[Editor’s Note: This anthology was published by Girl God Books (2022).]
“An Autistic Bibliophile’s Tale” by Jessica Penot
I once went back and found my first journal. I was 5 when I wrote it. In it, I said I wanted to be a “riter of bocs”. Even when I was 5, the only thing I wanted was to write. I knew that the only thing that ever made me happy were stories and books. I wanted to be lost in books. I wanted to be lost in words and in stories. I wanted to dive so deep into fantasy worlds that I wouldn’t ever have to come up for breath. The real world was too terrifying. Nothing in it ever made sense. Everyone was always mad at me. I never did anything right. From the time I was very young, I felt like I didn’t belong to anything. I was a puzzle piece put in the wrong box. I was difficult. I was a disappointment. When I wrote and read, however, I could be whoever I wanted and in books, I found other heroes and heroines who felt as out of place as I did. Books were the world that made sense to me.
I wrote my first novel on my mother’s old typewriter when I was 11 years old. It was a tragic thing. It was so influenced by Anne Rice it felt like a bad copy of Anne Rice, but her novels spoke to me as a child. I could relate more to the vampires wandering the world searching for some glimpse of humanity than I could to my peers. Those vampires with their lonely lives of isolation felt like kindred spirits. Real people were enigmas. I tried to interact with them. I desperately wanted to be like them. I wanted friends I wanted attachment, but people never made sense. I knew I was always acting wrong and upsetting them, but beyond that, I had no idea what they expected of me or what motivated their behavior. So, I wrote my first novel. I created a space where the main character could make beauty from her strangeness, where she could find solace in her isolation. I made a world for myself where I belonged. In the pages of my book, my strange and lonely heroine could find love and friendship. She could find acceptance where none had ever been available to me.
Writing and reading remained my life for years, but in college I turned away from the English degree, as I wanted to pursue a degree that was a little more practical. So, I became a psychologist. Despite my career change, I didn’t change. I couldn’t fit in with the normal. Oddly, as a therapist I could connect with people. I could understand them and maybe because I felt so isolated, I worked harder than most therapists to make sure none of my clients ever did, but connection was lost to me. So, I wrote and read. All my characters were isolated and born different. They were born witches, born gods, born demons, but there was always some reason why no matter how hard they tried, they could never fit in or be understood by normal humanity.
I worked out my isolation behind computer screens. I wrote about a psychologist who lived alone in a haunted house in Alabama. She was born a witch and the only way she could find help for her clients was to embrace her true nature and turn to witchcraft. I wrote about a warrior on a distant world who was born different and the only way they could find peace was to embrace their true nature. The same theme repeated, but I never understood why. I didn’t know I had autism. I knew I felt alone, but I didn’t understand.
By the time I was 40 I had published 10 books. I still had my psychology practice, but I had a mountain of failed friendships and relationships behind me. My otherness remained as distinct and well-marked upon me as Hester Prim’s Scarlet Letter. I might as well have had “freak: avoid at all costs” tattooed to my forehead. When I was finally diagnosed with autism, things began to finally make sense.
The last book I wrote was Jane of Air. It was a young adult retelling of my favorite book, Jane Eyre. It was told with a bit of a Lovecraftian twist so that Jane was born with a tattoo of a door on her back. She was smart and beautiful but different and off-putting and as she aged the tattoo grew and changed. It became larger. The bones of the story were like the story of Jane Eyre, but ghosts and old gods littered the hallways of Thornfield Hall and Jane herself was an unsmiling intellectual who spoke wrong and looked wrong. People moved away from her. She didn’t know what to do with her face and loud noises and odd foods could send her running. All of this was because she was born with part of an old god in her. She was born different. She couldn’t change it. She could see she was part monster, but she lacked the ability to be human, despite her desperate desire to belong. I didn’t know I was autistic when I wrote this book, but I knew Jane was me. I knew I felt like a monster. I felt like an outsider. I felt like I was born different and no matter how hard I tried to cover up who I really was, in the end people always found out and when they found out, they ran away.
I always knew all my characters were me. They were lost and broken and so different from humanity that they always feel almost doomed from the start. They don’t know how to connect or relate to the world, and they are desperately grasping for love and connection in any form. They are odd and other people avoid them. They try to pretend to be like everyone else, but they always fall short.
I spent my entire life falling short, being left out. I would make friendships and they would fade and die. Something always went wrong. I knew it was me. Even this year, I made a group of female friends who understood I had autism and when I allowed my mask to fall too far down, they all ran away. The lesson was as clear as it was when I was 10. I was wrong. The way I relate and respond to the world isn’t appropriate. It is weird and I am to be avoided. I was diagnosed with autism a little over a year ago. I lack self-awareness and struggle with alexithymia so even as I could see autism in my clients and could assess and diagnose it accurately, I couldn’t see it in myself. I had treated autism and done autism assessments for five years before I realized I had autism and had myself assessed.
It was only when I read an article in Neuroclastic about Jane Eyre as the first autistic heroine that I began to see the parallels in my life. I realized that all my characters were autistic. All their burdens were symbolic representations for what it feels like to be born autistic. According to Leedham et al (2015), findings suggest that women prior to diagnosis feel powerless and broken and after diagnosis they get an increased sense of agency. After my diagnosis, I experienced this. I saw all my female characters as myself and I realized that their only path to freedom was accepting their inner monsters, my only path was accepting mine. I had to accept my autism and embrace it. I had to love it for what it was and mourn that it had taken from me.
The last book I read was Circe by Madeline Miller. It is the story of the lonely witch who seduced Ulysses. As I read this book, I related to Circe more than to any neurotypical person. Circe was exiled to live alone on an island because she was so exceedingly different from the other gods and nymphs. She struggles through her entire existence to find peace with this. She gets angry. She turns men into pigs. She fights gods, but in the end, the only path to peace is to accept she can’t be like the other gods. She must embrace who she is. No matter how many times I read and write this story of the isolated woman who has to learn she can’t be like the others, I still struggle to accept it. Because for me, being autistic has been learning to accept that I will be the lonely witch on the island. Learning to accept that I will be isolated, but in that isolation, there is great beauty. And that beauty and strength beyond measure can be found if I can only accept that my witchcraft lies in books and my magic can only be truly understood if I embrace my solitude.