I have nothing to report

My husband and I would go on a walk, and he'd just start talking about some house we'd never mentioned before and tell how something changed.

"Ohhhh, that's the floor plan where they changed the master bedroom from the right side of the house to the left side of the house."

And then he'd pause. As if that realization was going to be the moment that shaped the rest of our lives. He'd pause some more. And a bit more.

Was I supposed to say something? Was there some big metaphor in his head he wanted me to respond to? Am I supposed to be coming up with a startup idea to change the world? What the cuss did this man want from me??!!

But I'd just cringe. Oh how I'd cringe. It made me feel so uncomfortable and irritated. Looking back with my newer insight, I realize that I felt very much on the spot, but I wasn't sure I could've named that before. Well, wait, I guess I did always wonder if he was expecting me to give him this kind of narration all the time, so, yeah. I felt a panic and being on the spot. Another unmet expectation.

Fifteen years

After 15 years of "look at the shape of that cloud!", it's not like I never asked my husband these questions directly. But neither of us really had the language to understand the real question nor the real answer, so I kept being irritated, he kept being hurt and rebuffed, and the cosmic ballet went on.

I genuinely didn't know. Hello, Autistic here! How am I supposed to understand mouth sounds?

I got the diagnosis in January of 2025, and we talk often of how I could not have known. I literally wear the same blue T-shirt every day. (I mean, not the same one, I have 20 of them.) All Gildan Ultra Cotton with 6.1# cotton in the GT-2000 style. And jebus help them if that cotton were one day to be 6#.

It's just what feels right.

Like so many people, I just thought autism was a kid rocking back and forth imagining television hospitals in his head.

I even knew it was a spectrum, but a spectrum of what? Nobody ever talked about it beyond very special episodes on television, deranged brain-worm guys, and deranged Jenny McCarthy. I never knew what someone might look for. I suppose even if I did, I just thought it was typical.

But so much I didn't understand. And seriously, how did no one think to ask me if I were autistic?

What now?

There's a huge "what now?" moment after a diagnosis. It's not like they write you a script for Normalactin.

It's not the end of a journey, but a new one: what do I try to change about me? What do I try to change about the world?

I chewed on this alone for fifteen years, and if you've done the same, you weren't doing it wrong. A lot of my site has been about the building I'm doing with AI, but there's a lot more to support me as I see the world. AI has turned out to be a good traveling companion on this one. It's a safe place with no shame, where I can ask about anything and gain this collective wisdom that it would be weird and scary to seek from others.

The office

A few weeks ago my husband came into my office and narrated a shopping trip he was about to take. I was sitting doing something with Claude, and the question and the oracle were in the same place at the same time.

So I asked it: "Is it a common autistic experience to be confused and irritated when spouse just narrates what they're doing when that was always the plan and it's no new information?"

It answered: "Yes, very common, and there's a clear reason it happens. Many autistic people treat speech mainly as a way to transfer information: if someone says something, your brain assumes it contains something new or needs a response, and starts working out what that is." If nothing's new, it said, the brain goes looking for the hidden meaning. "Is he asking for help? Does he think I forgot? Did something change?" That search takes effort and turns up nothing, and that's the irritation.

For a lot of neurotypical people, it said, narration isn't meant to inform. It can be a small bid for connection, basically "I'm here, we're in this together."

I was stunned at another time this neurology explained something so acutely that had been a life long background thing.

It wasn't an interrogation at all.

He was just making a touch-in connection. He wasn't asking me to approve of his plan at the store or for insight or comment. He was just connecting with me rather than walking out the door (which I totally do if there's nothing notable about my pre-planned outing).

There was a huge sense of relief, because I could translate this now, and I could meet more of his needs when he felt lonely for my not checking in about nothing.

The next day, when I came down and walked past his office on the way to mine, I popped my head in and said, "I have nothing to report!" I was having fun. I was meeting him where he was at and I didn't feel that small talk dread. I was communicating "I love you and I'm thinking about you" in a way that the message worked for both of us.

After a couple of days of this, though, he started acting irritated by it. He thought I was making fun of him.

Sigh. Rome wasn't translated in a day.