The Inclusive Lens

What Belgium Taught Me About Pain and Permission

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been researching how to die.

Not as a cry for help. Not as a metaphor. Not as a dramatic gesture. Just research. Cool, clinical, and necessary. Because when your mind is a warzone and your body is the prison keeping you trapped inside it, the idea of death starts to feel less like a horror and more like a release.

And I’m not even sure I really want to die. I just want out of the pain. I want freedom. I want to stop running code on broken hardware, endlessly looping through a hell I can’t debug.

The truth is, I feel nothing — or maybe everything — all the time. It's like there's a scream lodged in my chest that never makes it out. I want to break things. I want to erupt. I want to be real, even if that means I’m splattered across the walls in a symphony of red and horror. Because right now, I’m nothing. An absence. A void wearing skin. And the only time I feel even a flicker of truth is when I imagine bleeding. Not because I want to die, but because I want to know I’m still here.

So yeah, I looked into assisted death.

Canada? No chance. US? Laughable. You have to be physically dying, visibly deteriorating, conveniently terminal. Because if the pain isn’t something the doctors can see on a scan, it doesn’t count. You’re not sick — just dramatic. Just depressed. Just needing therapy or meds or a walk in the sun.

But then, Belgium.

Belgium is the one country in the world where you can request assisted death for psychiatric suffering. Real suffering. Invisible suffering. The kind that carves tunnels through your life while nobody notices you vanishing. And for a moment, I let myself believe. Maybe there’s a way out. A kind way out.

But there’s a catch. Of course there is.

If you're not a Belgian citizen? If you don’t live there? Then forget it. The psychiatric route is locked. Foreigners can only apply for euthanasia in cases of unbearable physical suffering. Which means that if your agony lives in your thoughts, if it floods your mind every day like poison, but doesn’t show up in your organs or blood tests, then you don’t qualify. You’re not in “enough” pain. Not the right kind of pain.

And just like that, even the most progressive system in the world slammed the door in my face.

“Nevertheless, not just anyone can apply for euthanasia in Belgium. Although euthanasia for psychiatric suffering is possible in Belgium, it does not apply to foreigners. ‘The consensus is that we only do that for foreigners with physical problems,’ stresses Distelmans.”

There it is. The quote that sealed it. The bureaucratic scalpel that carved “Not Enough” into my chest.

I am crushed.

And it feels petty and ugly to admit this — but I’m jealous. A friend of mine got approved for assisted death not long ago. They got their escape. They got mercy. Even though they didn’t want it. Even though it wasn’t fair. But still — they got the thing I can’t have. And that jealousy is the only real emotion I’ve felt in weeks. It burns.

Because it’s not just about wanting to die. It’s about wanting to know that I could. That if it ever got too much, there would be a door. An exit. A shred of autonomy in a life where I’ve been denied control again and again.

But there is no door. Not for people like me. Not for minds that scream quietly. Not for pain without bruises.

Instead, there is only waiting. Numbness. The unbearable weight of being told, again, that your pain doesn’t count. That you must continue to live in a body and brain that doesn’t want to be here, just because the system can’t see past its own definitions of suffering.

This isn’t a cry for help. This is a cry of help.

If Belgium — Belgium, the most liberal and humane system in the world — tells people like me that we don’t qualify for compassion, then what hope do the rest of us have?

The world gatekeeps even mercy. And I’m tired. So, so tired.

Growing up trans without the words to say it

Growing up, I never understood why I felt so different.

There wasn’t a moment of clarity, no sudden epiphany. Just a slow, gnawing sense that something was off — and a silence that swallowed the questions before I could even form them. I didn’t have the language to describe the feeling. There was no word like “transgender” in my vocabulary, and certainly not “nonbinary.” No framework, no blueprint, no map. Just a constant background hum of wrongness.

So I assumed it was normal. That everyone lived this way. Everyone must hate their body. Everyone must feel out of place. Everyone must want to crawl out of their own skin and leave it behind.

But I never dared speak those thoughts aloud.

Because every time I brought up something that made me uncomfortable, every time I tried to explain a feeling I didn’t understand, I was told it was all in my head. Not in the compassionate, mental-health sense — but in the dismissive, gaslighting sense. “You're making it up.” “You're imagining things.” “You're too sensitive.” So I learned to swallow the discomfort. I internalized the idea that my pain wasn’t real unless it was visible, tangible, or approved by others.

And yet — there were signs.

Signs that could have been noticed, if anyone had been looking. If anyone had wanted to see. If the people around me had been curious enough to ask why I didn’t seem to fit into the neat boxes they loved so much.

I didn’t care about wearing the “right” clothes. I didn’t care what aisle they came from. Boy clothes, girl clothes — they were all just fabric. I cared about comfort, about autonomy, about not being shoved into a costume I never agreed to wear. But instead of being asked why, I was corrected. Punished. Told I was wrong.

