Three words, one lifetime.

Every moment ticked by slower than usual, or at least it felt like time was moving like molasses. She always noticed that time really did seem to move faster when you were having fun. Perhaps it was the art of distraction that made time slip through her fingers. Waiting only made time seem as though it were stuck in in quicksand with no help. She fiddled with one of her stim keychains, lightly pressing buttons to try and fill the time and ease her mind.

The clock on the wall still said 1:25 and she wondered if it was just going to stay there. The room was itself was becoming uncomfortably warm and she was far too aware of her own breathing. The clicking of a computer mouse followed by random bursts of typing weren’t often enough to even try to make a little melody in her mind. The minute hand finally made its snail crawl to 1:26.

“So…” she finally heard from the voice in the swivel chair. Two tiny letters seemed as though they took forever to form as they floated around the room.

“You ARE autistic.”

Three words. Three words and thousands of moments flooded her mind. Memories of her youth, her schooling, failed relationships and struggling to hold a job if it didn’t follow a specific routine. The sounds that made her cover her ears, and the adults who would uncover them. The fabrics she loathed, the ones that always kept like acid against her fingertips, but were constant in her daily life. She could suddenly remember the taste of her favorite juice as a child, sitting on the floor in the back of her classroom. The way the lights were buzzing and the voices of the other children echoed off of her eardrums. How she would go home and open up the same Disney clamshell VHS to just watch and rewind. The plastic smell of those clamshell packages hit her like a sensory wave, along with the feel of the plastic that protected their slipcovers. How that smell and the way the VHS felt in her hands became comfort after having to try and fit in at school. She didn’t know why it was so hard to speak up and stand out, but it scared her so badly as a child to speak up sometimes she’d have accidents she couldn’t control. She never had words for why she couldn’t just be like the other kids. She was just shy. She was just quirky. She was just weird. Four letter sentences that defined her incorrectly, leading up to now.

You are autistic. Three words that she didn’t know existed when she was a child, navigating the world with a mind that built cathedrals against the average mind’s small country parishes. Even as she grew and autism became something in her vocabulary, she felt like a fraud to pin the label to her chest. She didn’t know she could wear it like an armour, a neurodivergent Joan of Arc in her own right. In her mind, it wasn’t the voice of God but the voice of her own neurodivergence begging for her embrace.

Her entire life thus far flashed before her eyes but it was as if she were seeing it through a fresh pair of glasses. There were details of her past that only confirmed those three little words. Moments caught in time that cemented her autistic existence. It was like a hidden picture suddenly coming to clarity. She knew that the more she reflected on her memories, more images would unblur and she could recognize the neurodivergence in her younger self.

It felt like she had lived her life over again in just a moment and she finally took in a deep breath and tried to muster up the right words. She couldn’t let imposter syndrome take root and question the reality she had just set in stone. Even merely asking “really?”, she deserved to embrace the truth of herself with open arms. She looked up as the minute hand danced to 1:27.

She nodded and spoke finally, three little words that set her free, “I am autistic.”

For Elanor and all those finding their answers as adults.