When It Turns Out You're The Stevie

This post was originally published April 25th, 2021

One time when I was a little girl, enthralled in a puddle of mud at the end of the driveway, a neighbor boy came over to see if he could play with me. His name was Stevie, but that day he came incognito, or so he said, having plucked a single blade of grass from the yard and holding it just below his bud of a nose as if it were a mustache.

Stevie was absolutely delighted in his own cleverness, but I thought Stevie was just about the dumbest kid on the block. Everyone knew that a blade of grass was not a mustache! And besides, Stevie was too annoying and, I thought, probably he was Autistic or something. My little girl mind putting a name overheard, to the traits I found so odd in my playmate. He was just plain weird!

In a little less than six months time, I will be celebrating my 56th birthday. It has been quite an interesting time these past few years, getting my bearings as a single woman, dealing with a major flare of chronic illness, and adapting, with the rest of the world, to life during a Pandemic. I've shed a lot of layers and old baggage and was beginning to piece together the fragments of my life to form a clearer understanding of who I really am. 

But it turns out, I am the one who is actually Autistic. The year of isolation and social distancing provided just the right environment for me to bump up against myself and see this truth.

This diagnosis seemed out of the blue at first, having nothing but a very stereotypical understanding of what it meant. And nothing but a very stereotypical idea of what it looked like in adults. No personality, no ability to smile or crack a joke, not funny ones anyway. No ability to feel connected to other humans, reciting facts with as much enthusiasm as a robot. Dustin Hoffman in Rainman. Sam in Atypical. 

As the shock wears off, the researcher in me begins exploring. The more I read and learn, the more my life is explained. I am discovering just how much society has failed to advance its view of those on the Neurodivergent spectrum, even as science has made extraordinary advances in the study of the brain.  

I look back at my childhood and the course of my life with relief for knowing this explanation. But there has been grieving in the remembering. 

How hard everything has always been without understanding why. How often I feel misunderstood - actually am misunderstood when trying to explain myself. How I always run left when everyone else is running right. How long it takes my brain to process new information. To work through the steps of a plan. How there are days when I cannot access my words to save my life. Especially if my body thinks my life is in jeopardy.

The organized piles all over the house that never quite make it past the piling stage.

How sensitive I am— To people. To moods. To temperatures. To smells, foods, medicines.

Teaching myself to maintain eye contact. Teaching myself to smile. Monitoring my speech to make my voice sound less flat. The internal coach always talking me through these difficulties after observing what I think normal is in other people. Never sharing my strange habits or quirky ways of self-soothing with another living soul, not even my therapist. 

Everything feels like it has been shattered and put back together through this lens. 

My mind wanders back over times that left me scratching my head with new understanding. The way a friend tried to get me to do a photo shoot, but I couldn't match any of the facial expressions she asked me to portray. We laughed it off with a joke about not pursuing a career as an actor, but dang. Why couldn't I make my face look pensive when asked? 

Now I know. I am the Stevie in my own story.

I think back to that little blond haired boy with a twinkle in his eye, holding that single blade of grass under his nose, and I want him to know, Stevie, wherever you are now, I don't think you are dumb.

I think you are beautiful.