Dear Little Me - Letter(s) to my younger self
Dear Little Me,
You're three. You've just become a big sister, so life is changing so much right now. It's okay. You're so smart, smarter than a 3 year old really has any right to be. The world is big, and you're so little - and you discovered that books are an escape from everything, even though you don't know yet that that's what you're doing, escaping from the confusing and ever changing world into the familiarity of your books. Hop on Pop never changes no matter how many times you read it. One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish is the same story every time. Fox In Socks? Green Eggs & Ham? The entire series of Spot the dog books? No matter how big or loud or scary the world is, they stay the same and there’s something comforting about that. Something about that feels safe and just feels right. And that's okay. There isn't anything wrong with you. You're autistic; you just don't know it yet.
Don't Take The Girl by Tim McGraw is your favorite song. You call it Johnny's Daddy because those are the first words of the song, and every time you're in the car you want to listen to it. That's weird. That's a weird song for a three year old to obsess over. But there's nothing wrong with you.
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Dear Little Me,
You're five. You started kindergarten a couple of weeks ago and you learned quickly that you love school because you're smart and you're curious - you want to know more about everything possible. Kindergarten is fun because the work isn't too hard and it's only a half day, so you're still home to watch Days of Our Lives with grandma in the afternoons. You made friends with the other kids at your bus stop, but later on in life you'll wonder if you were friends out of convenience (there's only so many kids your age in this small town, a town too small to technically be a town.. it's actually a village) or if you would have been friends anyway. You'll grow up, you'll grow apart, you're just too "different" for them... but you don't know that yet. You're doing your best and I'm proud of you. The world is still big and you're still little, but damnit you're trying and I see you and I am so proud of you. Your teacher will write in your report card that you're kind and a good friend, that you're compassionate but you're too sensitive, that you excel in reading (of course you do!), you love story time, and you're good at spelling. She'll write that your handwriting needs a lot of improvement (I'll be honest, little me, it still does to this day. But you can type almost anything you need to, so don't worry too much about your handwriting), you needed "much improvement" with beginning and ending tasks on time (you're better about this these days), and you didn't ask for help even if you needed it (still true). She'll tell your parents in that report card that you lack self confidence, you're too hard on yourself, and you get down on yourself quickly. Your parents notice this too - if you aren't immediately good at something, you don't want to do it.
Kindergarten ends and you start first grade. First grade is a big change. The class sizes are bigger and suddenly school lasts all day. It's louder and more people means it's more chaotic, and you're shy to the point of being unable to speak at times. It isn't so much playing and crafts as it is actual learning and it's too much. I wish I could go back in time, little me, and tell you how it all turns out so good, tell you how we love who we grew up to be. But for right now, you're five, you're six, and you cry and cry and have migraines far more often than a kid your age should and there's no medical reason for it. As far as anyone can see, you're a healthy kid. There isn't anything wrong with you. You're autistic; you just don't know it yet.
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You're seven and you're in second grade. This is the first year you're had a male teacher and to be honest you're a little afraid of him because he’s loud. That's okay. You're allowed to be. You don't know it yet at the start of the school year, but this is going to be one of your favorite years in school. This is the year you'll meet your best friend, and even though there'll be some years in middle/high school when you two grow apart, you also grow back together in adulthood and her children will call you Aunt Kimberly. But for now, you're seven and you've only just met each other. This is the year that the first Harry Potter book comes out and you have a high enough reading level that this book is independent reading for you. At DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) Time, you grab your trusty classroom copy of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone, curl up under a desk or table, and disappear into Harry's world. This is the year you start to think you're actually a bit smarter than your peers but also that you're somehow.... different from them. You start to notice that they don't seem to think about how they're holding their body when they're talking to each other. You start to notice that words seem to come easily to them, even if there's a lot of people around. You start to notice how quickly and easily different facial expressions come to them, almost like they don't even have to think about it first. You're seven and you already know if you're going to survive in this world, you're going to have to figure out how to do what everyone else seems to just know how to do. I see you, little me, and I love you.
Your best friend is your lifeline. You watch her to figure out what you're not doing right to be a person. You watch her face and her body and what she does with her hands while she talks and you study and try to memorize what to do with yours. She asks you at a sleepover one night "why do you stare at me??" You'll apologize and say you didn't mean it (because somehow, even at seven, you know that "I was trying to figure out how to be a person" isn't the right thing to say and might just be weird enough to end a newly formed best-friendship), and all is quickly forgotten because that's how life works when you're seven. I know you think you’re “too much”. I know you already think you’re too much for other people, too shy, too quiet, too attached to the people you’re closest to, too passionate about the things you like (and right now it’s the Harry Potter series), but little me, you are not too much. You have never been too much. I want to reach back in time and hug you. You're okay. There isn't anything wrong with you. You're autistic; you just don't know it yet.
