with—how hard it was to relate to classmates, how adrift and overstimulated he felt. A therapist had floated Autism as a likely explanation. Then my cousin pointed out all the Autistic traits he’d noticed were common in our family. We didn’t like change. None of us could handle talking about our emotions and mostly interacted using a surface-level script. Some of us had hang-ups about food textures and strong flavors.
