Debi Gregory writes about what it feels like as an autistic female writer in this powerful piece challenging the way neurotypical colleagues misunderstand, shame, gaslight and refuse to acknowledge the autistic female’s lived in truth and voice. It is as if she is deemed too autistic to have something to say; too autistic for the stage; too autistic to be a writer. Magical Women are honoured to be able to platform her first piece with us.

“My feelings don’t always fit the situation. 

If my food is overcooked in a restaurant, I get enraged. 

I want to kill the waiter. But I don’t. 

I politely ask him to take my meal back and bring it to me the way I asked for it. 

I spend my days making myself smaller, More acceptable. And that’s okay, Because at night when I go on stage, I get to experience the world the way I feel it … 

With indescribable rage and unbearable sadness and huge passion. 

At night, on stage, I get to kill the waiter and dance on his grave. 

And if I can’t do that … if all I have left Is a life of making myself smaller … Then I don’t want to live.”

— AARON MAFRICI PLAYED BY PAUL VOGT GREY’S ANATOMY, SEASON 6, EPISODE 12

I live in a society that has brainwashed me into believing that everything about me is a farce.

Everything about me isn’t about me.

Everything about me is about everyone else, the way they want it, the way they feel about it,

the way they need things…

And if I dare to disagree… If I dare to try to be myself…

Their rage, their incandescent, all consuming, demanding rage is acceptable and righteous

and justified.

Photograph by Issara Willenskomer