Pharos Tribune January “Healthy Selfie” Contest Winner!
This week, someone offered me a job I might’ve once dreamed of. Teaching yoga at a studio I love, invited by someone I deeply admire, in a space that already feels like home to my nervous system.
And my immediate reaction? Joy. Gratitude. Excitement. …And then: panic.
Not because I don’t want it. Not because it isn’t the right fit. But because it has the word job attached to it. And somewhere along the line, that word started to mean danger.
I finished my yoga teacher training last year. Back when I was still teaching kindergarten, still trying to survive the endless hamster wheel of work and burnout and pretending to be okay. Back then, yoga teacher training was supposed to be a side gig. A way to earn a little extra money. A way to stretch myself—literally and metaphorically.
I finished the training. I got certified. And then…I didn’t do anything with it.
Not because I didn’t want to. But because every time I thought about actually teaching a class—standing at the front of a room, being the person people looked to—I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
The idea of starting something new, of being responsible for other people again, of even just existing in a professional way again after everything I’d been through… It felt too big. Too close to the wounds that hadn’t fully healed. Too easy to fall back into old patterns of people-pleasing, self-abandoning, overextending.
So I just…sat on it. Held the certification in my hands but never used it. Told myself I wasn’t ready. Told myself maybe one day, when I wasn’t so scared.
And then this week, Natasha—one of my favorite instructors, someone whose voice and presence have made my own nervous system exhale more times than I can count—asked if I would like to teach.
Not an application. Not an audition. Just an invitation. Gentle. Genuine. Safe.
And even then—especially then—my stomach dropped.
I lost sleep over it. Not because anything was wrong. Not because Natasha had said anything scary or pressured me in any way. But because my body doesn’t know the difference yet.
It’s still wired to treat anything labeled “work” or “job” like a threat. It’s still holding onto the memory of late nights crying in classrooms, panic attacks in staff bathrooms, smiling through gritted teeth on law firm calls, pretending to be okay so convincingly that even I forgot I wasn’t.
When Natasha asked to meet up the next day to talk, I wanted to say yes immediately. I wanted to be the brave, excited version of me that lives somewhere inside.
But instead, I felt my whole system start to short-circuit. Tight chest. Racing mind. Restless sleep that never really came.
By Monday night, I knew I couldn’t do it. Not because I didn’t want to teach. But because I was already spinning so hard that the thought of one more step—one more commitment—felt like it might shatter me.
So I messaged her and asked if we could meet a different day. And of course—because she is who she is—she responded with understanding, with softness, with complete acceptance.
No pressure. No urgency. Just kindness.
And still, part of me felt silly. Ashamed. Like—Why am I like this? Why am I working myself into a panic over something that feels, in every logical way, like a gift?
But healing isn’t logical. Trauma isn’t logical.
It lives in the body long after the mind understands. It flares up even when the danger is gone.
This job—if you can even call it that—feels like the exact kind of opportunity my nervous system has been craving.
It’s not about hierarchy. It’s not about performance. It’s not about squeezing myself into a role that erases who I am.
It’s about embodiment. Presence. Breath. It’s about guiding others in something that has helped me feel safe in my own body again.
And still, it scares me.
Because for so long, “work” meant abandoning myself. It meant pushing through when I needed to rest. Smiling when I was breaking. Holding it together so everyone else could fall apart.
But this—this is different. This doesn’t require me to become someone else. It asks me to come exactly as I am.
And that’s why it feels terrifying. Because I’ve never had a job that made space for my wholeness. Only the parts of me that were useful. Productive. Palatable.
So I’m learning not to run. Not to back away from the thing that feels good just because I don’t know how to trust it yet. Not to dismiss something just because it doesn’t activate my survival mode.
I want to say yes. Slowly. Gently. With all of me. Not from fear, but from freedom.
Maybe this is what healing looks like. Not rushing into the fire again. But tiptoeing toward the warmth, just to see if it’s safe.
This is video #2 that I’m posting. I’m not sure if I’ll keep track of the number of videos forever, but for now it feels right.
This is just me being me — on video — even though I’ve never really been a “video of myself talking” kind of person. (I had to do it for a couple of college assignments and I hated it. That’s pretty much the only time I remember having to video myself.)
This one’s a little messy. I say “um” and “like” a lot — I know. Honestly, I do use “like” way too much in real life, but it’s just a word I love and it’s part of how I talk. I’m not usually much of an “um-er,” though.
I only recorded this once and watched it once, because I’m trying not to overanalyze or turn it into something it’s not. I just want to show up as the realest version of myself that I can.
I blink too much, and to me, it’s obvious I’m still not totally comfortable doing this yet. But that’s just how it is when you’re doing something new and vulnerable — and I know it’ll get easier with time.
For the next few videos, I might try writing myself a little script so I can get my points across more clearly. But for this one, I wanted it to be 100% natural.
Also, after I watched it back, I noticed the black paint on my fingers. But I’m not going to go wash my hands and re-record just because my hands are messy. Honestly, having paint on me (and usually some dirt under my nails) is pretty much my natural state.
I’ve shared a lot of words on this blog. But this time, I wanted to share my voice. My face. Me.
This video is the start of something new for me. It’s a little messy, a little scripty (I won’t lie), but it’s mine.
I’m not here to perform or perfect. I’m here to connect. To talk honestly about the things that matter—neurodivergence, burnout, healing, identity, feminism, softness, survival, joy.
If any of that resonates with you, welcome. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.
When was the last time you let yourself show up imperfectly—and still called it brave?
I’d love to hear your answer in the comments, or just let it sit with you quietly.
🧠💔 A personal essay on autism, ADHD, self-harm, and the journey toward self-compassion
⚠️ Note to Readers
This post contains personal reflections on self-harm, mental health, masking, and neurodivergence. Please read with care and compassion. If you are struggling, know you are not alone—resources are listed at the end of this post. I’m sharing this in hopes that someone else might feel seen.
I Didn’t Know Why I Did It
I was 21 the first time I self-harmed. It was the night of my sorority’s spring formal—an event I had spent weeks planning as the Vice President of Event Planning for Pi Beta Phi. That role wasn’t one I wanted; I took it on out of guilt and obligation when the original officer stepped down for her own mental health. No one else was willing to step up, and I didn’t want our chapter to fall apart under pressure from national headquarters.
So I did what I’d always done: I took on too much. I wore the perfect face. I planned the perfect party. I made sure everyone else had the time of their lives—even though I was barely surviving mine.
After the event, I went out with my boyfriend and friends to celebrate. Everything seemed fine. But later, back in my boyfriend’s room at his fraternity house, something broke. I sat down on the floor and started crying—hard. Full-body, couldn’t-stop sobbing. And then I started scratching the back of my neck, my arms, my shoulders. I pulled at my hair in sharp, frantic handfuls. It wasn’t premeditated. It wasn’t attention-seeking. It was a release. It was a meltdown. I didn’t know that word back then, but that’s what it was.
He pulled me into his arms and stopped me. And then I never spoke about it again.
The Perfection Trap
Looking back, it’s not surprising that it happened then. I was exhausted—emotionally, mentally, physically. But I didn’t know how to name it, and I didn’t feel like I had permission to admit it. I was a “high-functioning” sorority girl with leadership roles and a big smile. I was the girl people could count on. And I believed that being good meant never showing pain.
So I didn’t.
I buried it. I kept moving forward. I acted like it had never happened—because that’s what perfection required of me.
The Part of the Story I Didn’t Know Yet
It would be years before I’d begin to understand that I’m autistic. That I have ADHD. That my brain has always processed the world more intensely than others. That I’d been masking—hiding my real self to fit in, to survive—for most of my life.
That night wasn’t random. That moment on the floor was my body and brain screaming out after months (maybe years) of chronic overstimulation, internalized pressure, and emotional dysregulation. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t weak. I was melting down in the only way my nervous system knew how to.
But without a diagnosis, without language, without community or support—I thought it was just me. I thought I had snapped. I thought I was broken.
