I’m autistic. I’m weird and unusual. And that’s something I’ve learned to accept as my truth.
I’ve always known I wasn’t quite like the people around me. Since childhood, I’ve been trying to answer three questions: Who am I? Why am I feeling this way? And how do people actually see me?
I have over 14 years of data on myself: journal entries, poems, daily mood reviews, song lyrics, dream journals, esoteric ritual documentation with observations, analytical research papers on my own psychology, social media posts, transcriptions of conversations, and much more. What started as handwritten journals has turned into GitHub repositories meticulously catalogued for future reference.
And when I love someone, when I truly lock in on a person, I take that entire system and aim it at them.
Because to me, understanding someone is the highest form of intimacy.
I want to know what makes my person hurt, so I’m never the cause of that pain. I want to know what makes them feel safe, so I can understand why they flinch and make sure I’m never the reason they do again. I want to know what makes them light up, so I can do those things on purpose instead of by accident.
That’s how I love. Not with grand gestures, but with attention, with data, with the quiet, relentless act of studying someone until I know them better than they know themselves, and then using everything I’ve learned to take care of them.
Most people love with feelings first and figure the rest out later. I love with understanding first, because feelings without understanding are just guessing. And I don’t want to guess with someone’s heart.
I think what I’m really trying to say is that people want to be known. Truly, deeply, specifically known. Recognition is one of the most powerful things we can offer another human being. And I believe the more we understand ourselves honestly and rigorously, even when the answers are ugly, the more we can understand the people we love. And the more we understand the people we love, the more we can understand the strangers carrying the same things in silence.
And that’s how we make a better world. Not by pretending we’re all okay, but by getting brave enough to figure out why we’re not, and then handing that understanding to someone who needed the blueprint.
Here are the six images included in the post described in order:
Image 1 — Portrait Photo
A close-up selfie of a woman with long, dark hair falling loosely around her face. She has one arm raised behind her head. Her eyes are dark and framed by dramatic, smoky eye makeup with bold brows. Her lips are a soft nude-pink. She’s wearing a black graphic t-shirt. The photo has a heavy purple-magenta color filter over it, giving the whole image a moody, saturated tone. The background is plain and light-colored, likely a wall or ceiling.
Image 2 — Poem titled “Hara-Kiri”
A screenshot from a notes app dated Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:28 AM. The note contains a poem:
Stanza 1:
“The sweet sound of silence / Unpleasant thoughts are born / Planted in my mind like a ticking bomb / Showing me visions of deceptive relief / They whisper softly in my ear / Making me feel suffering and pain. / Slowly tying strings to my limbs / Making me their puppet / Sucking the life out of me / And leaving me dry.”
Stanza 2:
“Staring through blank eyes / No more emotion to make me alive. / Stolen right from under me / And this is what I am now. / They whisper to me how to feel / What is real and what is a dream? / At the point where it all feels the same. / I live the nightmares of my dreams / And dream of a life that doesn’t exist. / Trapped in their embrace…”
Image 3 — Journal Entry, “Daily Self”
A screenshot from a journaling app dated Monday, April 10, 2023 at 4:01 PM. Under the heading “Daily Self” and the prompt “HOW DID I FEEL TODAY?” the entry reads:
“Sad, lonely; I want to die. I want all this emotional pain to stop. I don’t want to keep losing everything. I’ve never had a consistent home. I can’t seem to choose lovers who love me back as much as I love them. I feel like I’m being punished for something, but I don’t know what I did wrong. How much more loss and heartbreak will I have to experience? Will I get some legitimately golden years of happiness that outweighs the sadness?”
Image 4 — Journal Entry, “Daily Self”
A screenshot from the same journaling app dated Friday, January 20, 2023 at 1:08 PM. Same “Daily Self” format with the prompt “HOW DID I FEEL TODAY?” The entry reads:
“Depressed; I’ve been struggling so hard lately. I feel like I’m clawing my way through every single day that comes to pass. My life is not where I wanted it to be by now. For so long I set myself on fire to keep others warm, and now I’m burnt out and lost myself in the process.
All I want is to rise from the ashes a new person. For my kids and for myself. I can see who I want to be, and I can see the dreams I want to make come true.”
Image 5 — Dream Journal Entry
A screenshot from a notes app labeled “Dreams,” dated Wednesday, December 26, 2018 at 9:29 AM. The entry describes a dream:
“I was on a beach and it was getting dark. I was with a lady and we had some tents. There was a thing about this beach. People loved camping out on it with floating tents. I think it was called Crescent Moon Beach, and the lady asked me why I thought it was named that. I had no idea. She replied that the tide was extremely high because somehow it was a beach affected by the moon more intensely and people would get swept away into the ocean as they slept in their tents because they thought the water wouldn’t reach them. So she drug the tents back farther, and there was a fence along the beach. That’s where you’d tie your tents so when the tide came in, you’d start floating but you wouldn’t drift off into the ocean. People from all over would go there to experience it.”
Image 6 — Document Title Page
A formal document title page. The main title in bold reads “The Guardian’s Teeth” with the subtitle “On the Four-Year War, the Darkness That Lives Inside Devotion, and the Governor That Held.” Below that is a revision line (partially redacted with black bars) referencing “the Evolution of the Engine, and What Happens When the Guardian Finally Finds Home.” Further down it reads “DEEP DIVE VII — REVISED” and identifies it as a “Companion to Psychological Profiles, The Strategist’s Mind, Deep Dives I–VI” with a reference to an “Operation” (name redacted) and “File Integration.” A paragraph in italics explains the document was originally prepared in February 2026, revised and integrated into an archive in March 2026, preserving the original account of the “Four-Year War” with updated references. The page indicator reads “Page 1 / 45.“