“Who would’ve guessed,” I say sardonically, and she somehow reminds me more of me than I would like to acknowledge. I am the very same. Only that I am the person who swallows it down, and she doesn’t. She is more daring. Holdingup a mirror for me to see. Almost like a version of me I never dared to be.
“Let me rephrase,” I say. “I won’t rule your every move, but certain things need experience and structure, structures you have no knowledge of, and you must be willing to learn.”
A moment pause follows, where she looks at me. It costs me all my willpower to keep the gaze.
“Strike out the entire proposal of involvement,” she finally says, her words coming rather constricted.
“Why wouldn’t you want your name published?” I ask immediately. While I already have an assumption about the why, I have to ask because she is the first student to request anonymity. Every other student would be thrilled and honored to be named in with research like this.
She smiles faintly.
“This is my rule,” she says. “I don’t want my name or anything ever about me to appear publicly. No name, no photo, nothing. This is your research.”
“Whom are you running from?” I ask before I can control myself, and thereby break my own rule of strictly professional behavior.
I know it.
She knows it.
The pot plant on my desk knows it.
And sure enough, she asks, “Strictly professional, wasn’t that your number one rule?” And while she calls me out on my own hypocrisy, I cannot help but wonder about her way of speaking. The students her age I usually entertain are different. They don’t combine that fast. Don’t speak in a sophisticated way like her.
Whatever has happened to her in her past, it must have been something that required her to become an adult much too early in life. Like me.
“You are right,” I say, formally. “Excuse my overstepping. The line seems to blur, because I see a lot of myself in you. Think about it, and let me know, will you?”
Her mouth curves slightly.
“I’m nothing like you,” she says and scoffs slightly.
“You might not see it, because you don’t know much about me, but you are.” More than I’d like to acknowledge, which is why she might tease me so much.
“I know enough,” she says in her typical manner.
“Do you?” I ask to challenge her. “Then tell me, what is it you know?”
She eyes me for a moment, bites her bottom lip, shifts, takes a deep breath, and then says without so much as a breather in between, “You are a little Miss Perfect, the most wonderful, knowledgeable, admirable person in the room. An image you have created brick by brick to protect yourself from judgment. Judgment that came from your close environment, probably your mother, with very strict expectations where your autism had no place at all. You upheld their expectations through your own perfectionism and standards, by making yourself small to fit what they thought possible for you.”
Suddenly, my chest clenches. It clenches so tightly that I believe I'm suffocating.
By making yourself small to fit what they thought possible for you.
An icy shudder runs down my back.
Every system in my body jumps into alert. Convincing me to run. Run away and close the door so no one ever sees me again. And she isn’t even done yet.
“You control, because you can’t let anyone see your humanity, your flaws, your differences. You are convinced there is something wrong with you because the people who should have loved you unconditionally taught you that love isa condition tied to you fulfilling their expectations. You believe you failed them. But they failed you monumentally in the only job they had.”
Goosebumps spread over my entire body as my jaw clenches. I am at a complete loss as I try to process her words. My hands are in close fists, my nails digging painfully into my palms.
“You strive for excellence in the one thing you can control, which is why you went into analyzing the human mind, why you built the predictive model, because prediction is what your brain labeled safe. Being able to predict is what kept you safe. But I tell you what, the world isn’t safe. The world is a fucking crazy place with mad assholes who come into a lecture room with a gun. And you can’t deal with it, because you never learned how to deal with the unpredictable. And none of that is your fault. Your parents should have protected you. Shielded you with their love. But they didn’t. And now, you are so fucking raw that everything just goes straight through, and you let it happen, because you care more about others than yourself. Noble by societal standards, but fucking stupid.”
With that, she falls silent, panting slightly from her speech.
I have no words because acknowledging that every single one of her words hit the mark would open up a door that I will never be able to close. I am consumed by fear. Everything spins out of control, and my arms snap up.
We just sit there.
