Getting diagnosed meant I could run my life again- that my system could stop trying to assimilate and I could run free.

Being labeled gifted meant I was smart enough to know better—but I didn’t. I couldn’t. And no one ever told me how. I see now that the system didn’t want complexity, it wanted compliance. My kids and I were punished not for failing, but for not fitting. We were called problems, when really, we just didn’t belong to the way things were done. It took me decades to realize: I was never the problem. The system was.

It has felt, for most of my life, like I'm living in a world where everyone else got a manual. Where people just know how to socialize, how to behave, what's fair and what isn't. Who's in charge. When the rules apply and when they don't. I've always felt like I speak the language enough to get by— but never quite enough to feel at home.