FIELD NOTES ON A CREATURE PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT TO BE LOST

For many moons, the creature was observed trying to live in unsuitable habitats.

Office break rooms. Chat threads. Family get-togethers. Places where everyone else seemed to have received instructions regarding when to speak, laugh, leave, care, stop caring, figure out how to stand normally . . .

Researchers noted excessive self-monitoring.

The creature was mostly just trying to get through the day without doing something weird.

Eventually a troubling possibility emerged.

Perhaps the creature wasn’t failing to adapt.

Perhaps it’d gone so long being studied through others’ definitions of normal that its own instincts were smelling slightly suspicious.

Too quiet was wrong.
Too sensitive was wrong.
Leaving early was wrong.
Needing more time was wrong.
Wanting a different life was especially wrong.

But something survived underneath all that correction.

A little pull from somewhere deep inside.

Not this.

Not them.

Not anymore.

At first it was easy to ignore. Years of practice will do that.

But creatures don’t need permission to know when a habitat is hurting them.

These days, the creature still occasionally wanders into places where it doesn’t belong.

Still gets that old feeling.

Shit. It’s me.

Only now, another thought sometimes pops up before the creature tears itself apart.

What if it isn’t?

All those years, It’s me never once had to show its work.

— Autistic Ang

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