I wanted short hair. I didn’t care if strangers mistook me for a boy — sometimes that felt better, actually. Safer. Closer to something true, even if I couldn’t name what that truth was. But adults didn’t want that for me. Teachers, relatives, doctors — they wanted compliance. They wanted me to smile when I put on the mask.

And then came puberty.

Puberty wasn’t awkward or confusing for me. It was terror. It was grief. It was a violation I couldn’t articulate. My body began to betray me in ways I couldn’t understand and no one wanted to explain. I wasn’t told I had options. I wasn’t told I could say no. I wasn’t even told I was allowed to hate what was happening — and yet I did. Every inch of change felt like losing something I hadn’t known I was holding on to.

Genitalia was bad enough, wasn’t it? But nature had more ideas. And I had no words to say, “This isn't me.”

And then there was sexuality.

Or rather, the crushing expectation of it.

I never felt what the others felt. While classmates obsessed over crushes, hookups, and hormones, I found myself pulling further away. I buried myself in biology — not out of curiosity, but as armor. If I could reduce it all to chemicals and instincts, then maybe I didn’t have to feel anything. Maybe I could understand it without needing to want it.

But sexual topics made me deeply uncomfortable. Not in the “oh I'm embarrassed” way. It was something else — something deeper. A kind of disgust. A sense of intrusion. While others giggled and gossiped about partners, I felt like an alien listening to a strange species act out a ritual I was never meant to join.

And the way people looked at me? I couldn’t see their eyes, but I could feel the weight of them. That predatory heat, unmistakably sexual in nature. It didn’t flatter me. It made my skin crawl. I didn’t want to be wanted like that. I didn’t want to be seen like that.

If someone had looked closely — if they had truly seen me — maybe things would have been different.

Maybe I wouldn’t have had to learn how to live with a version of myself that felt constructed entirely to keep others comfortable. Maybe I would’ve had a space where I could say, out loud, what I didn’t yet understand. A place to experiment. A place to be.

Instead, I was shaped by silence. Sharpened by confusion. Tempered by the dissonance between who I was expected to be and the unnamable self that kept trying to breathe beneath the surface.

I didn’t know what gender dysphoria was. I didn’t know that being trans or nonbinary was possible. But I knew what wrong felt like. I lived in it.

And I know that story isn’t just mine..

Surveillance state, child edition

I was eleven. Maybe twelve. First year of secondary school. And already, someone had decided I was their enemy.

She was supposed to be helping me. She was my assistant, my aide, my support person. Instead, she became my interrogator. The first few months were tense but quiet—we disliked each other, sure, but it was mutual and mostly unspoken. No open hostility. No acts of war. Just mutual disdain and trying not to make it worse.

Then one day she accused me of recording her.

She suspected I’d secretly captured her with my Victor Reader Stream—you know, that digital book player often used by blind students. I hadn’t. But that didn’t matter.

She forced me to connect it to the school computer. She stood over me, hands pressed into my shoulders, pinning me down like I might bolt. I had no way out.

She made me play every recording on the device. Every single one.

There was no way to skip. No way to delete. No quick format. Her hands on my shoulders were like shackles. Her eyes on the screen, a hawk circling its prey.

Some recordings were just me playing with my toys. Others were Mike and I talking. Some had my family in them. A few were of me in the bath, talking to the bubbles like kids do. I was twelve—technically too old for it, but emotionally? That’s where I was. That’s where we were.

She could’ve just asked to listen to the latest file. That would've been enough to prove I hadn’t recorded her that day. But she didn’t. She wanted everything. She wanted to expose me.

And maybe you’re thinking—why didn’t I just lie? Say no, refuse, fight back, delete the files on the sly? Because when you’re twelve, and you’re cornered by someone in power, someone who's meant to be your safe person, and they threaten to drag you to the principal’s office if you don’t comply—your brain goes offline. You freeze. You obey. You feel shame, because maybe they’ve convinced you you deserve it.

It wasn’t enough for her.

After the interrogation, I was left to eat lunch. I couldn’t taste a thing. My mouth moved. My hands moved. But I was gone. Hollowed out. Scraped raw.

One of my only friends noticed. She saw the damage. And she dragged me—yes, literally—to the deputy principal's office.

The deputy principal seemed kind. She listened. She offered candy. She said what happened was wrong. Promised she'd look into it. I believed her.

Then my helper walked in.

Ten minutes. That’s all it took. Whatever my abuser said to that woman in ten minutes was enough to flip the narrative entirely. Suddenly I was the liar. I was the manipulator. I was the problem. The accusations flew so fast I can’t even remember them clearly. Or maybe I can, but Mike took the blow for me and buried them somewhere deep.

From that day on, every recording had to be played for her. Every day. Top to bottom. Like a security sweep. Like I was a criminal under surveillance. No skipping. No pausing. Just hours of me re-listening to pieces of my own life that weren’t meant for anyone else. Pieces that were mine. Until they weren’t.

