DEFECTIVE EPILOGUE

To the court I present, Exhibit A, for a defective epilogue if you like, to our relationship, like closing a door that was never open anyway, but still managing to trap my fingers in it. “Sometimes I feel like I’m invisible,” he said.“You’re not invisible,” she said. “I can see you,”“Aww, thank y—”“People just find you boring.” I don’t know what makes me happy, I can experience it in response to events, but in terms of leisure time, I do not know what happiness feels like. A long time ago – so long ago I no longer remember the moment I agreed to it – I chose my interests based on their ability to testify for me. Books that made me look intelligent, skills that made me look capable, projects that made me look impressive. I collected hobbies the way a museum collects artefacts, not for joy, but for display. And somewhere across the years, the pretending stopped, and the hobbies became real. The interests embedded themselves into me like shrapnel that the body decides is safer to keep than remove. But the motive never changed, for everything I do for fun is work. Work to prove, to justify, to validate, and ultimately, to gain attention. If I am not producing something meaningful that I can hold up to the world like a severed head and shout “Look! Evidence!” – then my brain quietly classifies the time as wasted. Colouring, reading fiction, or just sitting still, – all of it comes with a sour aftertaste of guilt, so my brain flags it as danger. For it isn’t a productivity issue, it’s an identity one. I’ve accidentally built a life where, if I am not producing, I am nothing. I know – intellectually – that rest is useful, mindfulness is healthy, that recovery fuels productivity, etc. I understand the logic perfectly, but this isn’t logic, this is a threat response, because being clever is not a personality trait I developed – it is a defence I constructed. A little fort of vocabulary and competence, built brick by brick against a childhood that kept throwing the same stone at me. For context, the need to be clever stems from a childhood of being told I was stupid, when I was in fact just autistic. I absorbed that sentence without question, fully accepting that whatever room I walked into, I was always the stupidest person in that room, and it became the background music of my childhood, it didn’t even bother me, because you don’t miss silence if you’ve never had it, and so I was content, for it was all I had ever known. To such extreme it was, that when I sat my GCSEs, I just entered my name, and sat there. I only turned up because someone had told me that I’d face fines if I didn’t turn up. I was an adult before I started to question it, and that caused everything I thought I knew about myself to collapse so quickly that the only thing that cushioned the fall for years was alcoholism. I’d been categorised incorrectly and then left on the wrong shelf for years, quietly adapting to a space that was never intended for me. And the truth wasn’t even hidden, I’d just never thought to look for it. Now my whole existence is to correct a verdict that was handed to a child who never got a defence. I have to show the world that they were wrong about me. So I code, draw, write, paint, design, animate, create, invent, constantly, relentlessly, desperately trying everything, anything, to get noticed, to be seen. Like a never-ending courtroom, presenting exhibit after exhibit – books, art, music, websites, all to prove that I wasn’t who everyone said I was, but the people I’m trying to prove it to aren’t there anymore, it’s an empty courtroom, which is why it never feels enough. I don’t need more output, I already have the evidence. Teachers, parents, siblings, doctors, I have proved them all wrong a thousand times over. I am not stupid, I was never stupid, I was an autistic kid in a world that didn’t know how to see me. The only person who needs convincing is the small me, forgotten in the corner of the room, still carrying that rejection.