February 15, 2025

If Else:

At the time, it was customary to ask if your guest was comfortable taking off their mask after the hellos and how-are-you’s. Dr. Till cared little about social tradition. She was a petite, wisened woman who didn’t so much as offer a hello or formal greeting when I walked into her office. Instead, she smiled–well, I assumed she was smiling underneath her mask, given her deepened crow’s feet–pointed at a small table near the doorway and said, “Put your backpack there. Masks on or off?”

I put my backpack on the table and took off my mask. She followed suit.

I sat at what appeared to be her office desk–more of a sofa table, really, as it was no larger than two square feet and tucked behind a pale gray couch in the center of her office. The room had little decoration. An abstract ocean-view diptych hung next to the window. Dr. Till’s degrees were displayed above a filing cabinet in a corner. Compared to other therapist offices, Dr. Till’s was very modest in its size, color, and personality.

Dr. Till grabbed her book bag from atop the filing cabinet and pulled out a laptop, three binders, and four spiral-bound notebooks. She placed the binders and notebooks on the floor, the laptop on the table. 

“Would you like the lights on or off during the assessment?” she asked. Despite her curtness, her voice was gentle, that of a librarian’s. 

  1. If lights is ON:
    1. Hear lights
    2. Sound like school
    3. SELF in test mindset
  2. If lights is OFF:
    1. Relaxed
    2. Less stress
    3. SELF may communicate better
  3. Else:
    1. Lights remained ON during previous tests‍
  4. What’s different about this one?

“Uh, I don’t care,” I said.

“We’ll keep them on for now,” she said. “If at any time you want them off, the switch is right there.” She pointed left of the doorway.

I looked at the switch. It was tempting. Overhead lights were the devil, with their whiny ghrrrrrrrrrrr and blinking–

Dr. Till opened her laptop and typed away. 

Has the assessment already begun?

- - -

It was like looking in a mirror. An unapologetic mirror.

The same behaviors I hid because of others’ disapproval—minimal eye contact, curtness, finger-tapping, a robotic gait—Dr. Till did with no shame. I never asked if she was autistic herself, and I didn’t want to. Regardless of what her answer may have been, it would have made no difference in how I viewed her. 

She was, in earnest, a doctor who loved her job. I was, in earnest, a college student who loved his education.

“Tell me about your family,” Dr. Till said. 

“I’m the oldest child. My two younger sisters, both neurodivergent, are in high school. I was never close to them. We each had our own after-school activities growing up. At one point or another, we dropped those and started working. We’re all busy bodies.”

“And your parents?”

“Busy as well. They work long hours and organize all the youth events at our church on the weekends.”

Dr. Till typed away. “And how, in one word, would you describe your family?”

I drawled it out: “Functional.” 

As I spoke it, I knew it wasn’t true, but I couldn’t convince myself it was a lie.

… If family wasn’t functional, why have it? 

Despite my unease, Dr. Till seemed to understand my answer. At the very least, it didn’t shock her when I described my family as if they were hardware, or some Honda Civic in a discount car sales lot. 

She typed away on her laptop, emotionless. I’ll never know if she was trained to remain unresponsive during assessments, or if she was, in fact, autistic. I’ll never know.

- - -

For someone who loved the challenge of academia, it was somewhat fulfilling to fail parts of the IQ test. After documenting my basic familial and personal demographics, Dr. Till pulled a bag of colorful wooden blocks from her filing cabinet. She spread the blocks all over the table and asked me to recreate patterns displayed in her spiral-bound books. Then, she asked me to point out flukes in the books’ series of patterns. She wrote my responses in the binders. 

“You have a very high visual acuity,” she said. “Though I think you would have done better had we turned the overhead lights off. That damn ghrrrrrrrrrrr is distracting, isn’t it?”

The devil you know. And so on.

Next, she listed a series of numbers. I had to recite them back to her in reverse order. Then, I recited the ones that were multiples of seven. Then, I had to recite that list in reverse order. She recorded my answers in the binders. 