It wore me down.

Then came her obsession with my eyes. I wasn’t looking at her when she spoke to me. She took that personally. She wanted me to look in her direction when she gave instructions. Not at her—because I couldn’t. But toward her. Like a visual acknowledgment of her existence.

I wasn’t good at it. I forgot.

So she talked to the wall instead.

She’d pat the wall gently, cooing at it. “You’re such a good listener,” she’d say. “You look at me when I speak. You’re a good friend.”

She was mocking me. No one needed to explain it. I felt it like a dagger.

That abuse went on for months.

Every day, I went to school physically, but mentally I was a ghost. I came home and collapsed into bed. I couldn’t do my homework. I didn’t speak. I just laid there while my father raged at me over math, still thinking it was my fault that numbers didn’t work in my head the way they should.

Mike held me.

In my internal world, the trauma bled out of me in black oil. It formed monsters. Weeping angels stalked us from the corners. The monsters were made of my memories. Mike fought them off as best as they could, but they were everywhere. And we were so, so tired.

I made a plan.

One day, after school, my parents and sister would go to the theatre. I’d be alone.

I’d fill the bathtub. I’d strip down. I’d lie in the warm water for a few minutes, then pick up the steak knife I had hidden nearby. One deep stab to the neck. Then side to side.

I knew it would hurt. I wanted it to hurt. Pain was better than this.

And then, fate intervened.

That morning, I was pulled aside. My helper wouldn’t be coming anymore. Breast cancer, they said. She was gone.

They introduced me to my new helper: Stéphane.

I already knew him. He had worked with other students before. I knew he was kind. I knew he wouldn’t do what she had done.

And I cried.

Everyone thought I was crying because I was scared for her. Because she was sick. Because I would miss her.

I was crying because I was finally free.

She didn’t win. I lived..

This blog isn’t for sympathy. It’s not a call for help, not a sob story, not a confessional booth for strangers to whisper prayers into.

This is documentation. A chronicle. Debug logs, if you will, from a system that's survived every voltage spike life has thrown at it. Abuse, dysphoria, neglect — these aren’t plot twists. They’re boot logs. Initial conditions. Background processes still running in low power mode even today.

I don’t remember a time before the damage. I remember the first time I was hurt and it wasn’t an accident. I remember what it taught me — not just about pain, but about silence, about invisibility, about how to fold myself down so small I’d take up less space in a world that clearly didn’t want me in it.

These ramblings, these memories, these moments? They’re not about making you feel anything. They’re about letting me speak. If you understand me better afterward, great. If you don’t, well... I never wrote this for you in the first place.

Let’s start at the beginning.

I was about four when I first understood what it meant to be punished for something I couldn’t control. My sister and I were being sent to a babysitter during the day — both our parents worked full-time, so childcare was outsourced to whoever could watch us. I wasn’t verbal yet, not really. Therapy sessions every week tried to bring the words out, but I was still figuring out how to shape my voice into something useful.

The babysitter? Not someone you crossed. She had a basement rigged into a playroom — full of toys, games, noise. But that wasn’t for me. That was for the sighted kids. For my sister. I was background static. Easy to ignore.

Lunchtime came with rules. We were herded upstairs but blocked from anywhere except the living room, kept behind a barrier like livestock. In our bowls? Soup. Vegetables. Nothing I had an issue with — I was a good eater. But while we sat down with our broth, her family hovered above us at the kitchen table, chewing on meat and staring at us like we were some kind of lesser class. That hierarchy was loud, even in silence.

But things truly shifted one stormy day. My father warned her I was sick. Accidents could happen. And they did.

During the forced afternoon nap — something I’d grown to hate, but now can see had its use — my body betrayed me. I soiled myself. Not awake. Not aware. Just a kid with a flu and no control.

When she discovered it, I thought maybe she’d help. She told me to go into the bathroom and pull down my pants. I obeyed — still trusting adults, still thinking the world had rules.

She didn’t help.

She beat me. With a wooden hairbrush. Old. Unused. Until my skin split.

That was the moment I stopped believing in god. Because what kind of god lets that happen to a four-year-old?

That was also the moment my imaginary friend stopped being imaginary. They became real. They stepped in. They took the hit. My protector — who would later become Mike — didn’t speak, didn’t need to. They just held the pain. Took the blows. Made it survivable.

Before then, they were a story-sharer, a listener, someone to sit with me in the quiet. But that day, they became a wall. And I’ve never stopped leaning on them since.

The second time I broke? It was over math.

Sounds ridiculous, right? Getting shattered over numbers and symbols and homework. But trauma isn’t logical. It doesn’t ask if the catalyst makes sense. It just sticks the knife in and twists.