Teaching Burned Me Out Again
The next time it happened, I was a teacher—three years into my career at a public elementary school in Florida. I was overworked, under-supported, and living on Diet Coke, potato chips, and 3 hours of sleep a night. I stayed late at school. I brought home papers to grade and lessons to plan. I gave everything I had to my students and had nothing left for myself.
One night, the scratching and hair-pulling came back. I remember the sting, the sharpness, the brief moment of stillness that followed. The next day, a fourth grader asked about the marks on the back of my neck. I wore my hair in a bun every day, so they were visible.
I lied. “Oh, it was my cat,” I said. She believed me. Of course she did.
But they didn’t look like cat scratches.
It Wasn’t for Attention. It Was to Survive.
Self-harm is so misunderstood. Especially in neurodivergent people.
It wasn’t about getting someone to notice me. It was about trying to regulate a body that had gone completely dysregulated. It was a way to feel when I felt nothing. Or to distract myself from feeling too much. It was my brain’s desperate attempt to cope with things I didn’t know how to express in words.
And even when I did try to speak, I didn’t feel like I was allowed to.
Now I Know Better. Now I Treat Myself Kinder.
Today, I know that autistic and ADHD people are more prone to self-harm. Not because we’re “crazy” or “unstable” but because our brains and bodies are wired to experience the world in intense, overwhelming ways. We are more likely to internalize shame. More likely to mask. More likely to burn out quietly.
I’m not immune now. But I have better coping tools. I’ve found gentler ways to let the feelings out—through art, poetry, walking in nature, meditation, painting galaxies and wildflowers. I’m learning to ask for help. I’m learning to listen to myself when the early signs show up.
And I’m not pretending to be perfect anymore.
A Letter to My Younger Self
Dear Me at 21,
You weren’t crazy. You weren’t too sensitive. You weren’t weak.
You were breaking under the weight of a world that never taught you how to live in your body. You were trying to carry everyone’s expectations without dropping your own. You were masking pain with smiles and success and silence.
And when you finally cracked, you thought that meant something was wrong with you.
But all it meant was this:
You were overwhelmed. You were hurting. And you needed help.
I see you now. And I love you fiercely.
You made it. And you’re still making it.
Love, The version of you who finally knows she never had to be perfect. The one who wears softness like armor now.
Healing Isn’t Linear—But I’m Not Hiding Anymore
Up until this past summer, the self-harm moments had become more frequent than ever. It scared me. It felt like I was back in that place again—on the floor, overwhelmed, and alone.
But this time was different.
Because this time, I finally had answers. I was diagnosed with autism. And instead of shame, I felt relief. I was getting the help I needed. My parents, my siblings, and my friends showed up for me with love and support. There was no judgment. No pretending. Just care. And that made all the difference.
I still have moments. The past year has been one of the hardest of my life. So many changes. So much processing. So much unraveling.
But I also have more tools now. I can talk about the hard stuff instead of hiding it. I can lean on my boyfriend and my family. I can say “I’m not okay” without feeling like I’ve failed.
It still happens sometimes—but I don’t carry the shame anymore. I don’t keep it secret. And every time I speak it out loud, every time I let someone in, it loses a little more of its power over me.
I’m still working on it.
But the more I understand what’s really happening inside me—the sensory overload, the masking fatigue, the emotional spirals—the more I can show myself compassion. And the less alone I feel.
🕰️ The Timewalker: Part One – The Threads We Carry
This is the first part of a story I’ve been writing—about Wren, a young autistic and ADHD woman who can time travel with her black cat, Cat. She doesn’t change history with brute force—she changes it with empathy, insight, and by seeing what others miss. This is for anyone who’s ever felt too much, asked too many questions, or been told they don’t belong. You do. We always have.
Chapter One: The Crack in the Wall
Wren didn’t notice the crack until Cat meowed at it.
She was mid-scroll, knees pulled up to her chest, half-wrapped in a blanket burrito on her thrifted couch. Outside, the sky was sulking in that half-hearted spring way—too grey to be comforting, too cold to justify another hot chocolate. Cat, for his part, had been sitting by the back wall for a solid ten minutes, staring like it had personally offended him.
“Okay,” she muttered. “What existential threat have you found now?”
Cat flicked his tail once, slow and deliberate, and didn’t look at her.
Wren squinted at the wall. She’d lived in this studio apartment for three months now. The paint was peeling. The windows whined when the wind blew. The radiator was possessed. But the wall? The wall had never cracked before.
She stood, her joints stiff, and padded over in sock feet. The air near the wall felt colder. Not “the landlord forgot to insulate” cold—off cold. Like a breeze from a place that wasn’t here. She pressed her hand to the surface.
The crack was hair-thin but long, stretching like a jagged smile from the baseboard halfway up the plaster. Wren traced it with one finger. It thrummed faintly beneath her touch, like a heartbeat. Like it was… waiting.
Nope. Nope nope nope.
She stepped back. “Okay, no haunted apartment wall nonsense today.”
Cat meowed again, sharper this time.
Wren sighed. “You’re a menace.”
She scooped him up. He was heavier than he looked, all muscle and indignation. He immediately began to purr, but his eyes stayed fixed on the wall.
Wren had always noticed things other people didn’t.
The way certain lights buzzed so loudly she couldn’t think. The subtle shift in someone’s tone before they got annoyed. The patterns in ceiling tiles. The weight of words unsaid.
It wasn’t magic, exactly. Just her brain doing its own thing. A blessing and a curse, depending on the day.
Today, it mostly felt like a curse.
She’d been running on fumes for months before she finally crashed. Dropped out of her grad program. Stopped replying to texts. Moved back to her hometown because the rent was cheap and nobody asked questions.
Everyone said she was “too smart to burn out.” As if intelligence could somehow override sensory overload or social exhaustion. As if she hadn’t been masking since age five and it didn’t cost her everything.
The only one who didn’t expect anything from her was Cat. And possibly the wall.
That night, Wren couldn’t sleep.
She lay on her side, staring at the ceiling fan creak its slow, tired circles. Cat was curled at the foot of the bed, snoring in his own weird little way—like a tiny engine powering some ancient machine.
At 2:13 AM, she got up and padded to the wall again.
The crack was glowing.
Barely. Faint enough she might have missed it if not for the way the light danced—blue and silver, like moonlight on water.
She knelt. Reached out.
The moment her fingertips brushed the glow, the air shifted. Her room dissolved.
The couch, the radiator, the fan, the city outside—gone.
Replaced by warmth. Dust. Sunlight filtering through olive trees.
And a boy in a white tunic staring at her like she’d just fallen out of the sky.
Which, to be fair, she sort of had.
Chapter Two: Olive Branches and Open Mouths
The first thing Wren noticed was the heat.
It wasn’t the cloying humidity of Florida, or the stale radiators she grew up with—it was dry and golden, like sunlight had been ground into dust and sprinkled across the earth. The air smelled like dirt, thyme, and something floral she couldn’t name.
The second thing she noticed was that she was barefoot.
The grass was soft but scratchy. Too real. Too here. She looked down and realized her hoodie and leggings were still on her body, but the crack in the wall—the wall—was nowhere in sight.
And the boy in the tunic was still staring at her.
He looked about her age, maybe younger, with a face carved in curiosity and wide, stunned eyes. His tunic was off-white and belted at the waist. He held a clay jar in one hand, frozen mid-step.
“Uh,” Wren said. “Hi?”
The boy blinked. “You speak Greek?”
Wren blinked right back. “I—what?”
The words had slipped out of her mouth in her usual accent, but he had spoken something entirely different, and she had somehow… understood it. Not like she was translating, but like her brain had already sorted it before she could even question it.
“I—guess so?” she said.
He took a cautious step forward. “Are you a spirit?”
Wren blinked. “No. Just a girl. With a cat. Who is… not currently visible.”
Cat, of course, had disappeared.
Or had never come through the crack at all.
Her stomach flipped.
