DEFECTIVE EPILOGUE

To the court I present, Exhibit A, for a defective epilogue if you like, to our relationship, like closing a door that was never open anyway.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m invisible,” he said.

“You’re not invisible,” she said. “I can see you”

“Aww, thank y—”

“People just find you boring.”

I don’t know what makes me happy, not in the way people normally say it, not in the “I should try new hobbies” way, not in the “I need to relax more” way. I mean I genuinely do not know what happiness feels like when it isn’t being measured.

A long time ago – so long ago I no longer remember the moment it happened – I chose my interests, not because they pulled at me, but because they proved something. Books that made me look intelligent, skills that made me look capable, projects that made me look impressive. I curated hobbies the way a museum curates artefacts, not for joy, but for display.

And somewhere across the years, the pretending stopped, and the hobbies became real. The interests embedded themselves into me like shrapnel that the body decides is safer to keep than remove. But the motive never changed, for everything I do “for fun” is work. Work to prove, to justify, to validate, and, ultimately, for attention.

If I am not producing something meaningful, something tangible, something I can hold up to the world like a severed head and shout “Look! Evidence!” – then my brain quietly classifies the time as wasted.

Colouring, reading fiction, or just sitting still. – All of it comes with a sour aftertaste of guilt, so my brain flags it as danger. This isn’t a productivity issue, it’s an identity one. I’ve accidentally built a life where, “If I am not producing, I am nothing” and my nervous system fully believes that.

I know – intellectually – that rest is useful, mindfulness is healthy, that recovery fuels productivity, etc etc. I understand the logic perfectly. But this isn’t logic, this is a threat response. Because at its core, all of this is just an identity problem that my body has mistaken for survival, because “being clever” is not a personality trait I developed – it is a defence I constructed.

For context, the need to be “clever” stems from a childhood of being told I was stupid, when I was in fact just autistic. I absorbed that sentence without question, fully accepting that whatever room I walked into, I was always the stupidest person in that room, and it became the background music of my childhood, it didn’t even bother me, I was content, for it was all I had ever known.

I was an adult before I started to question it. And that caused everything I thought I knew about myself to collapse so quickly that the only thing that cushioned the fall for years was alcoholism.

And now, with my childhood and alcoholism behind me. – I feel cheated out of a life, I have to show the world that they were wrong about me. So I code, draw, write, paint, design, animate, create, invent, constantly, relentlessly, desperately trying everything, anything, to get noticed, to be seen, for not the stupid boy, but the one they overlooked.

I’ve had praise. Positive feedback, kind words about my books, my art, my projects. But none of it lands. – I’m still standing here waving my hands, desperate to be noticed for who I am.

So, will I ever accept I’m not stupid? Probably not, because that’s not the actual problem. Schools can be bad places, and children can be mean, but the really important part to every childhood, more important than the teachers and children, is the foundation, and the foundation to every child is their parents. And my parents, one was so oblivious to my problems, and the other just rejected them.

So it feels like I’m trying to “prove I’m clever.” But I’m actually trying to correct a verdict that was handed to a child who never got a defence.

A kid who was told he’s stupid… and then left alone with that sentence for decades. So now adult-me is in a constant courtroom, presenting exhibit after exhibit: books, art, coding, music, websites, all saying: “See? I’m not what you said I was.” But the people I’m trying to prove it to… aren’t in the room.

My parents aren’t watching, my teachers aren’t watching, the kids who judged me aren’t watching, the internet? It’s not a jury, it’s a void.

So I keep submitting evidence to an empty courtroom. That’s why it never lands, that’s why it never feels finished, that’s why no amount of output scratches the itch.

Because this was never about the world noticing me. It was about a child who was never seen, never understood, and most of all, a child who was never defended. For the most painful part of all of this is that I am trying to get strangers, to do the job my parents failed to do.

So I stand here, waving my hands, hoping someone will look at my work and say,

“You’re brilliant, and you always were.”

But that sentence will never heal when it comes from strangers. It will only heal if it comes from me, aimed backwards in time.

I don’t feel cheated out of a life because I didn’t succeed, I feel cheated because no one recognised who I was when it mattered most, and that’s grief, not ambition.

And the reason rest feels like guilt is because when I stop producing, that child’s voice comes back:

“See? You are stupid. No wonder everyone rejected you.”

So I outrun it with creation, not chasing attention but running from a forty-year-old accusation. Trying to retroactively earn a sentence I should have been given as a child:

“You’re not stupid, or defective, you’re just different, and that’s okay.”

I don’t need more output, I already have the evidence. Teachers, parents, siblings, doctors, I have proved them all wrong a thousand times over.

I am not stupid, I was never stupid, I was an autistic kid in a world that didn’t know how to see me.

The only person who needs convincing… is the small me, forgotten in the corner of the room, still carrying that label.