Too Much. Not Enough. Always Both.
Notes from the unnoticed version
In my last essay I wrote about how I show up for others. This one is about why that showing up so rarely lands the way it was intended.
I have always been too much. I have always been not enough. I have only recently understood why.
Most people think they know what autism looks like. A child. Withdrawn. Non verbal. Obvious.
That is not my story.
I have never been diagnosed. And the traits are mild enough that I could convince myself I am conjuring it. But the more I understand how autism presents in adults, particularly those who spent a lifetime learning to navigate a world not built for them, the more I recognize myself.
I am not using this as an excuse. I am using it as a map.
I am the version that goes unnoticed. The one that masked so well it became invisible. The one that connected too deeply rather than too little. The one that felt everything too intensely or not at all. While appearing either fully present or completely distant. Never in between.
The one that was always too much. And never enough. Simultaneously. I am not built for small talk and pleasantries.
I am a loner. It began as wounds. Then it became a choice. I settled into it quietly. Without announcement.
But solitude frightens people. In my late teens my sister told me what my mother had said: “you don’t have any friends.” It was not concern in her voice. It was criticism.
Everyone wants me to fix it. As if solitude is a wound still bleeding. As if I am broken and simply haven’t realized it yet.
In my early twenties I discovered something. Solitude was not the absence of connection. It was a philosophical state. A place where the mind settles and the noise of others clears.
A mind like mine demands constant translation from the world. Every social interaction. Every unwritten rule. Every pleasantry and every criticism lands differently than intended. Solitude is where the translation stops. Where I am no longer performing a language I was not born into.
Aristotle said that whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. I am neither. But I understand that my solitude is not a deficit. It is a chosen terrain.
People cannot fathom that I chose this. That I found contentment here. Contentment that most people spend their whole lives searching for and only find in midlife, if at all.
I do not go looking for connection. People appear. We cross paths. A conversation happens. And something in me recognizes something in them.
They are not pretentious. They are already themselves.
When I do connect fully, the depth gets misread. As if showing up completely means I have made them my entire world. They cannot carry what they have misread. Society has taught them that carrying another’s weight comes at a cost to their own.
I am like a hotel with open doors. People can stay as long as they want. They are free to leave anytime. This is not Hotel California. There is no price for leaving. No guilt. No chains.
I am a good host when they want to stay. I simply remain. Open. Available. I reach out once. To see if there is interest beyond where we already meet. If there is none, I know my place immediately.
Most do not stay long. Sometimes weeks. Sometimes months. Then they reflect. And what seemed natural in the moment begins to feel abnormal through the lens of what society says connection should look like. So they recalibrate. And I become too much.
There is a filter most people carry without knowing it. One that tells them how to behave, with whom, and at what level. I was not born with that filter.
Once, a friend brought her six year old son to visit. I got down on the floor and played with him. Fully. Without self consciousness. Without the performative distance most adults maintain around children. Afterward she said: “you’ll make a good mother.” She meant it as a compliment. But what she was really observing was that I had simply treated him as another person. Another playmate.
Another time a coworker brought her children to the office at the end of the day. An eleven year old and a seven year old. I was horseplaying with them. Fully. Loudly. Joyfully. To the point where their mother had to apologize to our manager.
I was not performing for the children. I was not being childish. I was simply showing up. The way I always do. Without regard for what age appropriate behavior is supposed to look like.
That is not immaturity. That is the absence of hierarchy.
I simply show up for them. Fully. Without reservation.
I am too much for a world that prefers surfaces. Not enough for a world that expects the conventional. I have never been either. And I have never pretended to be.
