The sun glimmered across the waxy leaves of my mom’s flowers in the side garden, glinting off the dew that graced the long green. A dog’s black and white snout came up from beneath one of the flowers, her short fur dappled with droplets. Dog tags jangled together with the breeze, clicking softly as the sun glinted off her name: Stella Luna.
I hummed softly, looking up at the sky. The off-white cumulus clouds floated by, reminding me of my childhood drawings. The only difference was the sky wasn’t as dark as my blue crayons always had been. Instead, Robin’s egg blue crested over us—me and my dog.
Free. I was free.
The breeze fluttered past me, ruffling my jacket and grounding me, the smell of sweetness and pollen wafted into my nose.
I sneezed, then smiled softly, watching Stella.
She nosed at the flowers, then at the black mulch surrounding them, then pawed at the ground, sniffing again, this time more aggressively.
“Stella,” my voice came out soft, “stop digging.” Crouching, I brushed the mulch back into place and tapped her snoot gently.
She nuzzled me instead, her soft fur brushing against my fingers.
For once in my life, the feeling didn’t hurt.
It didn’t feel like tingles or zaps, like my whole brain was going fuzzy or anything else that could cause me to flinch. It just was, and it felt… nice.
My disability was something that had haunted me ever since my diagnosis. Stigma and stereotypes lurked ever so closely and it was something I’d never appreciated, even before it was directed towards me.
Autism. They call it autism. They call it “high-functioning” or “low-functioning” and there seems to be nothing in the middle. No one talks about how we can be both or how much it hurts. No one talks about how we are discriminated against or how we want to be better, do better, and be more… appealing, but we can’t. We can’t just smile when everything hurts—when the sun’s too bright and our fingers ache from all we’ve touched. We can’t just keep on going when we’re overwhelmed, we can’t stop crying when we have a meltdown. We can’t just… be better.
Believe me, I’ve tried.
Stella butted her head into my stomach as I remained crouched next to her, interrupting my reverie. She snorted against me and kept rubbing me.
“I’m fine,” I murmur uncertainly, sucking a deep breath anyways, just in case I wasn’t. I brushed my bare hand down her soft, fur-covered side, something I never could’ve done before.
She pressed closer.
“You know, once upon a time I didn’t like dogs.”
She didn’t seem to care, closing her eyes and just letting me cuddle her. I pulled her closer, sitting down on the mulch. She climbed into my lap immediately, sitting there and lifting her head to sniff the breeze as it brushed by.
“I didn’t like their stinky breath and thought that they were going to viciously bite my fingers off if I didn’t pet them just right.” I drew out the word ‘just,’ squeezing her paw teasingly.
She pulled it away and I let her.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to trim your nails.”
She eyed me, then rested her head on my shoulder.
Humming again, I let myself drift back into my thoughts, hands drifting back and forth down her coat.
When I was younger, I’d been horrible about what clothes I wore. Everything was too itchy, too uncomfortable, too… everything. Too soft, too tight, too baggy, too itchy, too suffocating, too short shirts with too long sleeves. Turtle-necks were the bane of my existence and sweaters made me want to scream. I would live forever in fleece pajamas if I could, but alas, my father wouldn’t condone my mother letting me remain in pajamas past ten. As a homeschooled kid, I could do many things. I could play for two hours for recess instead of one, I could eat lunch whenever I was hungry, but I could never, never wear pajamas past a certain time of day.
I hated it.
I hated the stringiness of my ants on a log, but I loved the taste of the peanut butter and raisins. I hated cheddar quesadillas but I loved the salsa. But most of all, I hated the shredded carrots in the salads my mom would make.
Shredded potatoes in hash browns and tater tots.
Shredded carrots in salad.
Un-melted, shredded cheese on anything, anything and I couldn’t eat it. I’d heat it up and heat it up and heat it up until it melted or else it was picked off.
If it was shredded, it was a no. The taste was fine, just the texture… it caused tingles in my mouth as my tongue touched the tiny bits of anything. Lettuce too small in my salad? Chopped pieces of onion?
Ow, ow, ow.
It was like being shocked by electricity, except a very low voltage that didn’t go away immediately. Everything in me screamed “Unhealthy, unnatural, get away!” but I couldn’t.
“You’ll get used to it,” my parents always said.
If by “get used to it” they meant “you’ll learn to not say anything about your difference,” then yes, I got used to it. I learned how not to flinch when people touched me. I learned how to wear jeans without wanting to die. I learned how to eat shredded food without gagging. I learned how to make eye contact without bursting into tears. I learned how to not have meltdowns when I got overstimulated…
I shut down. I just… stopped existing.
Until Stella.
As if she knew I was thinking of her, she rested her head on me again—an alert. Be careful, is what that meant. Make sure you’re calm or you might have an issue soon.
My fingers laced through her fur, gently tugging but not enough to hurt, and she let me. I rubbed the long strands between my fingers and continued humming, focusing on how good it felt. How good the breeze felt, how good the flowers smelled, how… perfectly stimulated I was. Not overly so, not underly so, just… peacefully, pleasantly, and contentedly stimulated.
“See? I’m fine.” I kept stroking Stella. “You didn’t need to warn me I’m—”
And then it hit.
Disregarded, Stella’s warning still hung in the air, but in only a moment, everything—including all thoughts of that—was gone. Gasping for air, my fingers gripped Stella’s fur like my life depended upon it.
In my lap, she lowered herself onto her haunches, licking my legging-clad knee for a long moment before resting against me.
“Breathe,” I whispered, closing my eyes against the tears that welled up in my eyes. “Breathe, breathe, breathe…”
Curling my body over Stella, I wrapped my arms around her, beginning to tremble. I could feel tears welling up in the corner of my eyes and it all cut to black.
***
Maybe you could call it drifting. Maybe the fluidity in the in and out could be like a solid weight on your chest—pressure, in it of itself. But not, all at the same time.
Maybe you could think it wrong of me, to wake up with no recollection of how I fell asleep, why I fell asleep, or what happened.
All I knew was there was fur on my hands, a warm snoot breathing into my palm, and a heaving side pressing against my stomach—in out, in out, in out.
All I knew was safety in that moment. Not what had happened, not what would happen, not what I would recall in the future days.
Safety was all there is, all there was, and all there was going to be.
I was free.