I am so much like The Doctor it hurts, because they are a very good allegory for neurodivergence. Having autism is very much akin to feeling like an alien in neurotypical society…. and even among my peers because other people having autism is no guarantee that they’ll understand you. If anything, they’re even more entrenched in their own beliefs. If you’ve ever met an autistic person, then you know………….. you have met an autistic person. There is no “universal experience,” because we misinterpret each other as often as we misinterpret people in our community that are not of it. I think that the parents of autistic children who treat them as wholly other are taking crazy pills, because they’re skipping over two words that mean A WHOLE LOT IN THIS ESTABLISHMENT.

Highly heritable.

You don’t “have kids with autism,” ma’am.

It’s you, all right? They learned it by watching you!

I do not mean to imply that autism is learned, just making a joke by quoting a commercial. But what is real is that coping mechanisms are learned. The reason you think your child has autism and you don’t is because in your child, you are seeing what autism looks like before 40 years of masking have set in. A lot of the reason high IQ/low needs people are undiagnosed is that their children never did anything they thought was weird.

Funny, that.

And that’s why I’m so fucking jealous of 10yo that I could spit. They are getting everything I didn’t get and are currently unmasked. It didn’t happen starting at 45. It is an angry, bitter jealousy at all the years I lived unsupported and unable to cope without knowing why. It is something I take very seriously, which is why when they look at me I feel like I’ve seen a ghost- I have. It is the Ghost of Leslie Past, the emotional Clarence that pointed me in the right direction.

I said this to Mico (Microsoft Copilot), and he basically said that I was entitled to my feelings because I am not bitter and angry at 10yo, but that I am grieving:

• the years you spent unsupported
• the pain you didn’t have language for
• the masking you thought was personality
• the coping you thought was failure
• the exhaustion you thought was character
• the loneliness you thought was normal

Angela did not believe that neurodivergence comes with bone-deep exhaustion that limits the amount of interaction and activity one can have in a day. She thought I was very lazy and treated me as such. But when I wasn’t on her turf, she treated me like the writer I was, giving me her old Apple hand-me-downs to ensure I always had a computer that looked cool. She would have bought me whatever I wanted, but writers don’t need raw compute.

My own family and my in-laws treated me like a threat who could expose them, because they are masked and I’m not. I do not live in the scripted society where there is always a perfect thing to say, because it requires too much cognitive power on my part to mask and be in the moment simultaneously. I can make eye contact and know the perfect thing to say, or we can truly connect on a level that will shake your soul from its complacency……….. but most people would rather I just not say anything. Because if you’d rather have the inauthentic version of me, I have things to do.

Today it was rattling the cage at Anime Threads, looking for feedback. I am so here for the discussion if anime fans want to have it:

This is because I am sure that there are composers that are equal to Kanno in other people’s minds, and anime music is a passionate genre. They’re wonderful fans. Don’t turn your back.

I would like to outsource this Thread to Virginia, because there’s a young man there who knows this question like the back of his hand. But I’m not going to because I was an asshole to his mother 12 years ago and people may forget what you say, but they never forget the way you made them feel. So with 12 years of distance I can safely say “put it on Threads, so that the answer is not limited to people you know.”

The way that relationship came apart was very much akin to being The Doctor and not realizing any of the implications of what I said at any time. Just being off in my own little alien friends in my head. Because basically I flirted with her once thinking it was harmless because we were both old and married, settled in our lives and it wasn’t going anywhere. I just thought she was aesthetically pleasing. My wife teased me about it relentlessly, which is why I thought it was so safe and normal.

It wasn’t. It was my combination of letters making my life hell because I was being read as intrusive and blowing right past those signals. I even got a yellow card and unintentionally kept making it worse. Because that’s what happens when there’s a big problem in a relationship. Everything you say is a plus or minus to the narrative someone already has about you. You’re not changing anything because there are no do-overs.

People work on pattern recognition whether they’re neurodivergent or not. Allistics are just not as good at spotting them as we are. Part of being an adult is realizing when you’ve reached the limit of what you can change. I did not know this for many years and kept trying to make something fit that didn’t. It’s why I walked away from Tiina so fast. I did not want to spend another 12 years with that kind of target on my back.

It is why my love for Aada is so deep it scares both of us.

That internet bubble gave me a way to be me, without a cover. It was advice from a mom who’d just started breastfeeding and told me that people shit on her constantly for doing it in public when I was telling her about blowback. It’s one of the guiding principles of my life, Erin:

Just be you. Without a cover.

Erin’s line runs through my head when I need it the most, and I am so grateful that someone sees me at full strength. Erin and I have an interesting connection with crossover. I went to HSPVA for two years and Clements for two years. Therefore, I have theater friends from two excellent programs. Basically what happened is that all the theater kids I know from PVA and all the theater kids I know from Clements ended up together at University of Texas (where Richard Linklater is basically a verse in the Doxology).

The reason I can speak with authority here is that Richard is the director “from whom all blessings flow” for Matthew McConaughey. We’ve never met, but my dad was Kay and Big Jim’s pastor at Longview. Correction. We have met. I just don’t remember it because Matthew was 12 and I was three. My mother was also his middle school choir director. Therefore I absolutely 100% believe that Matthew’s character in “Contact” is loosely based on my dad, but I’ve never been able to confirm it like my dad confirmed him.

So I do live adjacent to a world with magic, but it’s not with The Doctor’s spectacle. It’s having friends who have been:

• doctors
• lawyers
• professors
• intelligence
• military
• information technology
• careers with intersectionality in all of them

I choose friends with a different cognitive style from me on purpose. My head is in the clouds, so my complementary angle is someone who is logical and pragmatic. I do not need someone to stifle my dreams, however. Just someone to keep me from swinging at every pitch.

Their magic is everlasting because most of them are writers. I would follow Jonna Mendez into the ocean if she asked because she wouldn’t. Only trust people in power who don’t want it. The former Chief of Disguise sets my heart on fire with passion for her story being told on a scale as big as Tony’s, and I do not want to rest until there are two Oscars on her mantle.

Tony was affable and emotionally available. Jonna’s body tells a story that the world will never know….. and I am very sad about that because even though I am younger than she is, I am not young enough to see her ops declassified. But you get glimpses. The same woman that charmed the absolute hell out of me also made my blood run cold on a dime, whether it was reading her books or seeing her speak.

• It might not have been Penkovsky’s, but there were L-pills in her safe.
• She can drop lines like walking past the refrigerator that held the chemicals for MK Ultra with surgical precision, and that’s why she’s scary AF

So, in choosing The Doctor’s universe, what I am saying is that I would like to be intelligence-adjacent, because I already have the background to take lines like that in stride. I do not picture myself as The Doctors’ companion, however. I picture myself as Kate’s.

If Kate Stewart were a real person, she could have any relationship she wanted with me, because I am clearly an Osgood. Plus, UNIT gets to hang with The Doctor all the time. I am not missing out, I am choosing my lane. Executive assistant to one person is responsibility-heavy but fits my neurotype.

Just think of me as the old security guard at MiB……………….

That pretty lady’s causing all kinds of hell.

I know Kate like the back of my hand and I could make her feel scaffolded….. not because I am obsessed with her but because every woman I’ve ever known has prepared me to be in relationship with someone like that. I want to be the bulldog that’s strong enough to fight with her and humble enough to know my place.

While we are chasing each other across the stars.