By Emilia Stavale

I wrote a song about solving problems with my revolver, but I don’t really have a gun, see? that’s just folk punk, babe. I solve problems with my mind, ever-whirring like a Wurlitzer, flipping through the stacks of information and potential solutions like those stacks of forty-fives; singles, like a Jack-of-all-trades I’m a master of none; not really educated, just cultured. Throughout my life, my autism has often felt like a curse. Now that I’m older, though, it sometimes feels like a superpower. I’ve spent my life studying humans, observing their habits and tendencies. I’ve been in therapy so long it can feel like I deserve an honorary degree at times. I’ve learned so much about the intricacies of the human mind that it can feel like I understand people better than they understand themselves. I certainly understand them better than they understand me. I realize I am not unique in feeling profoundly alone, yet I find a little solace in this notion. Alone is alone; whether you are joined in your aloneness is not consequential. They say that to be loved is to be known, but even the people who love me most don’t really know me. They know facts about me sure, my likes, dislikes, my habits maybe, even, but no matter how carefully and eloquently I express my thoughts and feelings they’ll never really get it. Yeah, yeah, like I said I’m certainly not the only one who feels this way, I know.
Anyway, it has to be this way, I suppose. I have to understand people, whilst most of them make no real effort to understand me. Cause what am I worth if I can’t be useful? Do I have inherent value, even if I am not running around anticipating the needs of every person around me? Am I worth having around if I’m not providing a service?

Sometimes I solve problems with my mouth. I speak, and like magic, my loved ones are soothed. My precise and studied affirmations provide comfort. But my mouth can solve other problems too: a kiss, to let you know that you are cherished ever so, a blowjob to relieve your stresses and quiet your mind. I have complained on several occasions that I do not feel useful, and more than once he has proclaimed that so long as I can “do that thing” with my mouth, I’m plenty useful. I’m sure that he is only joking, attempting to lighten the mood, and still these words are far from comforting. I was brought up in a society which teaches girls that they are only valuable if they are beautiful and sexual, and with great dissatisfaction I must admit that I have deeply internalized my fair share of these lessons. What do I have to offer if my tresses are not perfectly yet effortlessly coiffed? If my skin is not dewy and youthful? If my body is not taut in all the right places, and supple where it should be? If my lips are not moist and delicate, and do not taste of summer fruits, even when it is February? If I do not spend hours each week, and money I don’t really have, to maintain a strict grooming regimen, lest I actually look at my age? What am I worth then? I don’t want to worry about these things, I simply want to exist in a state of contentment without concern for how men or society at large perceive me, or how useful or productive I am.

I am often mistaken for being nearly a decade younger than I am. Any time someone is surprised to learn my age, I feel a pang of satisfaction, and this only goes to show how deeply affected I am by the pressures we are all subject to. I am succeeding so long as I remain young and thin and beautiful forever. Unfortunately I learned early that it is not enough to simply be beautiful. I must also be different enough to stand out in the crowd, in the vast ocean of internet profiles. Being different helps quiet the inner critic, too. I’ve never liked being stared at. It has always made me feel like there is something wrong with me. So, if I make myself look like a freak, with strange mismatched outfits and crazy hairstyles and tattoos and piercings, then I can simply try my damnedest to convince myself that they are perceiving my multitudes of adornments rather than gazing critically upon my face and body. I figured out this neat little trick at seventeen. I like looking weird; it feels more authentic. I’ve always felt like I am cosplaying when I present myself in a conformist manner.

Yesterday, surrounded by incredible artists, someone told me I look like an artist. That felt good, especially considering the setting. He said “you don’t look like a desk girl” and he was right; I’d rather make art and enjoy my life and feel good about what I put my time and effort into than work a soul-sucking job, even if it means I am always struggling to get by. It is difficult, though, feeling like I’m not a real artist because my work isn’t appreciated or sought after or marketable, which again, I acknowledge is not special. How many exceptional artists only gain notoriety posthumously? How many never do? I don’t want fame or fortune, I just want the imposter syndrome to dissolve into oblivion.

So, I suppose this is all to say that I, like many others, to be sure, feel indescribably insignificant and undeserving of any good thing in a world that wants to place me, naked, into a glass box, to ogle and commodify my body without regard for my personhood or attempts at self-expression.

Or something like that.