The Level 2 In-betweener
I live on a bridge between two worlds,
in the quiet place where Level 1 and Level 3 meet.
I am the unseen middle—
the Level 2 In-betweener.
Every autistic life is its own map,
charted with different landmarks,
different storms.
Yet these labels—these “levels”—
are double-edged blades.
They name our needs,
but they divide our worth.
They whisper that some are too much,
while others are not enough.
I see the parents of Level 3 children
fighting a different kind of war.
I have family who live in that world—
I know the gravity they carry.
There is a profound weight
in a pain that cannot be spoken.
A quiet heartbreak
in loving someone you cannot reach,
in watching suffering you cannot translate.
Sometimes that silence
is harder for the family than the person living inside it—
an endless ache of empathy
for a loved one who cannot say,
“It hurts.”
Yet within that high-support world
there exists a strange and uneasy privilege:
visibility.
Level 3 comes with lowered expectations,
with recognition, with support.
With funding, intervention,
and a seat at the table of inclusion.
No one tells a Level 3
to simply push through.
No one demands they mask
until the seams split.
Then there are the Level 1s—
fierce, relentless—
campaigning simply for the right to exist.
They carry the full weight
of their different wiring alone,
under expectations that stretch
far beyond human tolerance.
They receive little—
no grace, no funding, no understanding—
unless they wage the equivalent
of World War III
every single day.
Not just within medicine
or social care,
but everywhere.
Every shop.
Every conversation.
Every hour.
A constant battle
to be believed.
And I—
I flicker between these two worlds.
I know the trauma that shadows high-support needs,
the grief families carry in silence.
But I also know the quiet dismissal
reserved for those who can speak,
who appear capable,
who wear the mask too well.
I hold a strange kind of passport—
a “golden ticket”
that switches disbelief to empathy in an instant:
“I was a non-verbal child”
With those words,
the gaslighting stops.
The room softens.
Nothing about my needs changes.
The suit still doesn’t fit.
But suddenly
my struggle becomes legitimate.
A validation
so many Level 1s are denied.
But there are others, too—
those who walk beside us
without a label at all.
People who recognise
that their minds bend and move
closer to the neurodivergent world
than the neurotypical one.
Maybe their needs are small.
Maybe they have none at all.
Yet what they seek
is not intervention
or accommodation.
Only recognition.
Connection.
A quiet understanding that says:
You belong here too.
Because sometimes
the greatest support a person needs
is simply the knowledge
that they are not alone.
That their wiring
is not wrong—
only different.
And that difference
still has value.
So to the Level 3 parents:
your silence is heavy—
but your visibility is powerful.
To the Level 1s:
I see the war you fight
in every corner of your life.
And to those without a label—
whose minds still echo our patterns—
I see you too.
You do not need a diagnosis
to have worth.
You do not need a label
to belong.
And I remain here,
in the middle.
The Level 2 In-betweener.
A bridge between worlds.
Living proof
that the ability to speak
is not the absence of struggle.
So perhaps it is time
we stop weighing whose trauma is heavier,
and start recognising
that every one of us
is simply trying to live
inside a suit
that was never made to fit.
