i peel myself back,
looking for skin.
for bone.
for something warm-blooded
and nameable.
but there’s only
mood swings - ADHD?
echolalia - autism.
hobbies that turn to hunger -
special interests.
talking too much - ADHD.
talking too little - trauma. Or is that autism?
flinching at softness - trauma.
stimming - trauma. Or ADHD?
people-pleasing - trauma.
Shutting down - trauma.
Or were those also autism?
what isn’t accounted for?
when i laugh,
is it because i’m happy
or because it’s the safest sound to make?
when i sit in silence,
is it peace
or practiced disconnection?
was i ever whole,
or was i built
out of reaction,
adaptation,
survival?
do i still count
as a person?
i truly cannot tell.
but if i don’t -
that’s okay.
because this is who i am now.
a map of every exit i had to take.
a body full of reroutes.
a nervous system that remembers everything.
even if nothing here
was born purely,
even if it all came from need -
what’s left
is, well, what I have left.
Jul 31, 2025
Jul 31, 2025 at 12:33 PM UTC
i peel myself back,
looking for skin.
for bone.
for something warm-blooded
and nameable.
but there’s only
mood swings - ADHD?
echolalia - autism.
hobbies that turn to hunger -
special interests.
talking too much - ADHD.
talking too little - trauma. Or is that autism?
flinching at softness - trauma.
stimming - trauma. Or ADHD?
people-pleasing - trauma.
Shutting down - trauma.
Or were those also autism?
what isn’t accounted for?
when i laugh,
is it because i’m happy
or because it’s the safest sound to make?
when i sit in silence,
is it peace
or practiced disconnection?
was i ever whole,
or was i built
out of reaction,
adaptation,
survival?
do i still count
as a person?
i truly cannot tell.
but if i don’t -
that’s okay.
because this is who i am now.
a map of every exit i had to take.
a body full of reroutes.
a nervous system that remembers everything.
even if nothing here
was born purely,
even if it all came from need -
what’s left
is, well, what I have left.
This is what it feels like to unpack your own existence with a clinical checklist in one hand and grief in the other. I wrote this while wondering if there was ever a version of me that didn’t come from adaptation. Maybe not. Maybe this is all trauma. But if so, I still made something out of it. And that still counts.
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