The Price We Pay

This is the price we pay: knowing from childhood that we are different from other girls, desperately trying to connect, yet still left on the outside.

We experience soaring highs and crushing lows,

living with crippling anxiety that can only be turned down, never tuned out.

We yearn for human connection, but too often, our touch burns the people we love the most.

We shine in classrooms, but must spend hours alone to recover from the effort.

Advice comes sharp: “You should go outside more after school to lose weight.”

But I never had the words to explain how empty I felt the moment I crossed the threshold of my family’s home.

We pay the price of masking our true selves to survive, smothering bright pieces of our soul, unsure if they’ll ever return.

Slowly, we smother ourselves until we wonder if anything is left to love or recognize.

Some of us fade, day by day, dying decades earlier than our neurotypical peers.

Others, unable to bear the price, choose to end their suffering, seeing no other way to feel whole. This is the price we pay.

Mothers wonder what they missed. Fathers feel helpless, crying at folding tables during visitation.

When a doctor is summoned to help, they ask, “Have you had a boyfriend? Did you do well in school?”

No one ever asked my family or me at what cost these things were achieved. To this doctor’s credit, they wrote the referral.

I finally felt seen by my psychologist—they understood the price I had paid. Walking down the hallway to receive my evaluation report was the longest walk of my life. Hearing the words “autism level one” proved that the price I paid was by design. The system was not made for me. I began to heal, but grief lingered. What could have been different if I’d been diagnosed sooner? The price is not only paid by the disabled person for lack of a diagnosis—it’s paid by the family, the entire family.