Page 233 of Exiled
“Fell down the autism rabbit hole?”
He nods. “Yeah.” A beat passes. “It’s wild how different it is now. It’s so…vast.”
I shrug. “It’s a spectrum for a reason.”
“Yeah, I just…” He shakes his head with a frown.
“It’s okay if you…if you had other ideas of what it means to be autistic in your head. Even I did. That’s one thing we have in common, despite our age difference—we both grew up in a time where it was seen as this problem to be fixed. Like some incurable disease that cast shame on a family.”
He scowls. “I fucking hate your parents.”
Nodding, I say nothing to that. There isn’t anything to say to justify what they did…or rather what they didn’t do.
“While it is mostly on them, it’s also on the professionals who misdiagnosed me. Not that…well, it’s notalltheir fault. Did you know up until 2013, you couldn’t even have a dual diagnosis of ADHD and autism?”
He frowns. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. They literally could not diagnose me with both, so seeing as I didn’t meet the markers for autism, they assumed it was ADHD. But like I said that time in the cave, it only helped with so much, so then they thought it was other things, like mood disorders, behavior disorders…”
“And they shipped you off to reform schools.”
“Yup.”
He sighs roughly, shaking his head.
“I like when you grab my hand,” I tell him. “If anyone else did it, I’d probably punch them in the face.”
He laughs, but I stare at him, dead serious.
“I once punched a teacher in the face because my crayon broke while I was coloring.”
He stares at me, and I shrug.
“And I already told you the reason I ended up at Canaan.”
“You broke someone’s nose…”
I nod. “My…meltdowns…they make me destructive. I know I don’t look like I’ve got a lot of strength in me, but when I get like that…” I shrug, not knowing how to explain it.
He swallows, nodding. He already knows this. He’s seen it.
“It really does feel like I’m being swept up in a storm, with nothing to ground me. But when you hold my hand? When you holdme? It’s like something clicks inside me, and I feel…safe. Anchored. I know you’ve got me.”
“Is the stimming a sort of precursor to a meltdown?” he says, nodding to my fingers.
“Sometimes. Usually, that will come first. But I don’t always stim when I’m losing my shit. Sometimes I just stim to stim. I don’t even realize I do it half the time. Dr. Maddock and Dr. Healey—the therapist I saw in Indiana—they said it’s how I self-soothe. Not just for comfort when I’m stressed, but also when I need to focus. Like my body knows that struggling to stay on task, or stay calm, is a trigger for me…and it compensates without my even knowing it’s happening to prevent a meltdown.”
Nolan smiles. “Did you know all of this last time?”
I shake my head. “No, it was after you left. When I switched over to the mental health program. Dr. Maddock knew my history, but she…she waited for me to come to the conclusion on my own, and then helped me understand it better.
“It’s why I can talk about it more easily and in depth now. The things that trigger my meltdowns, what my meltdowns feel like, where my insecurities come from, what I need help with…” I pause, searching his face. “Like last night. Back on the island, I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain and rationalize all this, or tell you what you were doing wrong.”
He nods. “Yeah, I wondered that. I didn’t really notice back then. I just thought you were…guarded, I guess? Shy. I didn’t realize you just couldn’t explain.”
“A lot of people assume being or going non-verbal means not talking at all. But it just means we lose the ability to put words to what we’re feeling and experiencing. It’s all there in our heads, but we can’t get it out, and it’s really distressing. We shut down. Well, I do. Or I flip out, if I’m dealing with the sensory issues on top of that. Again, it’s a huge spectrum. I can really only speak for myself.”
“So this is something you’ve been…working on?”