I was born on a Thursday. The eighth Thursday of the 21st century. I've given you a riddle rather than stating my birthdate outright not to be difficult (though I often am, and always have been), but to prove its irrelevance to the story I'm about to tell you. I don't remember that day at all. If I had to guess I'd say it was cold, the streets were jam-packed with cars, and everyone felt varying degrees of misery. They probably complained about the weather, the traffic, the stolen election, or their baby on the way who refused to show herself until she was quite literally yanked into this world by the head with a pair of forceps. All that is to say, I have a strong propensity for tardiness. And, though it feels as if I'm becoming a new version of myself every time I blow out my birthday candles, it seems that, in the grand scheme of things, not much has changed. I take comfort in that familiarity. I may live in a new house, but at the end of every day, I rest my head on a pillow I've had since the fifth grade.

Thus far, I've stuck to the facts. All the facts add up to a mundane conclusion, which is that I am a 24 year old woman who lives a very average, terribly boring life. But the past couple of years (or maybe the past couple of decades) have been anything but boring. That's not to say they've been "good" per se, but that they've been revelatory and I feel both further from and closer to myself than I ever have before.

It would be awfully poetic if I said that I felt like I've died and been reborn, but it would be reductive and cliche, and a flat-out line in both fact and in feeling. The facts are as follows: I am autistic and I am a lesbian, and I did not come to realize either of these things until the age of 23. Thus, it still feels weird to say (or, in this case, write) either of those things openly.

Both revelations came to me separately. One in a psychologist's office and the other in a "friend's" bed. They both should have been far more obvious than they were to me, and looking back, I both grieve and I laugh. I grieve the person I pretended to be, the person I really thought I was for so long, and I laugh at the real woman inside who was able to trick herself into believing in the facade she created.

I've spoken quite a bit about my previous relationship (sometimes more cryptically than others). It is the subject of at least 50% of my poetry, which is due to the fact that I mostly write out of anger and longing. During the time I was in that relationship, I didn't write much at all because I was in a perpetual state of sadness that lasted until I lost all sense of self and didn't have a place to hold all of those feelings anymore, and I became numb for the most part. He told me I was nothing, and because I constantly walked on eggshells and tried to do anything to make him love me, I let myself waste away.

I broke up with him over the phone. Twice.

I often tell people that the best thing my ex ever did was cheat on me because it gave me a reason to leave him. While I cannot say that I am a happy person in general, I am happier than I have been in awhile. I have never been a happy-go-lucky sort of girl. I always see the glass half-empty, and because I am stubborn, I firmly believe that you cannot change your perspective on those types of things. I will never be an optimist, but I am okay with that.

I am okay with just *being* at all.

I am learning about what it means to be gay and what it means to have autism, and though these facts are new to my conscious mind, with every discovery comes a sense of familiarity. I am meeting with an old friend and I am growing into that old friend.

It all comes down to this: I am writing this on a Thursday. Everyone is complaining about the weather, about the incoming hurricane that they say is "the first of its kind". If I had a nickel for every time something was supposedly "the first of its kind", I would be rich. Contrary to the "breaking news" in my life and on TV, it seems like any other Thursday to me.

