Chapter 28 #2
He asked once before, and I wasn’t ready to share. Not back then. It doesn’t feel so hard anymore.
“I…shut down,” I tell him. “For lack of a better phrase. I’d been working overnights for three days in a row because of an error no one could figure out and a deadline coming up.
I was physically exhausted. Mentally exhausted.
And I’d been having a harder time dealing with…
everything, honestly. The littlest things would set me off. ”
I let out a breath, resting my head against the seat behind me. August waits, the tree in the front yard waving in the gentle breeze.
“It was so small, but it was the final push in a culmination of so many stressors. I’d just finished cleaning up the department’s mess, and we were meeting to go over the numbers.
Someone asked me if I ever got tired of being so smart, and I just…
I wanted to scream yes. I’m so fucking tired.
But no one sees it. Instead, I couldn’t say a single word.
Not one. I walked out of the room with twenty people watching my back, and I stayed in bed for nearly three days.
Dad called. Others did, too. I couldn’t answer.
I couldn’t even talk. I was exhausted down to my bones in a way I wasn’t sure I’d ever come back from.
It felt like something had snapped. Some wall had come crumbling down, and I didn’t have the strength to put it back up again. I was done.”
“Is that when you started seeing your therapist?” August asks softly.
“Not quite. I saw a psychiatrist first. I was scared, honestly, of the way I felt. I couldn’t make myself put on a smile and walk back into the office.
It felt impossible. I got my diagnosis on our second meeting, and in some ways, it was a relief.
I knew so little about what it meant to be autistic, but I’ve always known I’m different than most. That part wasn’t a surprise at all.
To finally have a name for it? And then to start putting the pieces together to figure out what it all meant?
It was validating. It was…cathartic. It made me angry for the past and hopeful for the future.
That’s what Steph’s been helping me with.
Understanding it all. I guess it’s not that uncommon for those of us diagnosed later in life to hit a breaking point after decades of masking. I hit mine.”
“So you quit,” August fills in. “And came back here.”
I swallow heavily and nod. “I did. I had to make a change for myself. I wanted the chance to live as myself. To find happiness that way. And after talking with Dad about it, I knew that wasn’t going to happen for me in Utah.”
My brother’s head cocks. “Wait, what? What did Dad say about it?”
I shrug. “He just…didn’t handle the news well. Told me it was utter bullshit, although not in those words. Said there’s nothing wrong with me.”
“There’s not,” August interjects.
I appreciate my brother’s defense, but our dad doesn’t see it the same way.
Whatever hurdles he’s overcome personally, he believes I can do the same.
But I don’t view my place on the spectrum as a sentence or a negative.
It just is. It’s part of me, as natural as the color of my hair or the blood running through my veins.
There’s no separating it from who I am as a person.
There’s no boxing it up and shoving it away.
I am autistic.
I always have been, always will be, and to take that part of me away would be to erase everything that makes me me.
“Benson,” August says quietly, making me wonder how long I was inside my own head. “What, exactly, did Dad say to you?”
I let out a sigh. “He said people don’t just find out in their forties that they’re autistic. He said the doctor must have been mistaken.”
August flinches, but I go on.
“He said maybe I simply needed a vacation and then I could come back to work and pretend like nothing had happened. As if it could ever be that easy. He doesn’t want to believe it, August, because then his whole worldview might come crashing down. The same as it did for me.”
August is opening his door and stepping out of the vehicle before I can say another word. I follow him, my brother tugging his phone out of his pocket right on the front lawn. He paces back and forth with the device at his ear.
“August?”
He waves me off, anger in every line of his body. He comes to a grinding halt before saying, “Yeah, hey. Did you really tell Benson during an incredibly vulnerable moment that the diagnosis he got from a professional was wrong?”
Oh, Lord.
August doesn’t seem to give our father any time to respond.
“How is that your place? Did you even stop to think about what Benson needed from you, or were you only thinking about yourself and how it made you feel? I shouldn’t be surprised, honestly, but what the actual fuck?
He’s your son. You supported him being queer, but you suggest he take a goddamn vacation to get over his autism? ”
My pulse is thundering. August doesn’t seem to notice me crossing the lawn and slipping inside the house. His voice carries through the front door as he continues yelling at our father, barely taking breaths.
I’ve seen August upset plenty of times. His emotions are loud and ephemeral in a way mine aren’t. Mine sneak up on me, slowly and overwhelmingly. They’re just as slow to let go.
I can feel them now, so much pressure inside my chest I can’t pull in a full breath. I grab a bag of my things, pick up Mouse from one of the many cardboard boxes I’ve fashioned for her, and, with scarcely a fleeting glance at the house that should feel like home, I run.