“Where am I?” she asked. “This isn’t Florida. This isn’t… this isn’t 2025.”
The boy tilted his head. “Twenty-what?”
Wren took a deep breath. The scent of olive trees hit her full force. She turned in a slow circle. Beyond the grove was a cluster of stone buildings, whitewashed and glowing in the late-afternoon light. Hills rose in the distance, dotted with cypress trees. A goat bleated somewhere nearby.
“I think,” she said softly, “I just time traveled.”
The boy dropped his jar.
It shattered on the ground.
They called him Thanos. Not like the purple guy, but short for Athanasios. He led her toward the village, cautiously, like she might disappear or smite him at any moment.
Wren was too overwhelmed to do anything but follow.
Her senses were on fire. The sound of sandals against the packed earth, the way the sky seemed wider, the chirping of insects—everything was so loud, so unfiltered. There was no air conditioning hum, no traffic, no glowing screens. Just… life.
And smells. Cooking fires. Wild herbs. Animal musk. Sweat.
Sensory overload threatened to swallow her whole.
“Breathe,” she whispered to herself. “In. Out. In. Out.”
Thanos looked over, concerned. “You’re not ill, are you?”
“No. Just… autistic.”
He frowned. “I do not know this word.”
Wren exhaled through her nose. “That makes two of us, honestly.”
The village was small—white buildings with flat roofs, narrow pathways, and pottery everywhere. People wore tunics, worked with their hands, and gave Wren many side-eyes as she passed.
A woman muttered something and made a gesture with her hands. A little girl pointed and laughed. A goat tried to eat Wren’s hoodie drawstring.
Thanos whispered, “They think you’re a nymph. Or a witch. Or Hermes in disguise.”
“Well,” Wren muttered, swatting the goat away, “Hermes does have great taste in shoes.”
“Who sent you?” he asked seriously. “The Oracle?”
“I don’t think anyone sent me. Unless Cat counts.”
Thanos stared.
Wren pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t even know why I’m here, okay? One minute I was in my apartment, touching a weird crack in the wall, and the next I’m standing in an olive grove getting goat-nibbled.”
“I believe you,” he said. “Strange things happen in this land.”
They reached a house with wide stone steps and a columned entrance. “My father is a philosopher,” Thanos said. “He’ll want to speak with you.”
“Oh great,” Wren muttered. “A man with opinions.”
As she stepped into the cool interior, Wren paused. The house smelled like ink and parchment, and roasted garlic. A different kind of grounding.
The moment she entered, an older man looked up from a scroll. His eyes narrowed as he took her in—sweatpants, hoodie, messy bun, and all.
“Who,” he asked in a measured voice, “is this?”
“This is Wren,” Thanos said. “She fell from the sky.”
Wren opened her mouth. Closed it. Sighed. “Hi.”
The philosopher stood. “You are not from here.”
“Nope.”
“You wear strange clothing.”
“Comfy,” she said, tugging on her hoodie.
“You are alone?”
“…I lost my cat.”
There was a beat of silence.
And then the philosopher did something strange.
He smiled.
Chapter Three: The Quiet Ones
The philosopher’s name was Damon. His house smelled like intellect and olives.
Wren spent the next few days sleeping in a corner room with a woven mat, trying to make sense of the century she’d fallen into. Cat was still missing. Every morning, she scanned the hills and alleyways. Every night, she whispered into the warm, candlelit dark, “Find me, please.”
But she wasn’t idle.
She asked questions—more than most people thought proper—and she answered with precision, especially when Damon invited her to his gatherings with other thinkers.
At first, they humored her. Then they underestimated her. Then they realized she could run mental circles around them.
Wren had always thought in spiderwebs—a million threads spinning at once, connecting across time and space and seemingly unrelated things. In this world of orators and scholars, her fast, pattern-obsessed brain was suddenly not a liability but a superpower.
Still, the women never spoke.
They poured wine, prepared figs, swept thresholds.
One afternoon, Wren caught a girl named Myrine watching her.
She was maybe twelve, eyes like polished amber, and she flinched every time someone raised their voice. She barely spoke, and when she did, she whispered in rhymes under her breath.
Wren approached slowly, like she might a bird in the woods.
“You think in pictures too, don’t you?” Wren asked.
Myrine nodded so faintly it was like her head caught a breeze.
Wren knelt beside her. “Do you hate loud sounds?”
Another nod.
“Do you repeat things in your head when the world feels too big?”
This time, Myrine smiled. Not big. Just enough.
“You’re not broken,” Wren said gently. “You’re like me.”
They met in secret—Myrine and three other girls who never quite “fit.” One lined up pebbles along the edge of the courtyard and remembered everything. One hummed tunelessly and had eyes that darted everywhere, absorbing it all. One never made eye contact but painted wild, aching beauty in the dirt with a stick.
They had been called “difficult.” “Touched.” “Useless.”
Wren called them brilliant.
She told them they were ancient minds living in a world that didn’t know how to see them.
And they listened—rapt, wide-eyed, and lit from the inside.
Wren taught them how to name their needs. How to stim safely. How to use metaphors and speak in ways the world might understand. Not to conform—but to be heard.
The debate came on the fifth evening.
A philosopher named Nikandros—booming voice, broad shoulders, ego like Mount Olympus—declared that women were unfit for reason. “Emotion is their language. They do not possess the spine for truth,” he said, sipping wine like the world existed to applaud him.
Wren rose slowly.
She hadn’t planned to speak.
But rage was a kind of lightning, and she had long since stopped trying to contain it.
“If emotion disqualifies a person from truth,” she said, “then why do your men kill over insults and spill blood for pride?”
Laughter rippled across the room. Uneasy. Intrigued.
Damon, seated nearby, gave a single approving nod.
“You think yourself clever,” Nikandros said. “But cleverness is not wisdom.”
“No,” Wren agreed. “But noticing patterns is. And I see a pattern in who is allowed to speak, and who is told to pour the wine.”
A stunned hush.
Wren pressed forward.
“I’ve watched women listen more closely than any man here. I’ve seen young girls calculate silence like it’s currency. We have minds like rivers and memories like maps. We see what you miss because you dismiss it.”
Nikandros rose.
“Would you debate me, then?” he asked, half-mocking.
“I already am,” Wren said, and smiled.
They debated for hours. Rhetoric, logic, ethics.
Wren was relentless—her ADHD hyperfocus locked in, her autistic need for precision turned razor-sharp. She took every assumption and flipped it inside out like a garment.
When the crowd finally dispersed, it was with muttering, awe, and no clear victor.
But Nikandros sat down quietly.
And poured her the wine.
Later that night, as the sky bruised purple over the hills, Wren sat beneath a fig tree with Myrine and the others. They practiced words: “I prefer quiet.” “I need space.” “Please speak slower.”
Myrine asked, “Will girls like us ever be remembered?”
Wren looked out at the horizon.
“Maybe not by name,” she said softly. “But I think—maybe—they’ll remember the shift. Like something cracked open here, and the light changed.”
A sudden rustle behind her.
Wren turned—and there, trotting across the grass like he owned the timeline, was Cat.
“Mrrp,” he announced, tail high.
Wren let out a laugh that turned into a sob. She scooped him up and held him to her chest.
“You found me,” she whispered. “I knew you would.”
Cat headbutted her chin.
“Okay,” Wren said, wiping her face. “That’s enough emotional vulnerability for the day.”
Chapter Four: The Smell of Smoke and Salt
The wind changed first.
It swept in low and strange through the fig trees, curling at Wren’s ankles like invisible ribbon. The hairs on her arms stood up. Even Cat paused mid-paw-lick and blinked toward the hills like he heard something she couldn’t.
Wren stood slowly, narrowing her eyes at the horizon.
The world shimmered. Just slightly. Like a heat wave or a memory.
She looked at the girls, still laughing and etching patterns into the dirt.
A pang of ache tightened in her chest. She didn’t want to leave them. She hadn’t realized until now that she could.
