Dearest little one,
Life will be hard on you. You will torture yourself by doing things that you don't want to do, and you'll pretend to be ok with it so you won't seem odd to everyone else. Your senses will feel like they're on fire and you'll go into sensory overload and have meltdowns.
You won't have many friends and often you will feel isolated and alone. You'll try making yourself 'small' to be accepted by your peers, but in doing so you will completely erase all the creative forces within you and the parts that make you YOU.
You will ridicule your traits, and let others laugh at you and you'll laugh with them to pretend like you were trying to be funny when you're just being yourself. You will smile a lot but feel an unbearable hurt underneath the smile.
The time will come when you cry from your deepest despair: "What is wrong with me? There must be something wrong with me! I hate myself!"
You will hate yourself for being 'crazy, intense, too much, and stupid' because some bad people will keep telling you that you are....so you'll begin to feel your life is worthless. When you turn 27 you'll even start to wonder if you'll keep thinking these thoughts until you are dead and gone.
You will want to give up.
When you are 30 you'll start to realize that you are Autistic. The grief in you will grow when you learn that you got ostracized by society and hated yourself for the parts of you that are the most precious, your natural autistic traits, but like a diamond, in the rough, these strengths never got to shine.
You'll begin to morn the life your could've had, had you known you were Autistic. What if I had just nourished your traits instead of shrinking, ridiculing, and hating them? Bittersweet is the word that will most accurately describe your new found awareness and your grief will hit like no other sadness.
You'll grieve the lost child in you and the suppressed teen and the young adult who tried so hard. You'll grieve all the effort you put into 'fitting in' knowing now that it would never have made a difference no matter how hard you tried because the world wasn't ready for your version of different. They'll never be, and knowing that will truly set you free.
Just know there's no correct way to grieve. Whatever you'll feel grief over is something you are allowed to feel. If you need to you can mourn your life, it's your life and you lived it so feel free to mourn it all you want for as long as you want.
And don't worry, you won't give up. I know because I am writing this to you now.
Your grief will metamorphose into a light that burns so bright others will need sunglasses just to look in your direction. All the things that will come to pass will not be the end...it is the beginning. You'll start to feel at home in your skin and find the support you need to keep being you.
You will be in control this time around and you'll trust yourself completely. You'll come to love yourself in a way you never knew possible, being gentle every step of the way. Best of all you will believe in yourself. Life will feel good. I promise.
With all the love I was never able to show you,
Breanna