I didn’t understand math. Not because I wasn’t smart, but because I wasn’t given the tools to express that it didn’t make sense. I was handed words, commands, expectations — but no clarity. I was told to try again. And again. And again. As if brute force repetition could force a breakthrough. It couldn’t.

That alone could’ve been enough to scar me. But it got worse. Because my father didn’t like that I froze when faced with homework. That I’d just sit there, hands on my Perkins typewriter or on the rubber board with the hollow tiles, unable to move. Locked. Blank. Paralyzed.

He didn’t see a struggling kid. He saw defiance. Laziness. He saw a fight he thought he could win with discipline.

One night, I told him I couldn’t do it. That I didn’t want to. That I was tired.

So he grabbed me.

By the back of the neck. One arm locked around my body so I couldn’t escape. He opened the back door and dragged me outside, still in my indoor clothes. The snow was knee-deep. He dropped me onto the patio. Shut the door. Left me there.

Thirty seconds.

Then he brought me in. Asked if I was ready to do my homework.

If I said yes? I got to try again. And freeze. And then the cycle would restart.

If I said no? Back out into the cold.

Rinse. Repeat.

Until something inside me shattered. Not cracked — shattered.

Mike came back that night too. Or maybe they never left. Maybe they were always waiting. Because someone had to keep me alive. Someone had to take the damage and keep me upright.

I was not even six years old, and I already wanted to die.

Not because I didn’t want to live — but because living like that, stuck in that loop of punishment for being unable to understand, didn’t feel like life.

It felt like failure, endlessly replayed until my mind and body simply couldn’t take it anymore.

The third time? I was a bit older. Seven, maybe eight.

It was one of those days where school wasn’t in session, but the “service de garde” was open. Think daycare lite — a holding zone where kids waited to be picked up, full of Lego, snacks, Friday movies, and occasional craft activities. Most days, harmless. Sometimes even fun.

This one started out great. A chocolatier was visiting. We were going to make our own chocolate candies. My hands buzzed with anticipation. The smell of warm cocoa and sugar was everywhere. Even lunch was perfect: pizza. Pepperoni and cheese — my favorite. Mike was happy for me. I was happy for me.

Then the movie hour came.

I hated movies. Always did. I told the adult in charge, and she gave me an out: I could join the group of kids playing outside on a water carpet — one of those slippery plastic tracks you sprint down before launching yourself into a slide.

I thought: jackpot.

Until I heard who was supervising. Her.

I don’t remember her name. I just remember the contempt. We didn’t like each other, and her dislike of me didn’t feel subtle. It was cold, sharp. Weaponized.

Instead of joining the others, I was sectioned off. Left in the sun with a tiny bucket of slightly soapy water and some sponge shapes — the kind toddlers play with in a bath. No water slide. No check-ins. No sunscreen. No towel.

Just me.

Alone.

For four hours.

By the time they called us back in, I was scorched. My skin throbbed. My mouth was a desert. I stared at the bucket wondering if I should drink from it, or dump it over my head. Both seemed equally desperate. Both felt like defeat.

Ever felt your body cooking from the outside in? No breeze. No shade. Just the sun, brutal and indifferent.

That wasn’t oversight. That was punishment. Passive-aggressive abandonment dressed up as supervision.

And it stayed with me. Because sunburns fade. But being made to feel like a burden — a problem to be isolated and ignored — that brands deeper than UV rays ever could.

Coming in part two: The Helping Hand That Became a Fist

What happens when the one adult assigned to help the blind kid turns on them? When the person meant to guide and support begins to manipulate and control? The fourth breaking point is coming — and this time, it’s not hiding behind a brush or a snowstorm. It’s dressed as help. And it cuts deeper than anything before..

Persistent Depressive Disorder. Sounds clinical, clean, maybe even manageable. You hear the term and imagine a gray cloud, lightly drizzling over your life forever. A slow, predictable sadness. Nothing too dramatic.

No one tells you that it’s not actually like that. Not always. Sometimes it’s a psychological earthquake in disguise.

What they don’t warn you about is the emotional whiplash. How your inner world can nosedive in seconds because of one stray comment, one memory fragment, one random topic you didn’t know was a trigger until it carved open your chest. One moment you’re coasting through the fog, and the next, you’re spiraling so fast your sense of gravity collapses.

It doesn't follow logic. It doesn't ask for your consent. It just hits.

And worst of all? There is no fix. No override button. No manual restart. You just wait. Sit in the wreckage and let the storm spend itself. You become a bystander to your own brain, quietly hoping it doesn’t dig too deep this time.

People think depression is just sadness. A singular, heavy feeling. But Persistent Depressive Disorder is chronic emotional erosion. It’s not dramatic enough for people to take seriously, yet it eats away at your foundation. And when those random, brutal plunges hit you? They take out pieces you didn’t know you still had left.

