NEW COLUMN ALERT: A late-diagnosed neurodivergent woman and 1980s preschool dropout identifies every moment from her past that filled her with shame, and mutters, “Yep, that tracks. I see it all now.”

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If I think of Autism as Place, then I arrive late at age 41, a bit timid, uncertain of the right words to say, but certain in what I know to be true: “Hi, I’m new here. And I’ve always belonged here. And I meant to come here. I want to be here. But I have to be honest, you’ve been hard to find.”

If an official time of entry exists, a record of belonging that doesn’t hinge on my awareness, then I suppose it’s 4:25 p.m. on a Wednesday in 1983 under the direction of a Midwestern doctor who wears glasses and jokes, “She’s got a good set of lungs, Brenda, that’s for sure!” Brenda is my mom.

I am the twin who made it forty weeks. As the story was told and retold, the fish didn’t get bigger, but my sense of eternal two-ness, as an odd or quirky soul, one whose left side grew slightly differently than her right, found shelter within my understanding of my lost twin, who I told everyone was a boy. I even imagined, before I could speak, that the two of us had gathered round a big tree in my mother’s womb and enjoyed private tea parties before he left, my early “memory” alive and well and blooming in soft sepia each time I called it forth.

So, yeah, I was different.

A journal from third grade, one with symbols (my own language complete with a legend), includes drawings of faces, labeled with emotions or personalities—the man with the cigarette can’t be bothered; the woman with the pouty lips and mole will steal your man—and then the most innocent, self-aware motto: Being Different Is Cool. I read through the pages in my forties, awed by the girl who regulated (or masked) with tennis practice and straight As, who climbed trees and wore Umbros and shopped at Gap Kids just like everyone else. She already knew.

If I’m going to tell you more about autism awareness, not the month when un-moisturized white men announce national registries, but as a personal a-ha, then we’ll need a quiet place. I can’t draw a straight line through a story to save my life, and neither can anyone in my family, which is how I grew up feeling safe. Shame mostly existed out there. Inside, we were us.

Even in the quiet, here with you, I cannot promise a satisfying arc with just the right amount of narrative tension; I won’t commit to language that startles and soothes to a rhythm I’ve chosen. I can offer to tell you what I know and what I don’t, and how those two aren’t equal but can’t be measured anyhow.

A few years ago, my preteen child, who’d just been diagnosed by a psychologist who literally wrote the book on ways autism is missed or misdiagnosed in certain populations, sat across from an elderly man in a white coat who shared his unsolicited opinion during a medical appointment: “You’ve spoken about your experiences so well today. If you were autistic, you’d barely be able to ask for a glass of water.”

The World, the World, the World, I told my baby once we’d left, cannot see you as you are. That man likely saw a white boy with trains, some image from one chapter of his ancient medical textbook. At the time, I had no idea the man had also been talking to, and looking past, me.

Within a year, another one of my children received a formal diagnosis. And if you’ve ever met my spouse, whom I call The Mayor, you can guess where we’re headed. The guy likes turning to his neighbor in church. He gets an itch to attend a PTA meeting—and scratches it! Even though autism is polygenic and Science can’t say, “If you’ve got autistic kids, one of y’all is autistic,” Science kinda hangs around the kitchen once everyone’s gone upstairs and whispers, “Boo, the call’s probably coming from inside the house.”

After a year of podcasts and books and online screenings and conversations with autistic women, I needed to know for sure. Whatever sure means when access, equity, and representation rarely meet up. If Autism is Place, then, when I finally saw myself in its folds and ridges, I needed papers stapled and creased, stashed in my tote, so I could run my fingers over the report’s curved spine and remember someone bore witness, said I belonged.

While I hate small talk and being perceived, I clock every single side-eye and smirk stopped short, every half-raised brow or sigh of dismissal. So even once I put my name on the wait list of what seemed like an affirming unicorn of a business with equitable pricing options, I couldn’t know if the assessor would see me. And if I would let her.

What if she spoke in short bursts with sharp words and “yeah, yeah, yeah” energy that turned me off? Or said, “You have a master’s degree and wrote a book? You’re a mom of three? You’re just stressed.” What if she only saw evidence of the ADHD and generalized anxiety disorder diagnoses I came with? If a Gatekeeper were to say I’m not of that Place, that I’m just Anxious or Tired or Need More Therapy, I would over-consider her words. Not only accommodate her perspective, but quite possibly reorient myself to her truth. I would doubt the hours of podcasts and running tab of “symptoms” in my brain; the collection of short answers I’d sent in with every relevant habit or experience I had energy to share, including the way I quit preschool after being disciplined for trying to help two boys follow the rules.

Who knew that meeting with my assessor, L., virtually—taking in her cozy, cool-colored office and hearing her voice, which was not sandpaper or pen tapping to my ears, but the sound equivalent of fresh sheets someone hands you without the demand to make your bed or fold them—would be one of the safest and most organic experiences of my adult life?

What is the opposite of a Gatekeeper? Maybe a person with air-dried wavy hair who you imagine was quiet as a kid and doesn’t seem annoyed when you hold up your squishy cat fidget, followed by a sales pitch on why she should run, not walk, to Wegmans and buy a box. In novels, blue or green eyes are often piercing, bold, or vacuous signifiers of beauty, but hers silently offered to hold the weight of my stories, even as her hands took notes, off-screen. After three hours of talking (as in I talked for 2.9 hours), L. looked up from her notes and, with a smile that wasn’t a smirk or mockery in the making, said, “Taylor, I already knew from the written responses you sent me.”

Sometimes, even as an adult with a million reasons why you don’t feel quite put together, you can be seen and beheld, unmasked and unhidden, and still walk away without shame.