Also, You Were Mine by The Dixie Chicks is your favorite song. That's a weird song for a seven year old to love, but there isn't anything wrong with you.
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Dear Little Me,
You're thirteen. You want nothing more than to be invisible because you're so tired of people picking on you. You know you're different no matter how hard you try to be the same. You want so much to be like everyone else that when your dentist recommends braces, you're so beyond excited because it seems like all the popular kids have had braces and maybe, maybe, maybe if you get braces, people will leave you alone. It doesn't happen that way, little me, and I'm so sorry. I wish I could talk to you and let you know that we make it and we're happy now. I wish I could say otherwise, but middle school and the start of high school is rough. They're rough years. I know you feel so lonely - your best friend got popular, but you didn't and that distance is starting to grow between you no matter how hard you try to stop it. You still watch Pokémon and the shows on Disney Channel, while your classmates are moving on to watching MTV or VH1 or whatever channel was popular that you didn’t care about. You're not interested in boys, but god you try so hard to be. You tried, little me, and I love you for it. When your best friend mentions how cute and you a certain boy in your grade would be together, you'll tell her to set you two up because you still don't know how to talk to people who aren't immediate family or the friends you made as a small child. When you find out a couple months in to what was supposed to have been forever (because you're thirteen and that's how life is) that he only said yes to going out with you because he wanted to get closer to your best friend because he had a crush on her mom (yes, little me, this happens and it sucks and I’m sorry. But trust me, even though I know you’ll pretend to be heartbroken because you think you’re supposed to be, it actually doesn’t bother you as much as you think it should), you'll ask her to break up with him for you too. I wish I could tell you not to bother with him; you never had a crush on him, you never had a crush on any boy and there's nothing wrong with that. You're a baby gay and you're still trying to figure out what it means that you feel about girls the way your classmates are saying they feel about boys. You aren't broken. You aren't wrong.
You're thirteen. People knock your books out of your hands when you're walking down the hallway and it’s a regular occurrence. You keep your head down because you're terrified to look at anyone - just a look might be enough for them to say something or do something. People laugh behind their hands and make fun of you with every presentation you have to give in class. You can't talk in front of people; your teachers are forever telling you to speak up, speak up, SPEAK UP and slow down because you're talking too fast, just wanting it to be over. None of this is your fault. Your emotions are bigger than you know what to do with. You cry what feels like too often and it feels like there's constantly anger bubbling right underneath the surface. You don't know how to be and it's frustrating; I know it is. I wish I could go back in time, I want to just talk to you. You feel like no one understands you, and the logical part of your brain knows that's how a lot of thirteen year olds feel, but it's so much deeper than that. You're hiding it with a smile, but you’re miserable and you start to wonder if you're broken. If you were born wrong somehow, maybe not even actually a human, not meant to live is this world because none of it makes any SENSE. You escape into any book you can find, but the book that becomes most important to your life is the first Maximum Ride book. Little me, I wish I could somehow tell James Patterson how much that book meant to us. How even still to this day, in our 30s, we reread the entire series at least once a year, how Max and the Flock felt like genuine friends to us at times, how much it meant to have those characters and that story at some of the loneliest points in life.
Little me, there is nothing wrong with you. You aren't broken, you aren't wrong, you aren't an alien who landed on the wrong planet. You're autistic; you just don't know it yet.
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Dear Little Me,
You're fifteen and it's 2006. Mom is going to come home a little later than normal from work one night because she had to stop at Walmart on the way home to pick up some things. While she's there, she'll pick up a CD for you - some girl she heard on the local country radio station. She thinks you'll enjoy it. The CD is Taylor Swift's debut CD. Little me, that CD is life changing. Taylor's lyrics hit you and there's just something about them, they feel safe, they feel like advice you wish you had gotten from a nonexistent older sister. Lyrics like “I’m alone, on my own, and that’s all I know” and “you’re tied together with a smile but you’re coming undone” and “how can I ever try to be better? Nobody ever lets me in” and “why would you wanna make the very first scar? Why would you wanna break a perfectly good heart?” resonate like no other lyrics have. Other people enjoy Taylor's music, but you're obsessed. You want to know everything about her and hear every song ever written by her. All you can think about is Taylor Swift and the Maximum Ride books. You spend conversations wishing someone would bring up either topic because while most topics aren't things you know or care to talk about, it's like a whole other side of you when you get to talk about them. It actually frustrates you a little bit - if you can talk about Taylor Swift to anyone, why do words only come easily when you're around people you're comfortable with when it comes to any other topic? There isn't anything wrong with you. You're autistic; you just don't know it yet.
