I have gone through most of my life feeling completely and utterly misunderstood. That’s a common theme for many of the autistic adults in the adult autism Facebook groups that I participate in. It’s actually a relief to know that I am not alone in this. It’s like laying down a huge burden. No. It’s like discovering that you’re sharing the weight with so many others as to make it tolerable.
I spent 58 years of my life thinking I was not only alone in it, but also that since I was the only one experiencing it , there must be something very, very wrong with me. And the constant drumbeat of misunderstanding did not disabuse me of that idea. That entire time, I didn’t know I was autistic.
Once I got the diagnosis, everything made sense. I’m still misunderstood, yes, but it’s not because I’m broken in a functioning world. It’s that I’m from another world entirely and no one is willing to take the time to use a universal translator. I’d probably do just fine on the Enterprise, but this ain’t that. Not even close.
You’d think being misunderstood, at this point, would be same old, same old for me. Par for the course. No big deal. But actually, it’s extremely triggering, because it carries with it 58 years of frustration and injustice and desperate attempts to explain myself. And now it carries with it a sense of mourning for the person I might have been if I had known about my autism all along.
If being misunderstood is triggering, being understood, because it’s such a rare occurrence, usually brings tears to my eyes. The poem below did just that. Mel Best is in one of my Facebook groups. I don’t know her personally, but 95 percent of this poem is like she opened a window to my very soul and wrote what she saw. So I contacted her and asked if I could share it on this blog, and she was kind enough to allow me to do so. The image below is hers (and I think it’s of her), too.
I know I have a way with words, but this poem inadvertently describes my life experience more eloquently than I ever could. Based on the comments she received on the original Facebook page, it resonated with a lot of other people, too. So, thank you, Mel Best, for this poem. By speaking for yourself, from your own heart, you spoke for so many of us, who have been so misunderstood for so long. Thank you for “getting” us, and for telling the world who so many of us are.
A𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜 W𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧.
I am the girl who read (and understood) Tolkien at eight.
Who searched every wardrobe for the one that led to Narnia.
Who saw Aslan as more real than any name given to God.
I was the girl who could create a world from a face washer and a few bath toys -
and feel more at home there than anywhere else.
Who lay in the grass at ten and wondered if she was just an ant dreaming her own life.
I’ve always dwelled in layers.
I don’t see time as linear -
The people I’ve loved live in me still.
Even the difficult ones.
The connection doesn’t fade.
I can feel it all, just as it was -
love, loss, joy, grief -
right here, right now.
I feel everything.
I notice the invisible things, and sometimes miss the obvious.
And I don’t love people in spite of their flaws.
I love them 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 of them.
I was the child whose quirks were seen as distractions,
not appeals for connection.
The one who didn’t seem to need much -
so what I 𝐝𝐢𝐝 need was often missed.
There was no map for a girl like me,
only confusion, and the sense that I was somehow wrong.
I was rarely what people expected.
I unsettled more than I soothed.
I didn’t know how to belong -
and I never quite learned how to disappear the right way.
I was the daughter they said didn’t feel -
but I felt 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠.
I was a stranger to my sisters,
too far off the map to follow.
I lost one mother before I had words for the loss.
The next rewrote me.
There was no space for the whole of me -
only the parts she could define.
In the relationships that mattered most,
I often found myself alone.
Present, hopeful -
but always reaching -
and never quite met.
I love with depth and fierce honesty -
and still shrink myself smaller to fit.
I have learned to bend
into shapes that felt safer -
long before anyone asked me to.
I speak with fluency -
but not in a language that makes me understood.
I seek space.
I seek sanctuary.
I love people, deeply -
and they exhaust me.
I can hold truth in one hand, and the opposite truth in the other.
I can hold 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡.
But it often weighs heavy.
I have lived my life as a bridge between worlds -
One hand holding grief, the other holding light.
One foot in the realm of deep feeling, the other in fierce logic.
Always translating. Softening edges. Stretching toward understanding.
Trying to be known, without coming undone.
I am the woman who shapeshifts to walk between worlds.
I wish I could reach back to that magical little girl -
the one who built worlds from bath toys and wonder -
and tell her how extraordinary she really was.
I wish I could sit beside her and say:
"You were never too much.
You were never not enough.
You were just… you.
And that was always more than enough."
And I want her to know:
I saw how hard she tried.
How hard she still tries.
The journey isn’t over.
So to the women who feel ‘other’ -
who feel unseen,
who are weary from trying to simply 𝐛𝐞 -
I see you.
I know you.
I 𝐚𝐦 you.
And you are me.
𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧.
(Mel Best, 2025)
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