Missing Puzzle Pieces

Getting diagnosed as autistic at 30 is realizing your parents tried to beat the disability out of you until you learned to internalize it so it wouldn’t be visible.

It’s realizing that you were gaslighted into thinking you didn’t need crutches, so you’ve been limping around thinking that how everyone is supposed to walk

And then you’re told it’s not.

I feel cheated, mistreated, ignored, unseen. Because I was well enough to be good enough, but I’ve never felt complete.

Always felt like I was chasing something on the horizon that someone else could see

I kept trusting that the more towards it I got the clearer it would be.

But that line just got further and further and more matter how hard I searched I just couldn’t see what they wanted me to look for.

Could never obtain what they wanted for me, what they wanted me to want for myself.

Now I know my present options are different, my motherboard has been rearranged so the buttons don’t all work the same.

But because it was too hard to figure that out they painted my buttons to look like everyone else’s, made me write down each function and label it.

Blue means laugh, no! Blue means sad.

I had to teach myself how to act, speak, even breathe like them

Now I have to relearn how to do those things as myself.

Unravel the personalities woven into this basket case and determine what actually belongs.