Hi K,

I get it.

All of it.

My name is Nick,

I'm 48 years old.
I always feel like that is an important thing to share.

I have had difficulties since childhood, and that was all I knew;
and I am speaking of the nature, or identity, of those difficulties.
I only knew them like that, but I never considered them to be
related to any one thing. In fact, I was completely blind to them.

Obviously, I can’t mean that I was not constantly aware of them,
or everything I just said would make no sense. I was blind to
them in the sense that I was unable to see that some part of
my personality was responsible for them; first cause.

That all may sound more intense than I intend it to be, but that
is what it looks like under a magnifying glass. That is how I have
lived my entire life; analyzing everything with the kind of
preoccupation that always causes me to overthink, overcomplicate
overanalyze. That includes introspection.

Here is another thing; this is very interesting. I speak of this in
the past-tense, but it isn’t something that will ever be in my
past. I don’t mean that in some hopeless, or despairing way.

It is a recognition. I am who I have always been. I don’t want
to be rid of any part of it. However, it can be managed and
directed. It has always been the part of me, that made me unique.
The core of my greatest strengths are the outward workings
of this invisible unknowable part of myself.
I have always aware of as well. This is proof to me, that it is not
imperative that I understand it all now.

I had to read up just now to see whether I had yet mentioned
that I am autistic. That’s another thing I always seem to take
for granted; that others know what I am talking about.
I try not to do that; make that particular assumption. I still do it.

I always thought that it was strange, in an alluring and peculiar sense;
that I can, even now, distinctly recall a few occasions; a morning
that was so notably better than all others, that it had power over
decades, to remain so conspicuous.

If it were reversed, and the most conspicuous days of my childhood
were the worst,then that would make more sense to me.

The reason I brought up that little oddity is because it is subtle. It best describes
the tenor and magnitude of a thousand little clues, that were persistent.
Tiny details that alone would escape relevance; but over a lifetime, considered
at once, would comprise a body of evidence.

In contrast to a lifetime of analysis that was also persistently, and imperceptibly
accumulating tiny observations of humanity, that would eventually emerge as
the body of comparison. The end of a lifetime of suspicions I could not even
identify.

Eventually I had sufficient evidence to bring an indictment against the notion
that I was the same as everyone else, or that they were the same as me.
That was the biggest part of a latent realization, that led to that recognition.

It wasn’t that I had suddenly become aware that there was something wrong.
It was the awareness that what I had always thought was wrong, was nothing
more than never fully knowing who I really was.

I have to put a TO BE CONTINUED here, otherwise, it will become too sprawling.
I encourage you to remain calm, everything is going to be well with you.
Even better than just well, I suspect.