Most people nod and don’t know what to say when you say you’re getting sober. It’s like getting pregnant in your mid-20’s. Is it congratulations, or indicative of a darker turn we didn’t know about that will get rougher in the future? There has been slight proudness and well wishes. It is mostly just awkward glances or words unsaid that people don’t want to peer into. Maybe they just don’t know how to.

When I stopped trying to kill myself, the hardest thing I wasn’t prepared for was building up the trust that I wouldn’t do it again.

I haveve been thinking about this while thinking about my purpose, my meaning, my reason to pretend to integrate into the world like the rest of us do. I’ve returned with nothing but the realization that our lives are just different reflections, different rooms, different streets on the same land.

Although my autism diagnosis has made a lot of things make sense, it’s also forever tangled me in a perception thrown on me by others, one that’s impossible to unravel myself.

I thought maybe, if I became someone important, all of the abandonment and pain would turn into fuel. That through success, I would achieve salvation from the price of what it cost: from who it turned me into.