i think i told you i wanted to break up

or to kill myself

same thing

you parked the car

and got out while i stayed inside

seatbelt buckled

you yelled and i’m cried

i don’t need to remember to know

it snowed on the way to pittsburgh

i thought it was pretty

i don’t need to remember to know

i always think snow is pretty

i’m remembering myself

sometimes, these days

i’m not sure if i said anything

or if we’d agreed to silence

i don’t need to remember to know

you hated every word from my mouth

i think we were late to the concert

i don’t need to remember to know

you were mad at me in the hotel room

i wore a nice leather jacket

and stuffed pills into the pockets

left my purse on the sidewalk

you didn’t tell me anything was wrong with me

only that you hated talking to me

i don’t think we went to the candy store

even though i wanted to

but i don’t need to remember to know

you would’ve yelled and i would’ve cried

you would’ve paid and i would’ve gotten chocolate

all over my hands and the leather seats in my car

you would’ve gotten mad and driven faster

all i have is the picture from the toll booth

i got in the mail

we didn't take many photos by the end

when i stopped looking like myself

i swore i'd be pretty again or like myself again

we talked a lot about forever and commitment

and love so

i thought about our engagement

but never our wedding

i thought about your funeral

i would cry and plan a eulogy

in my head, i never told you that

i’d wear my pajamas to the church

because i was always wearing pajamas or

nothing at all

i was never happy enough to wear anything else

i couldn’t pick out clothes from my closet

or look at myself in the mirror

when i wasn’t there at all

it was easy to plan ways to cry over you

i don’t need to remember to know

how to feel so sad

and nothing else

to feel sadness in place of self

you yelled and i cried

because i was someone else

but i wasn’t anyone else

i wasn’t myself

or at least i didn’t want to be

i think i told you i wanted to break up

or kill myself

same thing

or stay together forever

or kill myself

same thing

the only thing i miss

is how you held me after

you told me you wished i was someone else

you told me something was wrong with me

i know

something was wrong with me

and i’m sorry

i don’t remember saying i’m sorry

i don’t need to remember to know

i’m always sorry, i’m still sorry

for breaking up and staying together

or killing myself

same thing

i was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. blue and silent. (always). when doctors ask my mom when my anxiety began, she says it was in that moment. she swears my instinct is claustrophobia. i knew what dying felt like before i had the chance to cry. before i had a name or footprints on a page. i was born late and huge, an extra ten days and almost 9 pounds. i'm tall, much taller than my mom, almost eye-level with my dad, i'm out growing them. and yet, i'm still attached. i cried yesterday, started to panic because my mom left. i couldn't go with her to new orleans, i have to stay 'home'. i told her, 'it's funny how often you leave, considering you're the one who forced me to move down here, and now i'm the one who has to stay.' she said, 'you can leave, you don't have to stay.' but i need her. she's suffocating me here, but i need her.

all four years of high school live in a jose cuervo tequila box. i don't drink, and even when i did, i didn't drink tequila. before i typed out my poetry, i used to write it in the margins of my schoolwork. i have graduated and the box has moved states, and i still have not gone through the contents of it. not because i worry so much about my essays being cringe-worthy or seeing B minuses on the tops of the tests, but because i struggle to read my own handwriting - you know how some kids wrote in secret codes so that their parents couldn't read their notes? not me. i worry that my my words - whatever i thought was important enough to put in the jose cuervo tequila box - will disappear forever if i can't decode them. they say that your writing lives on long after you die, but what if no one can read it? not even the writer. when the words die, i die. 15 year-old me finally dies (the way she wanted to at the time). i spent a lot of time in college mourning lost words that were never mine to lose. it's been thousands of years and we still can't read Linear A, we have only fragments of Sappho, we don't know the way Catullus' manuscript was originally ordered because it was lost for centuries - we don't even have what we found anymore, just copies. i type what words i can remember, what things i think i wanted to say. Just copies.

Dear mom,

First and foremost, I want to tell you that I love you. (Here is where you say “I love you more”). I love you more.

You have told me many times that I am the reason you were born. Quoting a movie, apparently, though I can’t find it when I look it up, so maybe you’re misquoting (which is even better - in that case, it is your own).

“She is the reason I was born.” - you?

I don’t know why I was born. It might be the same reason. You were born to be my mom and I was born to be your daughter. Did you know that women are born with all of their eggs? So, in a way, I was with you your whole life. Sometimes, I get sad because I cannot go back in time and hug you. I know you had sad times when you were a kid and I want to comfort you then but I was not born until you were 31. I like the idea that I was always with you.

I don’t think that I am your only purpose. While I do think that I am most of all your daughter (and dad’s daughter, and Eddie’s sister, etc.), there are other things about me. The same goes for you. You are a mother, a wife, a sister, an aunt (and you are good at all of those things), but also: you’re a great cook, you’re better than everyone at Boggle, you’re the most generous and kind person I have ever met, you are smart (especially at computer stuff that I don’t understand), you are fashionable (you don’t need my help even though you think you do). Most importantly, all animals love you (sometimes, I worry you will pick up a wild animal and bring it home and it would let you).

Sometimes you say mean things to yourself, particularly about your appearance, which not only makes me sad, but also has never made sense. For my whole life, I’ve wanted to look like you. I’ve only ever heard people say that you’re beautiful.

I know I say I want to die a lot (and, when I’m having panic attacks, I do feel that way. Thank you for taking me to endless doctors appointments for the last decade by the way), but I am grateful for my life. Remember when I said “I don’t believe things will ever get better”? You said “I’ll believe for you”. That was when I was in high school and I think about it all the time. I have actually told that to other people as well when they feel the same way. Things did get better, and then they got worse, but I hope they will get better again.

Thank you for giving me Eddie, too. And Mia. And Chilly (via Eddie).

