Published on 12, July, 2020
My question is - do you have any place (community, environment, online,,, anywhere) where you feel you belong to and can be 'as you are' without masking or concealing the autism diagnosis?I'm an autistic adult who recently found out I'm autistic, in my 30s.Currently I feel a little lost, that I am reluctant to disclose my diagnosis at work, to my friends, even to my family... I feel I never experienced 'unmasking' too. So I'd love to hear some others stories who have places like you feel home.Thank you!
When I am absorbed in something to the exclusion of all else.
When I'm like that I imagine I'm in a bubble that nothing can get through...it's like I find inner peace.
The Zone I call it.
For me it is transcendent, like I've entered a vast, flowing current of consciousness. I feel connected. Hard to describe, really but delicious beyond compare.
It's like... as in how TS Eliot ends The love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.
.
"We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown••."
T S Eliot was no stranger to the 'zone' himself.
••The drowning at the end is equal to the myriad, crude ways that we are pulled out of this ecstasy: like the phone ringing or someone calling us to dinner or, demanding our presence in the "real" world.