I have surprised myself—it still happens, more often than I care to admit, usually in the negative sense.
Yet this time it came in the other direction, all positive, though not in the hollow way of “everything is working out and I’m riding on a high.” Far from it.
The last months, ever since publishing my two autobiographical novels, have been life altering, soul shaking in ways I could not have predicted. Each time I thought I was clear on my direction, my soul course corrected, sometimes sharply, always insistently. Again and again.
This year has taught me more than the thirty-nine years that came before it. It has taught me why I see the world as I do, why it feels the way it feels. It has taught me who I was, who I am in this moment, and who I am still becoming. The shift from black and white into the full spectrum of color has not been just about perception but about recognition—that I am part of that spectrum, inside it, threaded through it. And that is something I wish to name today, even if I dislike labels, even if the conversation remains only with myself.
First, a small update for those who wonder. I am still in Bulgaria. I chose to stay, and I chose consciously—even knowing it is the hardest path to walk. I chose this life, and I have chosen to remain with my wife. We are separated, yet we are not giving up on each other, and that thread will become an integral part of my writing going forward. My words will still carry a prophetic edge, but they are also learning to ground, to root more than I ever could before. Because life is not meant to be escaped. It is meant to be lived.
I have always recoiled from labels and boxes, perhaps because I always felt different from everyone around me.
Growing up, autism was a word you didn’t want attached to you. My father sometimes spoke of how it ran in our family, pointing out relatives in old black-and-white photographs—the Creole great-aunt with the thousand-yard stare, as if she inhabited another universe altogether, surrounded by peers who appeared fully present in their bodies, in their minds.
I saw myself in that look, though I tried not to. It haunted me, because she eventually ended her own life, unable to find a way to fit. That image imprinted: the lights switched on inside, but every door and window shut tight against the world, too much trauma sealed behind the walls.
I never thought I was “autistic enough” to belong anywhere on that spectrum—though truthfully, I had no idea what autism actually meant, only the vague associations I picked up from the adults around me. What I did know was that I felt alone. Alone to the point of ache, alone to the point of collapse.
Adulthood only intensified it. Holding down a job became unbearable. The hours surrounded by people, absorbing every shift in atmosphere while forcing myself to mask—it wore my body down until it broke. Headaches. Stomach pain. Depression. Anxiety. Inevitably I would quit, sometimes without a word, slipping away, inventing excuses to justify the cycle.
Finding new work was never the issue. The shame was. Each repetition added weight. What began as a stumble became a pattern, then a habit, then a personality. The one who couldn’t hold a job. The one who never made it past entry level. The one who wasted his potential. No one needed to say it aloud—I whispered it to myself often enough.
And then came Franzi.
Eleven years ago, the one who steadied my nervous system and quieted the noise. With her, I stopped running. I learned how to stay, at least for a while. I still faltered, still called in sick too often, but beside her I could imagine a different kind of life.
Yes, she was beautiful, but that was not what arrested me. It was her mind—her sharp humor honed by Buffy reruns, her loyalty, her sensitivity, her way of being brilliant and scatterbrained in the same breath. She could make chaos on a desk and yet bring order to my heart. She captivated me then; she still does now.
It has taken me until now to see it more clearly: I am not only autistic but AuDHD, a blend of the spectrum’s patterns and ADHD’s fire. That explains so much—the craving for rhythm and ritual, the need for silence, but also the restless bursts, the urge to move, the music played too loud, the sudden midnight dance. I am both the one who builds structure and the one who tears it down when it smothers me. And she, in her own scattered brilliance, meets me there. She too carries quicksilver attention, her own nervous system searching for safety even as it sparks with ideas.
This is why we once fit seamlessly and why we spiraled when life pressed too hard. My need for routine collided with her need for space. Her longing for quiet collided with my need to fill it. And yet even there, inside the tangle, we spoke to each other in a way no one else could translate.
I see now that I speak in acts of service. I tend the house, the firewood, the food forest. I rebuild her office quietly so she can walk back into it unhindered. I tend not as rescue but as devotion. Rescue was always my mistake—the urge to shield her as though she were fragile. She never needed that. She needed me to stand steady, so she could lean when the world tilted.
And she, though she calls herself boring and prudish, speaks fluently in touch. The forehead kisses, the spooning when the night turns heavy, the brush of her cheek against mine. Not small gestures, but confessions. Each time she lets her body rest against mine, she is saying without words: I still trust you to hold me.
Our love languages were different, but the longing was the same. She gave through touch and humor. I gave through constancy and devotion. When those languages met, we found home. Until life grew too loud. Poverty. Dogs. Homestead stress. My own checked-out trauma. All pressing until our wirings clashed, her need for calm against my restless drive. That is when we spiraled.
And yet I still believe we are worth it. Because when she spoons me in the morning, her nervous system is whispering what her words cannot: that she still feels safe with me, that some part of her still wants me near. Because when I hold her, my body knows with certainty—this is the woman I want to spend my life with. Not as escape, but as the ground I choose again and again.
Despite everything—her numbness, my fear—what we have is not common, not replaceable. It is the meeting of two divergent minds that somehow made a home.
So yes, I may be on the spectrum, and she may be ADHD, and that combination can be chaos. But it can also be the deepest kind of love when it is tended, honored, fought for.
Life is not black and white. And neither are we.
She is the home my nervous system chose. And I will not leave her behind. I will wait, steady and patient, until the quiet turns back into laughter again.
— Alex
Blessings and luck to you both.🕯️
Thank you for writing this. I related to it so much. I am Autistic and my partner of 17 years has ADHD. It was a match made in heaven, until I got very sick and our differences caused us to spiral apart in bad ways. We broke up for a couple of months. We were living together with our 2 young kids still.
But we have decided to give it another go now. Although I am sleeping in the garage away from the house because my nervous system needs silence at night now and he snores really bad.
Not many understand why we are trying again. But what we have is sacred, not replaceable. There was a time he was the only one my nervous system felt safe around, unfortunately he shattered that, and it is not easy to rebuild.
I still don't know how or if it's all going to work out. But we are still here, still trying, still choosing each other. With new boundaries. Because I won't give up my soverignty or my voice anymore to keep anyone else happy.