Autism in Heels: The Untold Story of a Female Life on the Spectrum

by Jennifer O'Toole

Remember that rigidity is partially the fruit of anxiety born of years of accumulated rejection and of our brains’ comparative executive function deficits. We trust easily because we don’t see strategy or others’ self-serving behavior. We take things at face value, expecting a lover’s promise of eternal devotion to be reliable, intransigent fact, never hopeful hyperbole. For those of us who aren’t used to kindness, who feel we are more endurable than lovable, who don’t know what “healthy” or even “friend” looks like, the now-or-never, this-person-or-all-is-lost feelings are what we’re taught to expect out of love and romance.

That is the lasting effect of autism by gaslight. Whether we’re known to be autistic or not, our experience of life is, according to other people, oversensitive, overdramatic, drama making, and attention seeking.

When you to cut to the chase, we are advised to change this and stop doing that—to stop behaving like ourselves, really. And, if we don’t, we will be burdens, disliked, undesirable, unemployable, isolated, mistreated, and, generally, rejected.