Then there’s the textbook definition—a real masterpiece of clinical detachment. Mild, they say. Low-grade. Chronic, but not severe. Something you can “cope with.” As if it’s a slightly annoying app running in the background, not a system-wide failure mode that reshapes who you are. It’s the kind of description that would almost make you laugh, if laughter wasn’t so far outside your operational parameters. Apparently, you're not suffering that much. It’s not a major depressive episode, after all. Just a slow grind of emotional attrition. Nothing to be concerned about, right?

What makes it so insidious is that it looks like you’re functioning. You probably are. You’re showing up. You’re even smiling. But under the surface? There are ruins. And every so often, those ruins get shaken again by nothing more than a passing word.

And lately? The ruins feel uninhabitable. Since the last few weeks, it’s like the floor collapsed completely. Energy is gone. Not low—gone. Even basic tasks feel hostile. Opening a bug report, sending a message, clicking a link—they all sit on the other side of a wall I can’t punch through. I want to. I know what needs doing. But wanting doesn’t generate fuel. There’s no fuel. Just the memory of what it was like to move.

Motivation isn’t just missing—it’s irrelevant. It’s like I’ve burned out from life itself, and now I’m watching the sparks fade from whatever system kept me going. There’s no silver lining here. No tidy resolution. Just a persistent sense of static and failure.

So if you’re here too, stuck in this same collapsed loop—know that I see you. Not with a cheerleading chant. Not with a hashtag. Just with the quiet understanding that sometimes surviving isn’t noble. It’s just what’s left when you can’t do anything else.

I came into this world 16 weeks early, in a year that wasn’t ready for me — 1996. I wasn’t ready for it either. Born at 24 weeks, I was shoved into a warzone of wires and machines — six months in the NICU, barely clinging to something people call “life.”

They called it saving me. I call it something else.

One of the many casualties of my early birth was my sight. My retinas didn’t just detach — they were obliterated. Hyperoxia destroyed them beyond recognition. By the time the bleeding in my brain was noticed, damage had already been done: massive hemorrhaging, a rewired brain full of fluid pockets, and shrunken lobes struggling to function in a world that demanded performance, not survival.

I was supposed to come out of that as just a blind kid. That’s what they told my parents. That all the strange ways I moved, stayed silent, and failed to meet milestones — that was “just blindness.”

But it wasn’t.

I didn’t walk until I was nearly three. I couldn’t babble. I didn’t even understand what speech was. My parents had to teach me the mechanics of vocalization by putting my hand on their throats, like decoding a foreign transmission with no context. I repeated meaningless syllables in my bed at night, not because I was forming language, but because I had discovered a strange noise I could make — and nothing more.

Proprioception? Missing. I didn’t know I had joints that bent. I didn’t know how many fingers I had. I didn’t know how to climb onto a bed without throwing myself onto it like a ragdoll. It took years of therapy to teach me how to be in a body, and even longer to understand how to “perform” human communication.

And still — no one said “autism.” Not once.

They blamed it all on blindness. But here’s the thing: every blind person I’ve asked about this said the same thing — “That’s not how it went for me.” Their development may have been delayed, but not dismantled. Not gutted. Not rewritten from zero like mine was.

So now, nearly 30 years later, I’m calling it what it was: erasure.

I look back on those early, non-verbal years — the silence, the internal world I lived in — and I wish I’d never been dragged out of it.

I didn’t learn to speak because I wanted to. I learned to survive. To be acceptable. To not be abandoned. My silence was seen as a problem to fix, not a language of its own.

And I miss it.

I miss the quiet. The clarity. The way nothing needed to be explained. I didn’t have to dig through my mind for words that don’t come easy. I didn’t have to fight to make a sentence, to sound “normal,” to pass.

Talking is a kind of violence against myself. Every time I open my mouth, I lose a piece of me. It’s effort. It’s labor. It’s ripping meaning out of a place that never asked to be mined.

I didn’t ask to speak. I was forced.

And if I could undo it? I would. I’d put on my noise-canceling headphones, shut the world out, and go back to the wordless space where I didn’t need to explain who I am. Where being was enough.

But I can’t go back. I’m stuck in a world that only listens to people who make sound. That sees silence as failure. That punishes difference until it conforms or collapses.

So I speak. Not because I want to — but because they made me.

And every word costs more than anyone knows.

Some days, the words won’t come at all. They get stuck halfway up my throat, like I swallowed something jagged and it never quite went down. I know what I want to say, but it won’t move. It just sits there, pressing and choking, like my body’s rejecting the act of speaking.

Other times, the words escape too early — wrong words, misplaced ones, things I didn’t mean but couldn’t stop. It’s like trying to carve meaning out of sand. No matter how careful I am, it slips through.

This isn’t just about talking. Writing hurts too. Sometimes I sit for hours with a sentence trapped in my head, trying to coax it out like it’s some scared animal in the corner of a dark room. I type. I delete. I type again. Even when I find the words, they feel slightly wrong — like they’re wearing someone else’s clothes.