Ex anima (I learned that from college. It means “from the heart/soul”),

GAEGBG

p. s. (this stands for postscript. i learned that in college),

i challenge you to a full game of rummy 500

i will write down all of the reasons i want to live:

1. i have a mother and a father and a dog

2. i have a brother

3. there is a video game i’m not done playing

4. i have that tv show to watch

5. caroline, courtney, carolyn, and sean

6. sometimes, i think i’ll fall in love

7. i have unfinished drafts

8. i have laundry to do

9. there are so many books i said i would read

10. i should learn to speak japanese

11. and chinese and spanish and ancient greek

12. i’m going to finish my memoir

13. i want to get a tattoo

14. i want to dye my hair pink

15. i misspelled “dye” as “die”

16. I could learn to type faster

17. I could get an mfa

18. or a phd

19. or get certified in stenography and type really fast

20. caroline is going to play that video game with me

21. i’m going to get better at video games

22. my mom beat me at cards last time we played

23. i haven’t learned how to play spades yet

24. or paid off my credit card bill

25. i want to take a picture in my graduation gown

26. i have emails to send and unread texts

27. i need to go to the dmv

28. i’m going to buy new shoes

29. and move back to virginia

30. one day my brother might get married

31. or have children and i have to be the best aunt

32. i think there might be a klondike bar in the freezer

33. if there’s not, i need to buy more

34. sometimes i laugh so hard i cry

35. the saddest thing i’ve ever read has yet to be finished

36. i have so many things to tell sarah

37. i need to see hannah at least once more

38. i want a root beer float and a grilled cheese sandwich

39. i want those two things on separate occasions, so that is two extra days i need to live

40. i’m starting to miss fredericksburg (they have good root beer floats downtown)

41. my pens still have ink and my notebooks have paper

42. i need to burn those notebooks or throw them in the ocean before anyone can read them

43. no one can read my handwriting, not even me

44. i have fanfiction to write and fanfiction to delete before my parents ever see it

45. i think i’ll start collecting stamps or bottlecaps

46. i have to convince myself not to do that (i have too much stuff and i don’t drink beer)

47. i’m going to have a birthday next year and i’ll be 25

48. my mom told me i was the reason she was born

49. i have to find out the reason i was born

50. i was once a child who wanted to grow old

Please hurry leave me, i can’t breathe

Sittin’ in your sweatshirt, cryin’ in the backseat

I dream of you almost every night

Always real, always right, always alright

If you ever change your mind

For you i’d bleed myself dry

You’re beautiful and i’m insane

But the fighter still remains

Delete the kisses at the end

Then i’ll set fire to our bed

I'll love you till my breathing stops

Always an angel, never a god

but you won't forget me

I could tell you the story of Lazuli by Beach House, and how it saved my life at 19, but I fear that would be cheating. I’ve written it down before, did a speech on it in my communications class, and told it to my therapist.

I could tell you the story of Wonder by Natalie Merchant, how it played on the radio in the hospital parking lot the day before my birth. My parents wanted my gender to be a surprise, but my mom knew when she heard that song that 27 hours later she would have a baby girl.

I could tell you the story of Round Here by Counting Crows, how Prozac worsened my depression when I was 15, how my mom drove me to school, how we sang that one line loudly, how she told me that even if I didn’t believe I could survive one more day, she would believe for me.

I could tell you the story of Maggie May by Rod Stewart, how I listened to it on the way to church, how Thursdays became my favorite day of the week and how Classic Vinyl became my favorite station, how it was Springtime, how I was 17 and happy.

I could tell you the story of Tennessee Whiskey by Chris Stapleton, how I baked cookies in my big beautiful kitchen in my childhood home, how I listened to the song while I did the dishes and felt at peace for the first time in years.

I could tell you the story of The House That Built Me by Miranda Lambert, how I walked through the neighborhood, past my elementary school and the swimming pool with my hand covering my mouth to hold in my sobs, how I listened to it the day I drove down 21 South, knowing I’d never come back and cook in that kitchen again.

I could tell you the story of Mother by Pink Floyd, how I sat outside the restaurant under the string lights hanging in the trees, listening to a man play a cover of a song I’d never heard before, how I felt okay in my new home state for the first time after three years of constant grief.

But instead I’ll tell you about Take Me Home, Country Roads, how it’s the only John Denver song that doesn’t make me cry, how they played it over the speakers at the end of the Hootie & The Blowfish concert where I wore my mom’s old t-shirt, how everyone walked together to the parking lot and sang a full rendition, how we all continued after we were too far away to hear the song over the speaker. How it was my favorite song of the night.

it takes over a year to decompose myself. my gorgeous decay is interrupted and, when pulled out from the ground by a fleshy hand, i arise groaning. i climb six feet towards the heavens, leaving sparse footprints and claw marks on my dirt path upwards. when i return to green grass and breathing people, i am handed a bouquet. is this an apology? are you guilty? is it gratitude? a thank you? the rose thorns do not puncture the skin on my palms. i do not bleed anymore. the red petals fall through my bony fingers. he loves me not.