Also, little me, I don't want to spoil it, (but I will because I know you need something to look forward to!) but you'll see Taylor Swift in concert 3 times. You'll go to the Speak Now Tour concert at the XL Center in Hartford, CT with your best friend, the 1989 World Tour concert at the American Airlines Arena in Miami, FL with your best friend, and then again during the Eras Tour at the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, FL with your wife. Yes, little me, your WIFE. This secret you don't want anyone to know? These days, you don't care you knows. You're proud to be who you are and, at thirty three, you're trying to be the person you wish fifteen year old you could see. Little me, I’m proud of you. I’m proud of us.
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Dear Little Me,
You're seventeen, maybe eighteen. Not so little anymore. Maybe "Younger Me" is better at this point. This is where I want most to be able to go back in time. Seventeen, eighteen, and miserable. You become friends with someone who... God, younger me, I don't know if he was ever your friend. Looking back now, I think he saw someone he could manipulate and hurt, but I don't know. You meet him on the first day of classes at Columbia Greene and you seem to just click. In a way that hasn't happened since you met your best friend back in second grade, you almost immediately feel comfortable with him. And that scares you. He introduces you to his friends from his high school and they welcome you with open arms - while you're friends with him. Things seem so good at first, but it isn't long until nothing you do is good enough. Younger me, I wish I could tell you to run from him. I wish I could tell you that you aren't wrong, he is. He never, ever puts his hands on you. But he yells at you, he tells you how useless you are, he tells you how you're worthless, how you're nothing without him around, how lucky you are that he found you, he saved you, how your "friends" are only your friends because they were his friends first and that the friends who were your friends first, they're only staying your friend because of him. Younger me, none of this is true. None of it. And I’m so sorry that you had to go through that. Younger me, you're falling asleep every night in tears, wishing you had never been born, wishing, hoping, praying to whatever god might or might not exist that you just wouldn't wake up the next morning. Younger me, you're feeling like this must be the proof that there is no God because no loving God would let you be this miserable and still alive. Just like he never put hands on you, you never actually act on that wish to not be alive, and younger me, I am so grateful for that. He used to put Party In The USA on repeat while we drove around in his car and it's almost a decade until you can listen to that song again without the hair on the back on your neck standing up and without feeling like he'll be there if you turn around. He never hit you, so you feel like you're being too dramatic because other people have had it worse. Younger me, physical abuse is not the only type of abuse and I wish I could tell you that. I wish you knew that. Younger me, I know it will take years to believe it, and sometimes you still question it, but you are worthy of being loved no matter what he made you think. Younger me, no matter how he made you feel, you aren't broken, useless, worthless, better off dead. Younger me, you're autistic; you just don't know it yet.
You're seventeen. Your first semester of college, you'll take a public communications class and a classmate will give a presentation about autism. You don't know anything about autism, you just know stereotypes, but somehow everything she says connects with you. You're seventeen, and you don't know it yet, but that class, that presentation, it changed your life. Honestly, it might have saved your life. And I know that sounds dramatic but, younger me, with how miserable we were at that point and how different we'd always felt... that day in class was such a turning point. Because even though we didn't start researching more right then, it gave a suspicion in the back of our mind that lead us to where we are today. Younger me, you left class on that warm Fall day wondering if you might be autistic. And I'm here today, I am alive today, to tell you that you are. And you're not broken. There is nothing wrong with you. You're autistic; and while you don't know for sure just yet, you're just starting to wonder about that. To quote the psychologist who diagnosed us (at age thirty-three!), younger me, "you're not wrong."
Little me, younger me, life gets so much better than you think it will. You'll end up happy. Little me, you wanted to go to Nashville so badly because you found out that's where country music, the music that felt like home growing up, comes from and one day you'll get there and it'll be everything you ever dreamed of and more. You wanted to go to Australia because you found out that's where Keith Urban came from and you loved his accent more than anything in the world, and you get there too one day! You'll take a study abroad class and spend three weeks in the most gorgeous country you've ever been to. You'll argue with both your parents about going - they're concerned (and honestly, probably rightfully so) because the furthest you've ever been away from home (without family around) is just 4 and a half hours away at college, and Australia is on the whole other side of the world, but you go. You go and it's wonderful and magical and the best experience. Little me, when you realized you liked girls the way your friends liked boys, you thought that was a secret you would never be able to tell. You thought you would have to settle, to marry a man because you were "supposed to" and to have kids with him because you were "supposed to" and you'd be, maybe not happy, but hopefully not miserable. Let me tell you, little me, you'll get married to the most wonderful woman and you'll live a life where you can't imagine her not being in it, you can't imagine things being any different. And, no kids. Just cats, just like you hoped. Little me, we have a job we enjoy. We have friends who genuinely care and who we don't have to pretend to be anyone else around. Little me, we're happy. There's nothing wrong with us - and we know that now.
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