A story worth fighting for

a restful (confessional) musing.

What is your story?

What events, special objects, and people shape you?

I have been a learner of other people’s stories for most of my life. Tasked with holding their nuances. Gently holding their rough edges and soft intimacies. Telling people, and showing them that love is the house they can dwell in. All of this knowing that I have passed out generously has felt lopsided because I have rarely received it back, rarely felt what true unconditional love can be.

I have nuances of my own.

I have things that make me…me. People sometimes gladly bask in my knowledge. Or, in the ways that I help them feel. Rarely, do I feel safe enough to admit how much chronic pain shapes my life. The anxiety I feel when I can’t find my medications. Unsure of how to tell people that living in fear of my vision feeling with bright lights and severe migraines folds into my story. I regularly experience a lack of grace. I wonder if telling people how much pain I suffer would change how they interact with me. These things are just as much a part of my story as my smile or the way I love reading books.

And so shakily I admit this here…

For years I have been pretty convinced that I am autistic.

Also pretty convinced that I have ADHD.

Writing those words has been a few years in the making. I am frightened to write them. Over the years, I became pretty convinced that I have ADHD. I may get an official diagnosis at some point. I always knew that I had problems with processing things, the way I view order, and my attention span. This has always been mitigated by the fact that I have been forced to be high functioning most of my life. I am an excellent student…but I have suffered along the way.

At the beginning of the pandemic, people began sharing their stories with getting diagnosed for autism as an adult. When I first started to hear these stories fear gripped my heart as some of them resonated. I knew that part of the fear was related to the unfair messaging that has been in place on what autism can look like in an individual. I didn’t feel out of control. I wasn’t violent. I…didn’t want to be different. But, as more stories and research came out the tears have flowed freely. In many of the stories of frustration and discovery I have been able to see myself. As I am.

Will society receive me if indeed I am autistic?

Will love meet me if I am considered deficient in some way?

There are shadowy fears and questions I have with admitting the possibility of being autistic. So much of my life has meant the commodification of my body. Proving that I am worth being loved. What happens when I have a different story?

In starting this journey to discovering every part of me, I have slowly had to let go of fear and the need to be seen as strong and capable. I inhabit a Black male body. While I wish this always meant something positive, I grew up with the jarring reality that I wasn’t conventionally attractive and perhaps could never be. A nose too big. A voice many told me was odd. Hamstrings that didn’t fit. I just wished to be invisible. Did I want to be white? No. Just…translucent.

Well. Here is my part of my journey and story. I say all of this even before an official diagnosis because these things make me who I am. I know that no matter what the outcome of this particular path is, I love who I am and the skin that I am in. I am wonderfully made and shaped. My fears are wrapped up in this post, and I hope that by telling my story you are able to hold your own more tenderly and with courage.

*Bless you all*