Letters to my younger self...

As you may have noticed from the many clues on the site, my name is Nicolás, and I am autistic.

As you’ll read again in the text at the end of each letter, I was recently diagnosed with C-PTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), a result of living life in a world not only not made for people like me, but a world that constantly shows us we are not welcome.

At some point in my life, I began to have periods of anxiety and depression. For a long time, I thought it was simply my brain working differently, autistically. Recently, I realized it wasn’t just that, and that there was something more. After a long diagnosis, my therapist and I concluded that I have C-PTSD.

You only need 30% of the symptoms for a diagnosis (with certain criteria). I, like many other autistic people, have 80% of the symptoms.

Something common in victims of torture... something common in autistic people.

The work regarding this new diagnosis has been particularly difficult. Not only to do, but even to know how to begin. It turns out that C-PTSD is very different in autistic people. For example, initially, something that seemed strange to me is that one of the most notable characteristics of C-PTSD are flashbacks, and I didn’t seem to have them. It turns out that, for many autistic people who think in images, flashbacks are not (at least in my case) distinguishable from a normal memory. Likewise, hypervigilance is something that is already part of my daily life, and is not something I can distinguish from a symptom of C-PTSD.

So, for example, I can have a flashback and not realize it, just feel bad and not know why. Or I can be alone at home where, in theory, I don’t need to maintain constant vigilance of my behavior and environment, only to be trapped in that mental state without realizing it.

That, and the lack of literature on the subject, led me to write these letters. As another attempt to find some way to work on my past. And, if possible, resolve something in my present.

Letters I wish I had received in the past

My autism diagnosis was late. At 16 years old.

By then, unfortunately, I had already accumulated a decade of abuse, mistreatment, and discrimination. The worst was not knowing why. Not understanding why.

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” — H.P. Lovecraft

Without knowing of this phrase’s existence, I understood its meaning very early in life. I consider that was one of the things that most affected me in those years: not knowing why things happened to me, not knowing why I felt the way I did, not knowing why I couldn’t do the things others could do.

Knowing the reason for things may not seem important, but it’s more important than it seems. It would have been for me, at least.

Letters I wish I didn’t have to write in the present

In the end, these letters are an attempt to make sense of the absurd.

Absurd in the cruelest sense of the word. In the sense that Albert Camus gives in his work The Myth of Sisyphus.

In their own way, these letters are a way to work on my past. But at the same time, they are a reminder of the reality that surrounds me.

I consider that, currently, I have achieved the rebellion against the absurd proposed by Camus in various aspects of my life. A rebellion that must be carried out every day. All days. All life. Tired doesn’t begin to describe the weight of such a life. However, the alternative is simple.

Not playing the game. Or more simply put, ending my life. Suicide. As many other autistic people have done. As many other autistic people will do.

As of today, writing this, it has been day 10,468 that I have decided not playing the game is not an option. But it has also been day 10,468 that I have had to remind myself that not playing the game is an option.

In the end, these letters are an attempt to make sense of the absurd. I can only imagine a life free from these thoughts. A life where it’s not necessary to rebel against the absurd every day. A life where it’s not necessary to remember that not playing the game is an option. A life where I didn’t have to write these letters.

But that life is not mine. And it won’t be. It wasn’t before, and it won’t be in the future.

Maybe you, who are reading this, are not autistic. And maybe it seems difficult to consider something as extreme as what I’ve presented here. I invite you to read the first two letters and reconsider if this is exaggerated or not.