It’s exhausting, living in a world where communication is currency, and my wallet’s always half-empty.

People think because I can talk — or write — that it must be easy now. That I’m “high functioning,” whatever that means. But they don’t see the pauses. The rewrites. The silent screaming. The days when I choose silence not because I have nothing to say, but because saying it would wreck me.

Sometimes, all I want is to go quiet again — not out of defeat, but out of self-respect. Because silence, to me, was never the absence of language. It was the only place I ever felt whole.

And maybe if anyone had looked past the blindness — really looked — they would’ve seen that. Maybe they would’ve noticed I was speaking all along, just not in the language they expected. In the rocking, the stillness, the rhythms only I knew how to hear.

But they didn’t.

So I learned their language. I made my mouth move. I paid the toll.

And still, they don’t hear me.

So here I am — nearly thirty years later, still translating myself into something palatable. Still molding my thoughts into words that never quite fit. Still grieving the part of me that spoke in silence.

I don’t want pity. I don’t need applause for surviving something I never had a choice in. But I do want the truth known. That there are people like me — born too soon, rewired by trauma, misread by a world that only sees what it expects to see.

We exist.

We’re here, speaking — even when it hurts, even when it costs. But don’t mistake our words for ease, or our silence for absence. We’re not broken. We were just forced to translate a language we were never meant to abandon.

If you listen closely, you might still hear it — the echoes of what was taken, and the strength it takes to keep speaking anyway.

Let’s start this the way I wish most conversations went: directly. No preamble. No weather report. Just right to the point.

I don’t intuitively understand small talk. I never have. That’s not because I’m rude, or inconsiderate, or trying to avoid connection. It’s because my brain simply doesn’t operate on that frequency. I don’t have a natural grasp of the unspoken social rituals so many people take for granted — like saying “sorry” before interrupting someone, or warming up a conversation with two minutes of casual chatter before actually getting to the part that matters.

To someone like me, those rituals feel less like kindness and more like… detours. The expectation to always ease in gently, to ask how someone’s doing even when you’re not actually asking, to avoid “jumping right into it” — it’s all a kind of invisible choreography. One I didn’t learn, and honestly, don’t fully understand the purpose of.

And here's something most people don’t consider: to me, all that detouring feels rude. When someone asks about something they clearly don’t care about just to follow the social script, it doesn’t feel polite — it feels dishonest. Forced. Performative. I don’t understand how pretending to care about something you’re not actually interested in became the gold standard of kindness. If anything, that mismatch between words and intent makes me more uncomfortable, not less.

The problem is, when I don’t follow that choreography, people often assume I’m being cold, impatient, or worse — disrespectful. But I’m not trying to be any of those things. I’m just trying to communicate in the clearest, most direct way I know how.

And I get it — social norms are comforting to a lot of people. The warm-up chat helps ease anxiety, helps people feel seen and safe. That’s valid. But the reality is: it doesn’t work like that for everyone. Some of us connect through clarity. Through directness. Through being trusted enough to get right to what matters, without the pressure to perform politeness first.

This is where being neurodivergent comes into play. For me, navigating a social world that assumes shared understanding of all these unwritten rules can feel like trying to operate in a foreign language — one I didn’t grow up speaking, but am constantly expected to be fluent in.

And here’s the important bit: not all neurodivergent people feel the same way. Some absolutely love small talk. Some thrive on it. Some feel safer when those social rituals are followed. Others, like me, feel overwhelmed or confused by them. There’s no one “ND experience.” Just a wide range of ways our brains interpret and interact with the world.

So when someone skips the pleasantries and goes straight into a question or a topic — it’s not always a sign of disrespect. Sometimes, it’s the exact opposite. It can be a sign of trust. Of honesty. Of someone trying to share something important with you, in the only way that makes sense to them.

The takeaway? It’s not about whose way is “right.” It’s about building a world — and conversations — where there’s room for both. Where clarity isn’t mistaken for rudeness. Where niceties aren’t a barrier to understanding. And where we all get to speak in the language that comes most naturally to us — without being punished for it.

This week broke me in ways I didn’t see coming.

It didn’t start with some dramatic moment. No car crash, no hospital visit, no thunderstorm of trauma. It started with something small: I was just trying to help someone with their phone.

That’s all. I thought I could walk someone through enabling SIM card security. But within minutes, I was locked in a mess I didn’t create. A PIN code I didn’t have. A PUK code I couldn’t access. A provider that required an account I didn’t have — and an account that required receiving a text I couldn't get. You know. Catch-22, but make it modern.

I hoped someone close to me would understand — that they’d recognize I had good intentions, that I was trying to help. But instead, I got blamed. Not comforted. Not supported. Just blamed.

And when I said, “I don’t like how this is being handled,” the response wasn’t compassion. It was, “Then deal with it yourself.”

