Let's Meet Theresa

By skyorty | Updated: Aug. 14, 2024, 3:36 p.m.

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Autism Level 1 Speaks
by Theresa Werba
In a world of hyper-stimuli,
lights and sounds and touches,
I retreat into the world within myself for relief.
There is too much to process all at once.

It comes at me like a screaming hoard,
shoving up against my walls and forcing me to interact.
Why interact?

Most talk like that is 
stupid, pointless, irrational.

If you do not care how 
I am today, why do you 
ask me how I am?

Just say Good Morning 
or Hello!
It is this stupid,
slow world,
where I move faster, 
think better,
process factually,
that frustrates me.

And when you talk, do I 
really understand?

Why is it that we misalign, 
why do I misperceive what 
you are saying?

Is this why you are 
frustrated with me?

Why do you think I’m being rude, when I am just annoyed?
Why is my voice too loud, my speech 
too intense?
You do not like the things I like, the things that interest me,
and I could talk unimpeded for hours about these very interesting things
unless you stopped me.

It could be canals or the Shakespearean authorship issue,
or points of linguistics, 
or the study of late Antiquity, or Jewish history, or poetry - 
my poetry.
You do not understand the tiny things that matter so much to me, or why they do, 
why I must tell you every detail, every minutia, 
why I have to explain,
must explain, everything, every little thing.
My mental world is overloaded and then
I go outside where the world
is overloaded and then
I can do no more.
At times it seems I do not even care

because in that moment it is simply not available for me to care.
But inside myself, my heart 
is wide, and deep,
so deep I have to shut it off in order 
to get through the
interactions into which I must engage.
Why has it been so hard
to walk into a store,
or interact in public?
Must I always play the game,
must I always act, pretend, and be somebody else just to buy something?
My mind explodes
with ideas, thoughts,
learning and logic,
connections and observations,
but when to stop, 
and when to give you 
a turn to speak 
evades me.
I am learning to do this to this very day.
Without the social mask, 
I’m sure you would not like me; being myself is one long conversation with myself.
But I have learned to smile,
to look into your eyes,
to be politic when necessary (though I hate necessity), to play the nice game of interaction.
If you would only understand!
My heart is not my talking, but I am truly trying to reach you through my talking, and so I’m talking, on and on and on and on and on.
For rages come, and anger,
the cursing, the frustrations, the rantings.
Why is everyone so stupid?
Why am I in a world of idiots?
Why doesn’t this person
have a brain?
Perhaps my only disability
is my intelligence.

My hyper-wired brain
is both an advantage
and a defect.

Rigid and inflexible to sudden change,
it sends me into spasms
as I try to figure out what
is now going on.
But it is not supposed to be this way! That is not what the menu said! That is not what you told me before!
What I cannot process I therefore cannot understand,
And the world then makes me angry and frustrated.
Only in the confines and restrictions of my bed, my routine morning puzzles,
my daily evening internet,
am I at equilibrium.
Here it is that I can find the quiet absent within my own mind.
So, when I talk, that is truly me,
trying to get out, one iota of the cosmos within, one speck of the vast universe of my thoughts.
Wouldn’t you like to join this world and listen for 
a little while?
So, be patient with me, 
try to listen through,
try to understand,
because inside 
I am very, very alone,
just my thoughts and me, trying to be heard.

(From Finally Autistic: Finding My Autism Diagnosis as a Middle-Aged Female, 2024; also appearing in What Was and Is: Formal Poetry and Free Verse, 2024.)

Let's Meet Theresa

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