But the tug in her ribs, the pulse in her temples—it was starting again. The same way it had before.
Time was shifting.
Calling her forward.
Cat leapt onto her shoulder like he knew what was coming.
“Tell your truths,” she whispered to Myrine. “Even if the world isn’t ready.”
Myrine nodded, solemn and glowing like she’d swallowed a little sun.
And then, in a blink—
The world fractured.
A sharp CRACK, like thunder pulled sideways. Air ripped open in front of her—a seam of light and wind and impossible sound—and Wren was lifted off her feet, not by force but by fate.
Cat yowled, claws digging into her hoodie.
There was no time to scream.
Only a flicker of images: ink-stained parchment, cobblestone streets, muskets in shadow, candles behind shuttered windows, and the smell—smoke and salt and something like revolution.
She landed hard.
On her side, in a narrow alleyway, pressed between two brick buildings that felt too close. The air was colder. Damp. And filled with sound—horse hooves, footsteps, men shouting about shipments, someone ringing a bell.
Cat launched from her shoulder, hissed at a passing rat, then casually started licking his paw like he hadn’t just been yeeted through a time-hole.
Wren groaned, sat up, and checked herself. No broken bones. Her brain was buzzing like a hive, though. The sensory input was intense—unfiltered, wild. A whole new century was crashing in.
She took a deep breath and looked around.
She was in a port town. Somewhere northern. The street signs were carved wood, and everyone was dressed in layers of wool, linen, and pride.
A boy nearby looked at her with wide eyes and dropped his basket of apples.
“Sorry,” Wren muttered, trying to act like she hadn’t just fallen out of a tear in the space-time continuum.
She stood up and adjusted her coat.
“I need to stop landing in eras where pants on women are a scandal,” she muttered.
Cat meowed in agreement.
As they wandered toward the noise of the town square, Wren caught fragments of conversations:
“…British troops settin’ up down by the wharf…” “…Governor’s tax again, it’s robbery…” “…Franklin says we need to organize…”
Wren’s heart sped up.
She wasn’t in just any moment.
She was in the thick of it—colonial America, right before the Revolution.
A time when everything was about to ignite.
And Wren, girl of patterns and paradox, had a front row seat.
She turned to Cat. “Alright, buddy. Let’s go accidentally change history—again.”
Cat blinked slowly, like he was the one keeping it all together.
They stepped into the square.
The scent of rebellion lingered in the air like smoke that hadn’t started rising yet.
Chapter Five: The Quiet Power of Eliza
The square was alive.
Voices overlapped in a symphony of tension: merchants haggling over taxed goods, young boys dodging carts with handmade pamphlets clutched in ink-stained hands, and soldiers on the edge of suspicion.
Wren kept her head low and her mouth shut. Observation first—always. That’s what made her a decent time traveler: she didn’t barge in with answers. She watched. She listened.
And she followed the thread of discomfort. That strange static that came when the world felt off—not just politically, but personally. That thread always led her to people who felt like her. People whose inner lives didn’t fit into the neat boxes history tried to fold them into.
Which is probably why she noticed her.
A woman in a slate-blue dress, standing slightly apart from the bustle, one hand pressed to her chest like she was holding in a breath. She wasn’t panicked. But her eyes… her eyes flicked across the crowd like she was scanning for patterns.
Like she saw too much—and didn’t know where to put it all.
Cat slinked ahead, tail high.
Wren followed.
When she got closer, she recognized her. From paintings. From letters she’d studied in her college history seminar, back when she was still trying to pass as “normal” and didn’t yet know her brain was wired differently.
Eliza Schuyler Hamilton.
Not yet the wife of Alexander. Still Eliza Schuyler. But already brilliant. Already overlooked.
Wren approached slowly. “Excuse me… are you alright?”
Eliza blinked, startled. “I—yes. I believe so. Just… too many voices at once. My sister says I feel everything too much.”
Wren smiled gently. “That’s not a flaw. It’s a skill—just not one this world knows how to use yet.”
Eliza tilted her head. “Do we know each other?”
“No,” Wren said carefully. “But maybe we should.”
Cat brushed against Eliza’s leg, purring softly. She knelt instinctively and stroked his fur with the kind of tenderness that made Wren’s throat tighten.
“You’re not from here, are you?” Eliza asked.
Wren’s lips twitched. “That obvious?”
“Not your accent. Your eyes. They look like they’ve seen something the rest of us haven’t yet.”
Wren took a breath. “I know what it feels like to be underestimated. To be too much and not enough at the same time. To hold so many ideas in your head it feels like you’ll crack open if you don’t let them out—but no one listens.”
Eliza stared at her.
Then slowly—slowly—she nodded.
“There is something I’ve been writing,” she said cautiously, “but my father believes it improper.”
“I’d love to read it,” Wren said. “Or hear it. Or help you finish it. Whatever you need.”
For the first time, Eliza smiled.
“Then perhaps we should talk.”
Over the next few days, Wren and Eliza met in secret corners of the garden or tucked behind shelves in her family’s expansive library. Eliza shared drafts of letters—sharp and articulate, questioning loyalty, liberty, and the roles women were expected to play in a revolution that barely saw them.
Wren encouraged her to keep writing.
They spoke of freedom—not just the country’s, but their own.
They even joked about Wren entering a public debate disguised as a young male scholar. “No one would expect a woman to argue Plato better than half the men in Boston,” Wren smirked.
“Especially not one with a cat on her shoulder,” Eliza teased.
Cat sneezed dramatically.
On the day of the debate—a gathering of men discussing “the moral implications of resistance”—Wren did exactly what she wasn’t supposed to do:
She showed up. Uninvited. Underdressed. Unapologetic.
And when a man half-drunk on brandy scoffed that women were too emotional to understand liberty, Wren rose from her seat, cleared her throat, and said:
“Then you haven’t been listening to the right women.”
And she spoke.
Not just for herself. Not just for Eliza. But for every woman who carried the revolution in her bones and was told to stay quiet.
And for once, the room listened.
Eliza, standing in the back, didn’t cheer.
She nodded. Like something had shifted.
And maybe it had.
That night, the portal returned—rising behind the Schuyler family’s stable like fog burning gold at the edges.
Eliza walked Wren there, quiet.
“I don’t know where you came from,” she said, “but you made me feel… possible.”
Wren swallowed the lump in her throat. “Promise me you’ll keep writing.”
“I will. Even if no one reads it now.”
“Someone will,” Wren whispered. “Someday.”
Cat meowed in farewell.
And then the air split open again—pulling them into the next story.
The next fire.
The next thread.
Chapter Six: Echoes in the Smoke
The portal spat Wren and Cat out into a storm of gray and silence.
Ash drifted on the wind like snow.
They landed hard, knees scraping against frozen soil. The air was thick with gunpowder and grief, the kind that clung to the bones of the earth long after the battles ended.
“Civil War,” Wren whispered, pulling her coat tighter. “Mid-war, maybe. Or just after.”
Cat pawed at a stray Union cap lying half-buried in the mud, then shook his fur out like he’d just stepped through a bad dream.
They walked.
No portal had ever felt quite like this—not just like a place, but a weight. Like the timeline was humming with pain, and history was bleeding through the cracks of itself.
Eventually, they reached a farmhouse. Crumbling at the edges, but not abandoned. Candles flickered in the window. Laundry hung limp on a crooked line.
Inside, Wren found her: an older Black woman with sharp eyes and a steadiness Wren felt all the way in her chest.
“Name’s Clara,” she said after a long pause. “You came through the woods like a ghost.”
“I’m… passing through,” Wren offered, not quite lying.
Clara didn’t press. She had the look of someone who’d seen stranger things than girls who didn’t quite fit into the year.
Clara was a teacher. A former enslaved woman who’d escaped to the North and had returned South after the Emancipation Proclamation to help build freedom from the ground up—one student at a time.
She kept a school in her sitting room, with salvaged desks and handmade chalkboards. She taught children to read and to question.
And she kept a trunk under her bed, filled with things she called important.