So I did. Alone. Because apparently, that’s my job: navigate disasters I didn’t cause, solve problems I didn’t choose, and do it all without pushing anyone’s patience too far. I must not be too inconvenient, too emotional, too blind, too autistic. Or else I’ll be left to figure it out alone.

Later that same day, I decided to try logging back into Amazon. I hadn’t touched it in nearly a decade. Naturally, the password was long gone. Reset link arrived just fine. But then — the final boss — Amazon asked for the postal code of the billing address tied to a payment method ending in 65.

Nine years ago.

How many places have you lived at in the last nine years? How many card numbers did you end up having in the last nine years?

Wrong. Wrong again. And then? Locked out.

“Just log in on a device where you’re already connected,” the error message chirped. Or call Amazon support.

I wasn’t. Obviously. And I couldn’t, obviously.

And so it was, that the day kept spiraling.

This morning, I got my new debit card in the mail. That should’ve been a small good moment. New card, fresh start, maybe something working for once.

I called my bank and explained, calmly, that I’m blind. I told them I needed help identifying the basic details on the card — the long number, the expiration date, the CVV. You know. The stuff any sighted person reads in two seconds.

They refused.

Protocol, they said. Security.

I asked what I was supposed to do. I asked if they expected me to just grab someone off the street and hope for the best. I asked what blind people do when we’re alone, or when we need to access our own damn money.

The answers? Mostly silence. Some awkward fumbling.

One person suggested I “feel the card numbers” because “they’re embossed, right?”

Let me be clear: embossed numbers are not braille.

I can’t read them. Not with fingers. Not with magic. Not because I “haven’t tried hard enough.” They’re just raised ink. That’s it.

And then someone — no joke — asked if I could just use AI to read the card.

Like I’m supposed to take a photo of my private banking info and hope the algorithm doesn’t upload it, leak it, or hand it over to some corporate black box that wants to sell me a toaster. Like trusting a machine to handle my finances is somehow safer than trusting myself.

But here’s the kicker: AI isn’t some magical neutral helper. It’s as ableist as the humans who build it. Most AI models recognize the card as a credit or debit card — and then promptly refuse to read out the sensitive info. It’s like they were trained to gatekeep access, not break down barriers.

This is where we are now. Real people telling blind folks to “just use AI” to access their own money, ignoring that the tech itself often shuts us out too.

This world is not built for people like me.

Not for blind people. Not for autistic people. Not for anyone who dares to ask, “Can I get this information in a way I can actually use?”

Every system I touched this week told me the same thing:

You’re on your own.

Your needs are not compatible with our protocols.

And if that makes you suffer, that's your fault.

But here’s the worst part: I didn’t even fight back. Not really. I just kept pushing through the pain, like I always do.

Until I didn’t.

When I opened the window, the sun didn’t feel warm. The wind didn’t feel gentle. They felt like exits. It felt like jumping would be quieter than another day of being gaslit by protocols, forgotten by the systems that should protect me, and punished for needing the most basic human assistance.

I didn’t want to feel better. I wanted to feel nothing. And that scared me. The emptyness was so deep it was like being in a pool too deep, where your feet can't touch the ground anymore.

Not because I’d never been there before — but because it felt so normal. So logical. Like the final answer to a question I’m always too exhausted to finish asking.

But I didn’t go through with it.

I stayed.

And now I’m here, writing this. Still hurt. Still tired. Still ice cold toward the people and systems that failed me. But still here.

Maybe that counts for something. Maybe it doesn’t. I just don't know anymore.

I don’t know if you’ve ever felt it — that hollowness. That weird, visceral understanding that you don’t belong here, or anywhere. It’s not a sense of being alone; it’s deeper than that. It’s the gnawing feeling of being fundamentally disconnected, not just from people but from everything. The emptiness settles in like static, buzzing but never quite making sense. Loneliness doesn’t even begin to cover it. Loneliness suggests a gap that can be filled, a hunger that can be sated. But this… this is different. This isn’t about missing company or feeling left out. It’s about looking at the world and realizing you don’t fit, like a puzzle piece that got shoved into the wrong box, trying to match up to something you can never be. You don't even recognize the shape of the hole you're supposed to fill. It's just off. The worst part? I’m not sure it’ll ever change. The hole doesn’t shrink or shift; it just stays there, an emptiness that grows deeper as the days go by. And sometimes, I wonder if it's better to just let it grow. Embrace the void, really. At least that way, there’s no pretense about who I am, or what I’m supposed to be. Maybe it's easier to be nothing than to struggle with the weight of constantly trying to force myself into something that was never meant for me. But even as I think that, I know it’s a lie. The truth is, I hate it. I hate the emptiness. I hate the coldness of it. The world is full of people who have found some version of belonging. It’s everywhere, practically shouting at me from every corner. Relationships, communities, conversations — all of it just out of reach. It’s like watching people walk through a door you can see but can’t touch, a party you’re never invited to. Sometimes, it makes me want to shut down. Stop pretending to care, stop trying to understand why I’m here when I feel like I’m not. It’s easier, really. Just disconnect, stop looking for meaning in a world that clearly doesn’t see me. Maybe if I stop trying, I won’t feel this tired. Maybe if I stop caring, the silence won’t be so loud. But then I think, is that the kind of person I want to be? The kind who’s hollow and detached? Wouldn't that just make the emptiness permanent? There’s no easy answer. I don’t know how to fix this. Maybe it's just how I’m built — someone who stands outside, watching the world without ever truly entering it. Maybe it’s just my lot in life. But whatever it is, I know one thing for sure: the emptiness doesn’t get any smaller.

