I spend a lot of time on metacognition. I’m fascinated by my own thinking. At the same time, I am locked out of awareness of how others think.
I have what many would call a photographic memory. It doesn’t quite work the way others think. I create abstractions of things I’ve seen. The abstractions retain their full context, more or less. Different abstractions that connect to one another. I suspect this is how memory works for many, but I find it very easy to retrieve them. To see them in front of me.
They have color. They have form. But their color and form are abstract. I cannot describe them with tools from outside my world. At times they shift into what many would describe as images, but the images are not photo-perfect. I don’t see them as images. I see them as memories, and memories are, to me, memories. It is more like I know it than see it.
The ease depends on stillness. It can arrive anywhere, but it is harder to control in certain environments. I can isolate myself in a chaotic environment, but it often results in me no longer being reachable. Others perceive it as me being sad, as me feeling unwell. But it is just how I become isolated. It is neither good nor bad. It is simply a fact.
The flood, however, is sudden. It is like a wall. I need to leave, but I cannot move.
I can remember things in precise detail. But I cannot remember faces. My memory works almost flawlessly — but faces are blurred to me. I recognize people by their gait, their height, qualities that exist beyond their faces. It works as long as they don’t change those qualities too much.
I don’t think all neurodivergent people experience what I experience. I don’t think it’s unique to us, either. But the fact that I can create these abstractions and interact with them creates a world for me where I can be exactly who I am, with myself.
It might be seen as sad. Or lonely. But I often feel more alone in the company of others. I cannot be myself. I am a shell of myself. I have learned to mask my true self, to the point where I experience what could be likened to personality disorders.
The masks cost energy, but it is only felt afterwards. Or when I have worn them for too long. In rare cases it turns into feelings of unreality where I am disconnected from myself. It becomes as if I am a spectator of myself without control or agency. I no longer recognize myself.
Who am I? When was I last me?
My inner abstract world is accessible to me. It is essentially inaccessible to everyone else. I cannot describe it with words. It works in its abstract form, but the moment it is made concrete, it falls apart. Loneliness sets in.
People have told me I am eloquent and insightful about myself. I disagree. If they could only see inside my mind, share my world with me — they would know there is so much more. So much that is lost when the abstract becomes concrete.
I much prefer the written word. The written word is easy to understand. There has often been time for reflection, the chance to convey the nuances and details that make a thought what it is.
The spoken word does not give me that. I can try as much as I want. Create as many social scripts as I want. Even if the scripts are perfect images of my abstractions, they fall apart the moment I speak them. Speech never matches my scripts 1:1, and what is conveyed lacks connection to the abstractions that give the thought its richness.
The social world is not made for people like me. It is built on a way of being that I cannot.
I feel alone in your world. In my world, I am whole.
A Note on the Above
This text began as a conversation (with myself) about qualia — the philosophical term for subjective experience. How do I know that what I see as red is the same red you see? We can agree that something is red, but we can never verify that our inner experience of redness is the same. Philosophers have debated this for centuries. For most people, it remains an interesting thought experiment.
For me, it is daily life.
I am autistic. And yes, I am aware of the irony of an autistic person building an entire text around the metaphor of “my world” and “your world”. I promise I know they’re not literal — most of the time… I experience the world through a mind that builds rich, abstract inner representations — memories that have color and form but cannot be translated into language without losing most of what makes them meaningful. I can know something with absolute clarity inside my own head and be completely unable to share it with you. Not because I lack the words, but because the words lack the capacity.
This is qualia, lived from the inside.
Much of what I describe in the text — the masking, the sensory overload, the disconnect between inner experience and outward expression — will be familiar to many neurodivergent people. Not all of it will resonate with everyone. Neurodivergence is not a monolith. But I suspect that the core experience — of having a rich inner world that the outer world was not designed to accommodate — is something many of us share.
I want to address something else, too. Autistic people are often described as lacking empathy. This has always struck me as a remarkable misunderstanding. What we often lack is not empathy but the ability to express it in ways that are legible to neurotypical people. The inner experience is there. It is frequently overwhelming. What is missing is the bridge — the translation from inner world to outer world, from abstract to concrete.
If you are neurotypical and reading this: consider that the empathy you cannot see may still exist. Consider that the person who seems distant, flat, or disengaged may be experiencing more than you are — not less. Consider that the social world you navigate intuitively is, for some of us, a foreign language we have spent our entire lives learning to speak, at great cost, without ever being fluent.
If you are neurodivergent and reading this: you may recognize parts of yourself here. You may not. Either is fine. But if you have ever felt whole in your own company and fractured in the company of others — I see you. Not because I can see your inner world, but because I know what it is like to have one that others cannot see.
I wrote this because the written word gives me something the spoken word never has: time. Time to find the shape of a thought before it falls apart. If something here reached you, then perhaps the abstract did not entirely collapse into the concrete this time.
Perhaps enough survived.