That’s where Wren found it.
A small, leather-bound book. Worn at the edges, pages softened by time and touch.
Not a journal.
A collection of letters.
Wren flipped one open and her breath caught.
The handwriting. The cadence. The questions.
Eliza.
The title read: “Reflections on Liberty, Womanhood, and the Hidden Cost of Revolution” – E.S.
Wren blinked back sudden tears.
“You know it?” Clara asked, curious but calm.
“She—she was a friend,” Wren said hoarsely.
Clara nodded. “Came into my hands through a Quaker family in Pennsylvania. One of the daughters was passing them around to women meeting in secret. I think her mother had gotten them from an abolitionist out of Boston. I only know this much: these words? They made me fight.”
Wren swallowed hard. “Can I read it?”
Clara gestured to a rocking chair. “All the time in the world, baby.”
That night, as thunder rolled in the distance and Cat curled on her lap, Wren read Eliza’s words like scripture. They weren’t just poetic—they were strategic. Arguments for equality, compassion, education. Questions about how the country could birth freedom while binding half its people.
And in one tucked-away note, Wren found this:
“If I cannot change history now, perhaps I can plant questions in the hearts of women who will.”
Wren closed the book and held it to her chest.
It was working. Eliza’s quiet fire had traveled from girl to girl, heart to heart, until it reached Clara. And now Wren.
And that changed everything.
The next morning, Clara asked Wren to speak to her students.
“They won’t understand where you came from,” she said, “but they’ll feel what you know.”
Wren took a deep breath. She talked about asking questions, about using your voice even when it shakes, about how people had always tried to write women and neurodivergent folks out of the story—but they were never really gone. They were the margin notes in history’s great manuscript. Waiting for someone to read them out loud.
The children listened. Wide-eyed. One girl—ten, maybe—sat straight-backed in the front row, fingers tapping her knees in a rhythm Wren recognized.
After, that same girl asked Wren if it was “bad to think different from everyone else.”
This time, it opened not with urgency, but with purpose.
Like it knew Wren had found something she needed.
As she stood in its glow, Clara pressed the book into her hands. “Take it. Maybe someone else needs to read it next.”
Wren hugged her. “They will.”
She stepped into the light, Cat following behind, tail brushing Clara’s skirts.
Time cracked open again.
And the echoes of Eliza’s words traveled forward—riding with Wren toward whatever came next.
Chapter Seven: Ink on the Walls
The portal dropped Wren and Cat into heat and stillness.
This time, they landed in a narrow alley, the smell of fried okra and train smoke in the air, the sound of gospel floating from a distant window. The sun bore down on a small southern town—Georgia, maybe Alabama. Wren could tell from the way people looked over their shoulders when walking past the “Whites Only” signs.
Cat leapt gracefully to a nearby windowsill and meowed, annoyed.
“I know, buddy,” Wren murmured. “We’re not welcome here.”
They slipped down side streets until they found it—a faded sign above a brick building: “The Magnolia School for Colored Girls – Founded 1892.”
Inside, everything was worn but shining with care. Fresh chalk on the board. A vase of wildflowers on the teacher’s desk. Sunlight slanting through gauzy curtains.
And standing in the middle of the room, fixing a stubborn map of Africa to the wall, was a woman in her thirties. Tall. Graceful. Eyes like flint.
She turned, startled. “Can I help you?”
“I’m Wren,” she said. “I’m… passing through.”
The woman didn’t ask how Wren got in. Just narrowed her eyes like she’d met a few mysteries in her life already.
“I’m Miss Lila Ashby. You here for the reading circle?”
Wren blinked. “The what?”
Lila smiled. “We meet after school. Read and write things we can’t say out loud in daylight.”
Wren felt that old tug in her chest. This was the person she came to meet.
That night, Lila invited Wren to stay for dinner. Collard greens, black-eyed peas, cornbread. Cat got his own saucer of milk, which he licked with exaggerated dignity.
After the meal, Lila pulled out a tattered envelope.
“I keep this with me,” she said. “Been passed down through women in my family for three generations.”
She unfolded the pages carefully.
Wren’s breath caught.
It was Eliza’s letter. The same one Clara had kept. But this one had notes in the margins. New thoughts. New fire.
Clara’s handwriting.
And below that, new lines. Slanted and graceful.
Lila’s.
“I don’t know who this Eliza was,” Lila said, voice soft but reverent, “but her words traveled like a song. Clara was my great-aunt. She taught my mother to read using this. My mother taught me.”
Wren looked up, stunned.
“She said the words would call out to the right women. The ones with questions.” Lila met Wren’s eyes. “They called to you, didn’t they?”
Wren nodded slowly. “They always do.”
That weekend, Wren sat in the back of the reading circle while girls aged ten to sixteen took turns reading passages from banned books. Some shared poems they’d written. One girl wrote about feeling like her mind was “a thousand bees and a thunderstorm,” and Wren nearly cried.
Afterward, Wren asked her about it.
“I don’t talk right. Not like the others. My teachers say I’m too loud, too fast.”
Wren knelt beside her. “You’re not broken. You’re brilliant.”
The girl smiled, just a flicker. “Miss Lila says that too.”
“Miss Lila’s right.”
That night, Lila confessed that she sometimes wondered if her resistance mattered.
“They close our schools. Burn our books. Treat us like shadows.” She clenched her fists. “What if nothing changes?”
Wren handed her a note. Just a scrap of paper, but on it she’d written:
“If I cannot change history now, perhaps I can plant questions in the hearts of women who will.”
Lila read it in silence. “Eliza.”
“She did change history. So did Clara. So are you.”
When the portal came, Wren felt it like a breath on her neck—soft but sure.
She hugged Lila, who whispered, “Take the letter. It belongs to the ones who carry it forward.”
Wren tucked it into her satchel beside Cat, who let out a satisfied purr.
As the light began to shimmer around them, Wren glanced back one last time.
Lila was already back at the blackboard, chalk in hand, writing a new question for her students.
“What would freedom look like if you wrote the rules?”
Chapter Nine: The Vote That Wasn’t Enough
The portal opened with the crackle of static and the scent of warm asphalt. Wren landed hard on the sidewalk, Cat tumbling beside her and letting out an indignant mrow as a car with tailfins whooshed past.
They were in the South again. This time: Selma, Alabama. 1965.
There were signs everywhere. Literal ones: “COLORED ENTRANCE,” “REGISTER TO VOTE HERE.” And invisible ones, too: tight shoulders, wary eyes, the heavy silence of a community waiting to be heard.
Cat stuck close this time, tail twitching.
Wren ducked into a small church with a crooked sign that read “Voter Education Project – Meeting Tonight.” Inside, people filled every pew. At the front stood a young woman in a plaid dress with hair pinned back and eyes like steel.
“Tonight we don’t talk about what we can’t do,” she was saying. “We talk about what we will. We will walk. We will write. We will vote. And we will not be moved.”
Her name was Ruthie Clare Ashby—a descendant of Lila Ashby, Wren realized with a quiet thrill. And in Ruthie’s hand, just like before, was the same envelope. A little more tattered. A little more powerful.
After the meeting, Ruthie caught Wren watching.
“You one of the volunteers from the North?” she asked.
Wren hesitated. “Something like that.”
Ruthie didn’t press. She just said, “We’re marching on Sunday. Selma to Montgomery. We’re tired of waiting for justice.”
That weekend, Wren walked beside Ruthie across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The crowd was electric—hope and fear braided together. Cat peeked out from Wren’s satchel, ears twitching.
Wren kept pace with Ruthie, who carried a sign that read:
“We hold these truths…”
But just as they reached the crest of the bridge, the police came into view—lined up, mounted, unmoving.
Wren felt time tighten around her like a fist.
And then it happened.
The charge. The batons. The gas. People screaming, running, holding one another. Ruthie’s sign flying into the air like a bird with clipped wings.
Wren pulled Ruthie to the side, shielding her with her own body, Cat hissing fiercely from the bag.
