Write another blurb about being autistic — specifically from my perspective. What are your thoughts on it?
"High Functioning"
There are moments I should have spoken - not in collapse, not in fury, but in confession. "I am overwhelmed." That would have been enough.
No fanfare, no fists on the table. Just a whisper. A surrender. A soft, holy implosion. The collapse that happens quietly, inwardly — the soul folding into itself, corners pressing into corners like a ritualized origami of survival. No red lights. No wailing sirens. Just the erotic tremble of a body undressing itself. Ash in my palms. Selfhood blistering beneath the sealed heat of my lips.
But that isn't how we're trained. We, the high-functioning, the fluent-in-normalcy, the masters of disguise - we are taught the sacred ritual of silence. What they call composure is sometimes just the sound of someone else's suffering. We learn to act — to perform. It is an ancient theater, the Great Masquerade, and the costume is always a face that isn't quite yours. You paint it on with the blood of your effort. Smile like scaffolding. Laugh like war drums. Grin like you've never bled. I wore mine like honey-laced armor — sweet enough to be swallowed, sharp enough to be slaughtered.
Because this world doesn't want your wildness. It wants your compliance — your roars tucked into lullabies, your allotment ornamental. Pain must be palatable to be acknowledged, and your difference must be draped in productivity to be spared
On some days, I stood behind glass. Poised. Polished. Untouched. A wax figure on display in the temple of expectation. My body unmoving, my mind in mid-seizure light - through eyes of static and sparks. Every thought — a live wire. Every breath — a negotiation. I survived in the language of stillness. I prayed in the cathedral of suppression. I held my breath so long, I forgot what air tasted like. If I spoke - if even a sliver escaped - the illusion would rupture like overripe fruit, split and weeping, slicking down the chins of the horrified. Once stained by aversion, no sweetness can be trusted.
But grace does not explode. She does not kick down doors. She doesn't rescue - she remains. Grace is the woman who walks barefoot into the storm and does not flinch. She is hips swaying like prayer. She is weather-worn yet glorious. She does not arrive to fix you. She arrives to see you - and stay.
I dream of birds again. Not the haloed kind - not symbols of transcendence you find tattooed on wrists. No. I dream of the broken ones. The ragged prophets. The birds who do not fly and do not fall. Suspended mid-storm, wings tight to their bodies, held not by sky but defiance. There is blessedness in their pause. A gospel in resistance. They do not flee, they do not crash. They wait. In waiting, they become divine.
I have the heart of a poet and the mouth of a scholar. I annotate my pain. I footnote my joy. I bleed in metaphors because the raw truth has teeth — it eats. It devours. To speak plainly is to be devoured plainly. But in metaphor, there is melody. In metaphor, there is music.
I am not circuitry. I'm not thesis, not X or Y, not textbook diagnostic code. I am velvet and voltage. Salt and sugar. I am the paradox of meltdown and mercy. Loves like a madman whispering through a keyhole. I am the sacred ruin - burning, unraveling - but listen closely: the chorus still sings through the flames.