I started laughing halfway through the recitations. I knew my working memory was horrendous, and this test was sure enough proving how bad it was. Dr. Till, I swear, smirked occasionally when I’d say things like, “I know twenty-one wasn’t next, but I’m going to say it was anyway…”

She hounded me on world history, tested my arithmetic skills, and (poetically) revealed my dependency on neologisms, creating new words or using words in unconventional ways, when communicating. Technically, because of my reliance on word-smithing, I failed most of the questions testing my vocabulary.

“Define freedom,” she asked. 

“A state of being–no. Someone can feel free without actually being free. It’s not a life quality–er, quality of life. Whatever it’s called. It’s an emotion. An emotionally based mindset. That’s all mindsets, damn. Excuse me. It’s a mindset.”

“Is that your answer?”

“For now, it is. Yes.”

It was strangely sincere to fail, especially because failure (and how I failed) meant there was a fluke in my wiring. 

I was neurodivergent. That was a relief in itself.

  1. If autism is TRUE:
    1. Lazy is NULL
  2. If autism is FALSE:
    1. If neurodivergent is TRUE:
      1. Research ++
      2. Introspection ++
  3. If neurodivergent is FALSE:
    1. Neurodivergent is NULL
      1. Lazy is– If neurodivergent is FALSE:
        1. Lazy is
    2. Lazy is–is != NULL

Well:

  1. If lazy is TRUE:

I loved academia, but it was not reciprocal to loving me. I worked twice as hard to keep up with my peers, and I did it because I loved learning for learning’s sake. Even if I wasn’t neurodivergent, I’d still learn for learning’s sake, work twice as hard for work’s sake, continue researching and introspecting for introspection’s sake…

Surely it wasn’t normal to think in code. Surely it wasn’t normal to become nauseous at the thought of touching cotton balls, dryer lint, or styrofoam. 

What if it was, though? Surely there is some condition that accounts for:

  1. If neurodivergent is FALSE:

That didn’t mean:

  1. Lazy is TRUE
  2. Delusional is TRUE
  3. Weak is TRUE

Else–

Else–

Else I’ve just wasted a few grand on an assessment to tell me what I’ve been telling myself for years.

  1. Neurodivergent != VOID‍
    1. If you’re brave enough to search for an answer.

But I was neurodivergent. That was a relief in itself.

- - - 

My education was a significant factor in my decision to pay for an autism evaluation, however, the true prime for my interest was a little more intimate. Overhead lights were the devil, but there were cases in which that ghrrrrrrrrrrr was a necessary distraction. 

“… It’s when consent is ill provided or disregarded,” I explained to Dr. Till. “Well, not entirely. In some unfortunate cases, someone coerces intimacy. It can also mean you—I–I wasn’t aware I was being coerced, because who actually ever says what they want anymore? I said yes because it was easier to calculate the result. If I said yes, he was happy. If I said no, he would either be sad, frustrated, confused, or restless, and I would feel bad because… I don’t know why I felt bad. I don’t know. That’s my answer, for now.”

  1. If in bedroom:
    1. If lights is ON:
      1. Hear lights
      2. Sound distraction
      3. SELF is distracted
    2. If lights is OFF:
      1. Stress ++
      2. SELF may dissociate
    3. Else:
      1. Lights remained ON during sex
      2. SELF in test mindset
      3. Hear lights
      4. Stress is ghrrrrrrrrrrr ‍
    4. ghrrrrrrrrrrr ‍
  2. ghrrrrrrrrrrr 

Dr. Till stopped typing. “Let’s take a break,” she said. I nodded. I went to my backpack, pulled out my water bottle, and drank some water. 

I was shaking.

“I’ve met a lot of students like you,” Dr. Till said, massaging her hands. “Ambitious, like you. You slip through the elementary and secondary school systems without alarm, but when you go to college, or join the working class, everything falls apart. Your systems fall apart.”

“That’s why I’m here,” I said. “So I can get the accommodations I need to support myself. Better than I have before.”

She smiled. “I’m certain I can assist with that.”

Does that mean?

“We have a few more tests to run,” she said, “But only for protocol’s sake, at this point. I have all the information I need to diagnose you.”

I didn’t know whether to smile, cry, or hug her. I suppose I could do them all at once. Even before the pandemic, I was averse to randomly hugging strangers, but Dr. Till seemed hardly a stranger anymore. 

I put my water bottle back in my bag, turned off the overhead lights, and joined Dr. Till back at her desk.