I moved to a new school for the start of Year 5. It went all the way up to Year 12, so they had a big girl library with real, adult books. The non-fiction section had a series of books, spread out through the relevant sections, called ‘Issues in Society’. 11-year-old Grace grabbed ‘Dealing with Depression’, ‘Youth Mental Health’, and ‘Self-harm and Young People’ and sat obtrusively in an aisle, cross-legged and swamped in a wool blazer (‘you’ll grow into it’, my mum had said. The fabric itched and the loose sleeves irritated my wrists in a maddening, impossible to articulate way). The world around me and my role in it felt like an elaborate castle I would never be able to explore or experience. I could see it, I could see my peers and my family and my teachers wandering the battlement walkways or peeking out of towers, but I remained an ignorant outsider, examining the murky moat water and staring up at the unforgiving span of the drawbridge that I’d never seen lowered. 

I read obsessively as a child—it’s such a cliche, the isolated, mature child reading as an escape, but it’s the truth—and among non-fiction books, I always picked out the ones about ailments of the body and mind. When I was 9, I asked for a first aid kit and handbook for my birthday (which I got—and I still have the Australian Red Cross First Aid Handbook on my bookshelf to this day). When I reached the ripe old age of 11, I advanced from first aid to mental illness. I still remember sitting in the front seat of my dad’s car, cumbersome book spread out on my lap, listening to the rain spit against the roof and windshield as I learnt the difference between monoamine oxidase inhibitors and tricyclic antidepressants. I remember sitting at a cafe table on a Sunday morning, taking bites out of rock-hard sourdough toast spread liberally with Vegemite as I taught myself the difference between psychosis and schizophrenia. I remember sitting under my desk, feeling the grates of the heater imprint on my legs, terrified to admit how many of the criteria for the diagnosis of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder I fit. 

I don’t remember ever reading about autism at this point, which makes sense, because my reading was centred on mental illnesses rather than developmental disorders. Ironically, I think I knew more about Attention-Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), the other disorder that gets lumped in with autism under the ‘neurodivergent’ umbrella despite them being quite different (although fairly comorbid). The patient file I requested from the psychologist I saw in high school says I did not meet the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (they actually used the term Asperger’s Disorder, but that’s clinically outdated as well as generally problematic) in 2011, but the diagnosis was confirmed in 2015. It made me angry—that period of time, my pre-teen years, were marred by the precocious cynicism of an isolated child. How different would they have been if I understood myself better, if I had the language to articulate how and why I was so different to my peers? I suppose there’s no point wasting my time with an impossible hypothetical, but it still feels difficult to let go of entirely. I felt failed by the adults in my life. 

Following this revelation, I researched obsessively. The mechanisms of autism—local overconnectivity in key brain regions, inflammation in the immune system, abnormally formed synapses, unbalanced excitatory-inhibitory networks—captivated me. I shunted school (and eventually university) work to the side to make room for the education on my own brain. I took to VCE Psychology like a duck to water (easily and happily) and began my tertiary study at the age of 16—studying a first-year psychology subject. I was finally being rewarded for my engagement in my special interest, and it was immensely satisfying. I ran around the perimeter of the castle, finding windows into rooms I hadn’t realised existed. The more I studied, the more of the castle I saw, the more I learnt about why the way I experienced the world was so different to others. I was still on the outside, but I was seeing more and more each day.

I took summer subjects for most of my undergraduate career. Like many autistic people, I am beholden to my routine, and that routine features study front and centre. I’m untethered, verging on distressed, without it. So, I filled the void with Khan Academy, Duolingo, and summer subjects. My final year’s subject was Music Psychology, and it was in studying it that I finally felt truly seen. The subject gave the students very free reign, which typically distresses me, but I used it to my advantage. I wrote my final paper on autism and music perception.

It was during my research for this paper that I happened across the term ‘alexithymia’. It’s a word beautiful in its elegance and logic— ‘a’, without. ‘lexi’, words. ‘thymia’, emotions. 

It says exactly what it is—the inability to identify and express one’s own emotions. It explained everything—my inability to identify the emotions of others, the physical distress I felt in times of stress, the panic I felt whenever someone asked, ‘How are you?’ (Despite my knowledge that ‘how are you’ is really a secret allistic code for ‘hello’, and ‘good thanks, how are you?’ is the secret allistic response meaning ‘your greeting is acknowledged and reciprocated’). I read on, taking in the strong links to ASD and the relevance to interoceptive awareness, feeling increasingly vindicated. It explained everything—my complete obliviousness to thirst and hunger until they verged on painful, my tendency to outright ask people ‘are you scared or excited?’, my inability to tell if my stomach cramps were due to acute anxiety, a response to longer-term stressors, or just hunger.  It completely explained my poor emotional regulation—how could I regulate an emotion I couldn’t identify? How could I regulate an emotion I didn’t even realise I was feeling? I spent the rest of the day reading about alexithymia and interoception, my assignment completely forgotten. 

As the sun set, I leaned back in my desk chair and gazed over my laptop screen at the view from my bedroom window. I saw the castle, the world and my place in it, so nebulous and forbidding before today. 

And the drawbridge fell.