Nicole Cliffe's post about autism hit hard for me. I've felt out of place in the world for most of my personal. I totally get it what it feels like to feel like an alien who is always just slightly abnormal. It's a hard way to live.

Childhood was a nightmare. I did so much masking, which I didn’t know was masking until…a few years ago?

it gave me the information I desperately needed: how to look normal to other people. How people are. How they communicate to each other. I remember reading The Left Hand of Darkness and as Genly Ai struggled to make sense of this alien culture’s concept of “shifgrethor”, described in the book as “prestige, face, place, the pride-relationship, the untranslatable and all-important principle of social authority in Karhide and all civilizations of Gethen” thinking “Jesus, that’s exactly what it’s like for me to be alive all the time.”