When the smoke cleared, they were still standing. Bruised. Coughing. But standing.
That night, Ruthie showed Wren her version of the letter. She had copied the words of Eliza and Clara, added Lila’s teaching notes, and then something of her own:
“I march because someone marched for me before I was born. I speak because someone was silenced. I vote because someone was told they couldn’t. I will not stop.”
“I don’t know if it’ll change anything,” Ruthie said, her voice low, almost breaking. “People keep saying the vote is ours. But it’s not—not really. Not yet.”
Wren reached for her hand.
“It will be. You’re making it true.”
As the portal shimmered to life behind her, Wren turned back once more.
Ruthie stood tall in the doorway of the church, hands ink-stained from writing new flyers, a group of teenagers listening to her with the kind of rapt attention people once gave prophets.
Wren knew what came next—the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the years of struggle ahead.
But in this moment, she let herself believe in the power of small seeds. Because this chapter—the one about the vote that wasn’t quite enough—was still being written.
Chapter Ten: The Echo Chamber
The portal whooshed open behind an old TV repair shop, and Wren landed in a pile of garbage bags next to a neon sign that flickered “OPEN” even though it clearly wasn’t.
Cat leapt gracefully onto a rusted dumpster, tail swishing like an antenna.
Wren dusted herself off and looked around. Brick buildings. Synth-pop leaking from a boombox across the street. Teens in denim jackets and crimped hair laughing under a mural of Ronald Reagan.
The year was 1983, and America was buying what Reagan was selling: “Morning in America.” Optimism. Patriotism. And the slow, quiet erosion of everything people like Ruthie had fought for.
Wren found herself wandering through a public library—the kind with sun-yellowed carpeting and that faint, nostalgic book smell. Cat trailed her down the aisles.
She wasn’t sure what she was looking for until she spotted a zine rack in the corner, half-hidden by outdated encyclopedias.
One stapled pamphlet caught her eye: “We Remember Ruthie Ashby.”
She grabbed it, heart racing.
Inside: grainy photographs of Ruthie marching in Selma, teaching literacy classes, protesting the closure of voting access centers.
But also: a timeline. A note about her suspicious arrest in 1971. A quote scribbled in blue ink:
“Freedom isn’t free, and it doesn’t stay. You have to keep choosing it, every day.”
Wren’s heart ached. In the zine’s final pages was a name: Tasha, Ruthie’s niece, now leading a small grassroots coalition in a city riddled with “war on drugs” propaganda and broken mental health systems.
Wren tracked her down in a community center in D.C.
Tasha was in her thirties, wearing a “Silence = Death” pin and running a voter registration booth between a needle exchange clinic and a free meal line.
“You look like you read,” she said to Wren, raising an eyebrow.
“I try,” Wren replied.
Tasha snorted. “Then read this.” She shoved a flyer into Wren’s hand: MENTAL HEALTH RIGHTS ARE CIVIL RIGHTS.
Tasha had grown up reading her aunt Ruthie’s letters—just like Lila had read Clara’s, and Ruthie had studied Eliza’s.
Each generation passed down truth like contraband in a world that didn’t want it printed.
She told Wren about the cuts to public mental health programs, the closure of institutions with no community care to replace them, the stigma swallowing up neurodivergent people—especially poor and Black.
“We don’t get to have breakdowns,” Tasha said. “We get criminalized, or pathologized, or erased.”
Wren felt it in her bones—the aching familiarity of being misunderstood, too much, too sensitive, too different.
“You ever feel like the world wasn’t made for your kind of brain?” Wren asked.
Tasha nodded slowly. “Every damn day. But I’m here anyway.”
They stood together at a rally the next day, holding signs that read:
“Disability Rights Are Human Rights.” “Our Brains Deserve a Future.”
And beneath her breath, Wren whispered, “So do our hearts.”
Cat purred, rubbing against her leg.
Wren didn’t rewrite a law that day. She didn’t change the President’s mind or undo the damage done by greed disguised as greatness.
But she saw Tasha hand a flyer to a teenage girl who looked like she hadn’t spoken in weeks, and the girl smiled.
And that—that was something.
The portal began to hum again, its pull gentle but insistent.
Wren turned to Tasha. “What should I remember?”
Tasha smiled. “That we were here. And we kept going.”
Chapter Eleven: The Girl Who Always Asked Why
The portal opened not with a bang, but a hum—a kind of warmth that wrapped around Wren like her favorite blanket used to. She landed softly on a sunlit patch of carpet, the air filled with the scent of plastic dolls, peanut butter, and freshly mown grass.
It was 1997. And Wren was home.
Well… a home. Her childhood home, specifically. Cat gave a curious chirp and padded off through the kitchen like he belonged there.
Wren stood in the living room, blinking. VHS tapes lined the entertainment center. A lava lamp bubbled in the corner. A Lisa Frank notebook sat open on the coffee table—her own handwriting looping across the page in colorful gel pen:
“WHY does everyone say I’m bossy? I’m not bossy. I just KNOW STUFF.”
She wandered into the hallway and stopped cold.
There she was. Little Wren. Eight years old. Barefoot. Wearing a bright blue Tweedy Bird shirt and pacing in front of a corkboard with tacked-up drawings and index cards labeled things like “FROGS,” “WEIRD WORDS,” “HOW DO BRAINS WORK??”
She was muttering to herself, scripting conversations and flipping a fidgety plastic bracelet around her wrist. And she looked tired—the kind of tired that sits in your bones when the world doesn’t make sense and no one believes you when you say so.
Adult Wren swallowed the lump rising in her throat.
Cat brushed past Little Wren’s leg. The girl startled. Looked down.
“…Where did you come from?” she asked.
Cat blinked slowly and flopped over, purring like a tiny engine.
Little Wren giggled—sincerely—and for a moment, the air lightened.
Later that day, Wren watched her younger self sit at the kitchen table, frustrated as her mom tried to help with a worksheet. There was too much noise. The light buzzed overhead. The paper felt scratchy under her hand and the pencil was too loud on the page.
“No, no, NO,” Little Wren cried, covering her ears.
“I don’t understand why this is so hard for you,” her mom said.
Adult Wren whispered, “Because no one saw your wiring. But you were brilliant.”
That night, after bedtime, Wren slipped back into her childhood room and sat beside her younger self as she dreamt—still talking in her sleep, still asking questions no one ever really answered.
She left something behind before she went: A letter. Folded, aged, and laced with everything she wished someone had told her.
“You’re not broken. You’re building. You feel things deeply because you see deeply. Your brain isn’t wrong—it’s a lighthouse. Stay curious. You’re going to change the world just by surviving it.
Love, You.”
She placed it under the pillow. Cat gave her a knowing look.
The portal opened once more, and this time it shimmered like a memory that never really left.
Chapter Twelve: The Threads Between Us
The portal dropped Wren in the middle of a city park, not far from a small lake reflecting streaks of orange and pink. It was quiet. Familiar. She knew that bench. That tree. This was now.
Cat trotted ahead and leapt up onto a picnic table, tail flicking like punctuation.
Wren stood still. The world buzzed differently here—less dramatic than Ancient Greece or Civil War battlefields, but heavy in its own way. She’d just come from every version of the fight: for freedom, for visibility, for truth, for voice. And now she was standing in a world where the fight was quieter, sneakier, and still so far from over.
She sat down and pulled out the leather notebook she’d carried through every jump. Pages stuffed with names—Clara, Eliza, Ruthie, Tasha—and places—Athens, Virginia, Selma, Seneca Falls.
At the top of a fresh page, she wrote:
“We’ve always been here.”
Across the park, a little girl was melting down in front of a playground—screaming, overwhelmed, misunderstood. A parent looked around, embarrassed, whispering sharp instructions. Wren didn’t interfere. But she noticed.
A teenage boy sat alone on a bench, headphones in, drawing meticulous doodles into the corners of his math homework. Probably called lazy, maybe just lost. Wren saw him.