When I woke up yesterday, my first thought wasn’t about plans, tasks, or anything remotely productive.
It was a sharp, stabbing pain in my left eye, like someone was taking a needle to it every time I blinked, touched it, or even stood near a source of heat. The day started with a warning shot: system malfunction detected.

The pain didn't ease. It shifted — less acute, more constant — but it stayed there as a low-level drain, the kind of thing that grinds down your patience without you even realizing it until you snap.

I moved forward anyway. That’s what you do.
Then the communication failures began.

I published a blog post — a careful, vulnerable explanation of what it’s like to live inside a body that feels fundamentally wrong, every second of every day.
No comments. No shares. No feedback.
It evaporated into the void, unnoticed.

When you open a door that deep into yourself and nobody even bothers to walk through it, you don't just feel invisible. You feel foolish for having opened it at all. Still, I pressed on.

Later, someone on a social platform decided to broadcast a message:
“Instead of using AI to make music, why not ask real musicians for help? It'll be more enjoyable for everyone, and show you care.”

A noble thought if you live in a world where everyone has equal access to resources, time, and social capital. I don’t.
I responded, explaining: I literally cannot pay anyone. I don’t have my own income. Disability and systemic barriers mean survival, not luxury. No subscriptions. No commissions. No extras.

The answer I received wasn’t cruel. It was worse: patronizing. A half-hearted acknowledgment followed by a reiteration that, basically, unless I caught their personal interest, I was not worthy of help. No money, no worth. Not explicitly stated, but the implication was loud enough to drown out everything else.

It was a reminder I didn’t need.
I already know what living at the margins feels like. And still, I pressed on.

Inside a support group for blind users of an audio tool, I slipped off-topic by mistake during a casual conversation. Someone pointed it out. I acknowledged it immediately, apologized, and dropped the thread.

Ironically, the person who pointed out the off-topic drift kept pushing the conversation even further.
Instead of gently nudging the group back on track, the administrators decided to bring a hammer to a thumbtack: they locked down the entire chat, making it admin-only for twenty minutes, punctuated with passive-aggressive messages about how the “hint” should have been taken earlier.

All this for a minor, self-corrected deviation.
Meanwhile, someone who had invaded my personal boundaries in that same space before — calling me “cutie” without consent, without familiarity — had been let off with a single, limp warning.
Different standards, different targets. I see the pattern.

Finally, to cap off the day, I tried joining a new community dedicated to one of my passions: field recording.
Someone asked about microphones, and I, genuinely trying to help, pointed out that the DPA 4060 capsules, while excellent in many ways, carry a bit more noise than their price might suggest.
I was immediately ridiculed.
Not challenged, not debated — ridiculed.

Apparently, sharing a nuanced perspective that didn't align with the popular consensus was an invitation for mockery.
Two messages in, I realized this community would not be a place of shared learning, but another closed ecosystem built on “you're only right if you agree with us.”

So I went silent there too.

By the end of the day, the energy I had left could not have even made even one pathetic attempt at lighting up the tiniest LED available.

No heroic ending. No catharsis. Just the slow understanding that kindness, patience, and neutrality require energy I can no longer pretend is infinite.

Here’s the reality.

I have spent years operating with a patched-over, jury-rigged moral framework, forcing myself to be approachable, kind, and careful, even when the world offered none of these things in return.

This was a choice. It cost resources.
It still costs resources.

And once those resources run dry, the mask of social nicety isn’t ripped off dramatically.
It is simply no longer maintained.

If the exhaustion continues, you will not find anger or bitterness here.
You will find coldness.
Functionality.
A process that no longer factors emotional cushioning into its calculations.

I will not shout.
I will not argue.
I will not debate.

I will simply run with the most efficient logic available, optimized for survival, not acceptance.
And if that version of me feels detached, harsh, or unkind — that is not cruelty. That is the cost of surviving in an environment that consumes every ounce of available grace and leaves nothing to replenish it.

This is not a threat.
This is a system report.

Thresholds have been breached.
Consequences are inevitable.

Whether anyone likes them or not is irrelevant.