In a flash, it’s like the air is sucked from the room. A loud ringing fills my ears. My thoughts narrow to those words—autism spectrum. She continues speaking, but my brain is too shaken to pick up everything. I catch only bits and pieces.

Difficulty socializing.

Need for routine.

Repetitive motions.

Sensory issues.

Consuming interests.

Meltdowns.

She’s describing autism, I realize. It also sounds eerily like she’s describing me, but that’s simply not possible.

“I can’t be autistic,” I say, interrupting her. “I hate math. I don’t have a photographic memory. I fit in. I have friends, a boyfriend, even my mom’s friends like me. I’m nothing like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory or—or—or the brother in Rain Man.”

“None of those things are diagnostic criteria. They’re stereotypes and misperceptions. And I believe your fitting in is a result of a great deal of masking on your part. It’s common for high-functioning autistic women like you to acquire late diagnoses because they ‘pass,’ but it’s not healthy. I’m concerned you’re on your way to autistic burnout—if you’re not already there,” Jennifer says with a worried frown.

I have no response. Her observation has literally made me speechless.

We get through the rest of the session, but when I step outside the building, I don’t remember much. I squint up at the blinding brightness of the sky. It’s the same sky that’s always been above me, but it feels different now. Everything feels different. The sun, the wind in the trees, the pavement beneath my shoes.

There’s a green bench to the side. I’ve walked by it for months without once sitting on it. I sit on it now, open the book Jennifer gave me, and read. Hours pass. Clouds race over the sun, momentarily shrouding me in darkness before passing on. In these pages, I read about other women, their experiences, their difficulties, their strengths. But it feels exactly like I’m reading about myself—the way I copy my peers so I fit in; the way I don’t understand them but I pretend; the way I used to hide under the table at parties to avoid the noise and the chaos and the stressful social interactions, much to my parents’ embarrassment; the way I need rigid structure in my day or I can’t function; the way I can’t stand to focus on something unless it’s interesting to me and then I get tunnel vision; even the way I’m tapping my teeth right now. I’m stimming. In secret. In broad daylight. I’ve been doing it my entire life.

Just like the women in the book, there’s always been a lot “off” about me, so much to change, to suppress, to hide—to mask. It was painstaking, often exhausting, work, but my efforts were rewarded with my family’s approval and the acquisition of friends and a boyfriend. By changing myself, I earned a sense of belonging.

But maybe I belonged all along. Just with a different group of people.

I did all that work. I experienced all that confusion and pain. And maybe I didn’t need to. Maybe with the proper insight, I could have been accepted the way I was.

When I’m done reading pertinent sections of the book and everything in the manila folder, it’s the golden hour. This used to be my favorite time of day to play the violin because it feels like there’s magic in the air. Logically, I know it’s not magic, it’s light falling at an angle as the sun descends toward the horizon, but it adds something indefinable to the gravity of now.

I walk home in a sort of trance. It’s not until passing pedestrians give me double takes and odd looks that I realize I’m crying.

I don’t try to stop.

I let the tears fall.

I cry for the girl I used to be.

I cry for me.

It’s a foreign experience. Self-pity is not an indulgence that I allow myself. This doesn’t feel like pity, though. It feels like self-compassion, and the realization makes me cry harder.

No one should need a diagnosis in order to be compassionate to themself.

But I did. Tough love doesn’t allow room for weakness, and tough love is all I’ve known. Maybe for now, just this once, I can experiment with a different kind of love. Something kinder.

I cry until my muscles ache, and then I cry more, like I’m letting out tears for a future sadness. People watch, and they whisper among themselves. A little girl points at me and asks her mommy what’s wrong with me, and the woman picks her child up and hurries away.

I see, and for the first time in my adult life, I don’t care that I’m making a scene. I haven’t hurt anyone. I shouldn’t be ashamed. I shouldn’t need to apologize.

This is me.

THIRTEEN

Quan

WHEN I HANG UP FROM THE CALL WITH LVMH ACQUISITIONS, I sit back in my chair and stare at Michael, who’s seated across my desk from me. Neither of us speaks for a full minute. The stunned expression on his face says it all. I’m pretty sure I look the same.

“Did that just happen?” he asks, breaking the silence.

I open up my email program on my laptop, and when I see what I was looking for, I turn it around so the screen faces Michael. “I think it did. Look, her lawyers are already contacting our lawyers to move acquisition talks forward. Prepare to be cc’d on everything.”

“There’s a real chance we’re going to be a household name?” he asks.

An amazed kind of laugh breaks out of me. “I guess so? We might hate their offer and conditions, though. They could also change their minds for no reason. These things go nowhere all the time.”

He nods, but he also sags into his chair and rubs his face like he can’t quite believe this is real life. After a moment, he blinks and declares, “We need to celebrate.”

I grin. “I’m down with that.”

“Tomorrow night,” he adds.

“I have something then,” I say, but before he can suggest another time, I continue, “but I’ll reschedule. I want to reschedule, actually.”

He gives me a curious look. “It’s something … with her?”

“Yeah.” I keep my tone casual as I straighten up my desk, gathering financial printouts into a neat pile. “Things didn’t go too perfectly last time, so we decided to try hooking up one more time.”

Michael props an elbow on his chair’s armrest and rests his chin on his fist as he looks at me. “What do you mean by ‘not too perfectly’?”

“I didn’t sleep with her. We did some stuff, and it was really good. But we both have issues, and we’re working on it,” I say lightly, like I haven’t been thinking about her all week and jerking off to fantasies of her every chance I get.

Michael arches his eyebrows, asking, “You guys have tried to hook up how many times?”

“Only two,” I say.

“At what point is it dating? Three times? Four?”

“It’s dating when we say it’s dating. And we’re not,” I say.

He sits forward in his chair like he’s a bloodhound who’s caught a scent. “Why do you want to reschedule?”

I shrug and put the printouts in the proper file in my desk drawer. Generally, I’m kind of messy—when I got around to cleaning my apartment the other week, I saw that my dishes really were growing mold; that’s a new level of nasty, even for me—but when it comes to this business, I’m super organized. I keep things alphabetized and color coordinated. My email inbox drops to zero unread at the end of every day. Everything’s paid exactly on time.