Nearby, a group of college students rallied with signs reading:
“Neurodivergent Not Broken.” “Mental Health Is a Right.” “We Are the Future, Too.”
Wren smiled.
Cat meowed loudly at a passing jogger and curled into Wren’s lap like a weighted blanket. She scratched behind his ears.
“I get it now,” she murmured. “Everywhere I went, there were people like me. Hidden. Dismissed. Fighting quietly.”
That night, Wren sat in her apartment surrounded by old books, protest pins, and sketches of portals she’d drawn half-asleep. Cat lay curled beside her notebook as she flipped through her memories.
She thought of Little Wren and the note under the pillow. She thought of Clara’s courage. Eliza’s words. Ruthie’s fire. Tasha’s grit.
And she thought of her own.
What if I’m meant to be the bridge? Not just between time periods… but between people. Between systems and voices. Between the past and the possible future.
She didn’t know how, not yet. But she knew this: she would not be erased. And she wouldn’t let others be, either.
The portal hadn’t opened again yet. But Wren didn’t mind. Maybe this time, she’d build one.
End of Part One: The Spark
The portal didn’t open again that night.
It didn’t need to.
Wren lay on her back, Cat purring on her chest, and stared at the ceiling as if it were a canvas. She had stories now—ones history never told quite right. She had questions to keep asking, and maybe even some answers to give.
She whispered to the stars outside her window:
“We’ve always existed. Now we begin to be seen.”
Somewhere in the future, a ripple started.
And Wren—neurodivergent, brilliant, imperfect Wren—was ready to make waves.
✨ End of Part One: The Threads We Carry
📣 Coming Soon: Part Two – The Reckoning and the Rise
Wren has seen what happens when stories are erased—and what happens when people carry them forward anyway. In Part Two, she’ll face resistance from those trying to rewrite history, glimpse possible futures, and begin creating a movement of her own.
💬 What part of Wren’s journey spoke to you?
Would you time travel if you could? Have you ever felt like the world wasn’t made for your kind of brain? Drop a comment, share this story, or just sit with it. Your voice matters. You always have.
Yes!! Thank you so much!
good for you! we should be able to disagree without bringing opinions about each other’s bodies into it!
Thank you for your feedback. I greatly appreciate it.
Hi Kayla Sue 🙂 I just found your blog via one of your posts (which showed up as a search…
Great Blog❤️ Please support my new post(like,repost,comment)please❤️ https://wordpress.com/reader/blogs/208441502/posts/21563
“My Brain on Fire: ADHD Edition” 🧠An essay from Unmasking, One Post at a Time — Entry Four
Some days, my brain feels like a wildfire. Everything is urgent. Everything is now. And somehow… I still forget to respond to that one text I opened three hours ago.
Living with ADHD means living inside a mind that’s constantly running laps. Thoughts sprinting. Emotions bursting. Ideas bouncing like pinballs while I’m just trying to find my keys, which are in the fridge. Again.
I have:
About 16 unfinished art projects (actually there’s too many to count I just made up the number 16 lol)
Three cups of half-drunk tea, 2 cans of half-drunk diet coke, and the glass of water I forgot to sip on
74 tabs open (but I know exactly what’s in each one)
A to-do list I rewrote four times and then lost every single one of them
Big dreams
No concept of time
And a habit of spiraling into research rabbit holes that end with me crying over a documentary about deep sea coral
I forget things constantly—but I remember things deeply. I can’t start tasks sometimes—but once I do, you might not hear from me for six hours because I’ve hyperfocused myself into a parallel universe.
It’s not just distractibility. It’s intensity. Of thought. Of feeling. Of motion.
People say ADHD is “just being hyper” or “bad at paying attention.” But no one talks about:
The guilt of always being behind
The panic of missing a deadline you meant to meet
The shame of being called lazy when your brain is actually sprinting at full speed toward everything except what you were supposed to do
The frustration of knowing what you need to do, but not being able to start
No one talks about how isolating it is to feel like you’re failing at basic tasks while also being brilliant in ways no one measures.
And it’s not all bad. There’s so much magic in the ADHD brain, too.
I can come up with ideas that make people pause and go, “Wait… that’s actually brilliant.” I can connect seemingly unrelated things like I’m weaving a constellation. I can love fiercely, create spontaneously, and dive into things with my whole heart. I can notice beauty in overlooked places. I can feel things big.
But none of that means it’s easy. And most days, I don’t want praise or pity. I just want understanding.
If my brain is on fire, I’m trying to learn how to stop yelling at the flames and start dancing with them. Some days I get burned. Some days I glow. But either way, it’s me. It’s all me.
And I’m not lazy. I’m just wired differently. And honestly? That fire fuels some beautiful things.
“Be Yourself, But Not Like That” 🧠An essay from Unmasking, One Post at a Time — Entry Three
“Be yourself,” they say. But only if it makes everyone else comfortable.
💬 The Double Bind
“You should just be yourself!”
Except when I try, it’s suddenly too much, too weird, too intense, too soft, too different. The social advice to “be yourself” often comes with invisible conditions — ones that feel impossible for someone like me to meet.
I’ve learned that the world doesn’t actually want authenticity. It wants a curated version of it — one that doesn’t disrupt the flow, question the vibe, or take up space in a way that makes people uncomfortable.
Especially if you’re autistic. Especially if you’re a woman.
🧍🏽♀️ The Teacher Friend
At Warrington, one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever had, I had a teacher friend who told me I needed to stop caring so much. She wanted me to act like her — tougher, louder, colder. She said it would help me survive the chaos of our school. Maybe she meant well. Maybe she didn’t. I was too exhausted to know the difference.
The truth was, I needed support. Teaching was goddamn hard. I was pouring everything into those kids. But I couldn’t turn off who I was. I couldn’t fake being callous or detached. That’s not how I work — and it never has been.
When I did show up as myself, when my real personality inevitably bubbled through, she and another teacher would make fun of me. Little digs, little laughs. I started shrinking. Quieting. Second-guessing everything. I was still burning out, just more silently.
👗 The Panama City Girls Trip from Hell
Another time, I went on a trip to Panama City with two girlfriends who made me feel like I was failing some invisible test of womanhood. They wanted me to like the things they liked. Dress the way they dressed. React to the world how they did. I didn’t — I couldn’t. So I spent the trip trying to disappear.
I ended up getting so drunk one night that I peed on myself. I was trying so hard not to feel anything, to be someone else, to escape the absolute discomfort of not belonging.
I wanted to go home. I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want to be anyone but me — but I didn’t know how to be me without paying for it.
🔁 Repeat
This wasn’t a one-time thing. It’s been the pattern.
Be yourself — but not like that. Have emotions — but not those ones. Talk — but not too much. Don’t talk — but don’t be weird about it.
People want quirky, not clinical. Empathy, not shutdowns. Passion, but in moderation. And always — always — the kind of “different” they can laugh at but never be uncomfortable around.
🌱 What I Know Now
I know now that those friendships weren’t safe. They weren’t made for someone like me to exist in fully. But at the time, I thought I just had to try harder. Be better. Be cooler. Be quieter. Be… less.
But you know what?
I’m done with that. I’m done trying to be someone else’s idea of tolerable.
Because being myself — actually being myself — has cost me a lot. But it’s also brought me home.
To the right people. To real softness. To joy I don’t have to explain. To art and cats and poetry and long walks and all the weird, wonderful things that make me me.
Salt-N-Pepa were yelling truth through my headphones when this essay started writing itself in my head.
“If I wanna take a guy home with me tonight, it’s none of your business!”
I wasn’t just listening—I was lip-syncing, stomping around my home like a woman possessed. That song doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t play nice. It kicks down the door and makes space for a woman to say, I belong to no one but me.
And as I sang those words loud enough for the neighbors to hear, I realized: this is it. This is the whole damn point.
Women get practically nothing in this world—not full safety, not full respect, not equal rights. But if we don’t even get our own bodies? Then what do we have left?
