a child.
I wasn't standing outside the world looking in.
I was part of it.
For years, I thought belonging meant figuring out how to become more like everyone else. I'm beginning to understand that perhaps belonging is something entirely different: creating a life in which I can participate without abandoning myself in the process.
The world is still messy and chaotic. People are still complicated. I still need more solitude and fewer demands than many people do. But I can finally see the beauty in that messiness rather than feeling compelled to stand outside of it.
Maybe I wasn't dropped off on the wrong planet after all.
Maybe I simply needed to learn how to live here as myself.
And after all these years, I think I'm finally ready to be here.
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