I’m not totally hopeless. I wish I could say I believe the patriarchy will collapse in my lifetime, but I don’t know. Maybe it will—and if it does, I’ll probably cry and pee myself out of pure joy. But until then, I want to be crystal clear about one thing:
A woman’s body belongs to her. No one else.
Let me say it louder: I’m a grown-ass woman, and what I do with my body is none of your fucking business.
Objectified at Birth
From the moment we’re born, people start telling us who we are based on how we look.
“She’s so pretty.” “Look at those eyelashes!” “You’ve got a little heartbreaker on your hands!”
Compliments before we can walk, before we can speak—and they’re always about our appearance. Pretty. Cute. Beautiful.
Have you ever heard someone walk up to a baby boy and say, “He’s so handsome, he’s gonna break hearts”? Not really. Boys are strong. Boys are tough. Boys are smart. Girls are pretty.
And so it begins—this quiet but constant training that tells us our worth lives on the outside. That we are here to be looked at. That our bodies are not just our own, but for others to comment on, rate, touch, control.
By the time we’re old enough to notice, it’s everywhere. Dress codes. Street harassment. Politicians making choices about our reproductive rights. Our bodies have been claimed by everyone but us.
And that is terrifying. That is infuriating.
Silenced in Real Life
It’s not just politics. It’s not just headlines. It’s in my friend groups. Especially with my guy friends.
I try to speak—talked over. Try to share—told to shut the fuck up. Try to exist—mocked, ignored, laughed at.
And when I yell—because sometimes that’s the only way to be heard—I’m called dramatic. Crazy. “Too much.”
What am I even doing there, then? What’s the point of friendship if I’m just background noise?
I try to explain patriarchy. I try to talk about gender and fairness and equity. But I’m treated like I’m making it all up. Like I’m the problem. Like I’m speaking a language they’ve already decided not to understand.
It’s isolating. It’s exhausting. It’s one of the reasons I’ve wanted to die.
Not the only reason—but a big one. Because when the world constantly erases you, it’s hard to feel like you matter. Like you belong.
And then there’s the confusion. Am I here to be pretty or respected? Do I have to choose?
Add autism to the mix—undiagnosed until 32—and people still act like they know me better than I know myself. “You don’t seem autistic.” “Are you sure?” Yes. I’m fucking sure. I’ve spent years untangling this. I’m still learning. We all are. But people don’t even try.
And still—here I am. Saying it out loud anyway.
The Power They Can’t Take
For everything this world tries to strip from us—our voices, our safety, our sanity—it still hasn’t found a way to take the one thing that lives deep in our bones: our power.
It’s not the kind of power written into law. It’s older than that. Wilder. Quieter. Unshakeable.
And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
If reincarnation is real, I’d come back as a woman again. Every time.
Because even though this world tries to make it seem like being a woman is a disadvantage, there’s something we carry that can’t be touched. A generational fire. A knowing. A legacy.
I think of all the women who weren’t allowed to speak. Who weren’t allowed to choose. Who weren’t allowed to dream—and still, somehow, they survived.
They fought. They wrote. They whispered truths. They lit the path. And now I’m here—pissed off, alive, and writing this.
Sometimes I think about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and it all clicks. She holds the power of every girl before her. She fights because they fought. That’s what womanhood is to me.
Yes, I’m tired. Yes, I’m angry. But I am not alone.
Hope That’s Bigger Than Us
I don’t know if I’ll live to see the day women have full autonomy. But I hope someone does.
I hope some girl grows up in a world where her voice is not just tolerated, but expected. Where she doesn’t have to choose between being pretty and being respected. Where her body is hers and hers alone.
Where no one tells her she’s “too much” for daring to take up space.
Where she’s free to be loud. To be weird. To be whole.
That world may feel far away. But hope is power, too.
Sometimes it’s just the decision to keep going. To write. To scream. To speak anyway.
Because even if they don’t listen— We’re still here.
And I’ll keep blasting Salt-N-Pepa, stomping through my house, saying it as loud as I need to:
“It’s none of your business.”
My body. My rules. My life.
Try and take that from me—and see how loud I can be.
“Masking 101 (And Why I’m Tired)” 🧠An essay from Unmasking, One Post at a Time — Entry One
Before I knew I was autistic or ADHD, I just thought I was working really hard at being a person.
Turns out, I was masking.
Masking is when you hide or camouflage parts of yourself so you can pass as “normal.” It’s mimicking facial expressions, tone of voice, posture. It’s copying how other people laugh or how they make eye contact. It’s forcing yourself to suppress stimming. It’s scripting conversations in your head before they happen. It’s smiling when you want to scream. It’s laughing when you’re confused. It’s staying quiet when you’re overwhelmed. It’s pretending you’re fine so no one thinks you’re difficult.
I’ve done it for so long, I used to think that was my personality.
When you’re autistic or ADHD—especially if you were socialized as a girl or assigned female at birth—masking becomes second nature. We’re taught to be accommodating. Quiet. “Not too much.” So we make ourselves smaller. We mirror people. We blend in until we disappear.
And sometimes we’re praised for it.
“She’s so mature for her age.” “You’re so adaptable.” “You always seem so calm.”
Calm? No. Just dissociating professionally. Adaptable? Maybe. But at what cost?
Masking isn’t just exhausting. It’s identity-erasing.
I’ve walked out of social situations completely unsure who I was. I’ve said “yes” when I meant “no,” just because it felt easier. I’ve been praised for being chill when I was actually melting down inside.
People didn’t see my burnout—they saw “grace under pressure.” People didn’t hear my sensory overwhelm—they heard “sensitivity.” People didn’t notice my panic—they saw “perfectionism.”
Masking works… until it doesn’t. And when it breaks down, it looks like depression. Anxiety. Burnout. Shutdown. Rage. It looks like “what’s wrong with me?” It looks like “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
And honestly? That’s where I was when I started unmasking.
Unmasking is not always peaceful. Sometimes it’s letting people see you stim or cry or say something awkward. Sometimes it’s choosing not to go to a thing—even if people expect you to. Sometimes it’s saying “no” and feeling that old panic rise up… and doing it anyway.
It’s slow. It’s scary. It’s freeing.
I’m still tired. But now it’s the kind of tired that comes from becoming, not disappearing.
If you’re masking, and you’re tired too— you’re not alone. You’re not broken. And you’re allowed to rest.
ADHD or autism. Scattered or structured. Too much or too rigid. I’ve spent so long trying to make sense of the contradictions in me.
I talk a lot—but I miss social cues. I crave novelty—but cling to routine like a lifeline. I hyperfocus—but I forget to eat. I feel everything—but can’t always name what I’m feeling.
I thought those tensions meant I was broken. That something didn’t add up. But it turns out I’m not a puzzle with missing pieces—I’m just both.
I’m autistic. I’m ADHD. Both, not either.
The world doesn’t really know what to do with people like me. Especially when you’re a woman—or raised as one. Especially when you learned early on that being “too much” meant being too loud, too sensitive, too weird, too intense, too curious, too emotional, too different.
So I masked. Hard. I made myself smaller in some places and shinier in others. I excelled, so people wouldn’t look too closely. I adapted so well they called me “resilient,” even when I was barely holding it together.
There’s grief in unmasking. In realizing how much of your personality was survival.
But there’s also something else. Something softer.
There’s relief in seeing myself clearly for the first time. There’s power in naming it: ADHD and autism. There’s beauty in building a life that doesn’t punish me for the way my brain works.
Some days, it’s still hard. I lose track of time. I miss appointments. I get overwhelmed by noise or plans or expectations. I say the wrong thing. Or nothing at all.
But I also notice the little things. I love intensely. I create like my life depends on it. I see patterns. I care deeply. I remember everything that ever mattered.
And I wouldn’t trade that for being “normal.”
I don’t have a bow to tie this up with.
But I do know this: I’m done trying to split myself in half to make other people comfortable. I’m both. All the time. And I’m finally learning to be okay with that.
Leave a Reply