Printer Jam, Open Sky

The first "professional" photo I ever took.

“Between what I want to say and what I can say is a narrow gate. Some days it opens. Some days I stand outside with my hands full of sentences.”

Hey. It’s me.

I’ve never been great at starting these. (That’s not new.) I can talk for hours in a haphazard, no-rail-guards way, but ask me to write and my brain does the printer-jam thing: too many pages queued, none of them coming out straight. What’s changed isn’t the jam—it’s what I do when it happens. I don’t rip the paper out anymore. I breathe, I pick one sheet, and I try again.

Back then—2019 me—I was learning the shape of my brain out loud. I wrote about the mind’s eye and the ocean with the gate; about seeing everything at once and crashing from “too much information.” I learned the words for it: overload, meltdown, shutdown, interoception. I said the big true thing: Don’t ask HOW. Ask WHY. That line became a little handrail I could grab when the stairs got slippery. It still is.

I unmasked. (Or started to.) I made a vow: I will do that no more. I asked for kindness while I did it. I planted my feet in the dirt of Autistic Pride and said, we are ALL Autistic, even when we disagree. I argued hard when I had to—not with cruelty, but with evidence and a beating heart. I wrote about ABA and trauma and the way institutions call harm “help.” I closed with love because anger, by itself, eats you.

Then the world tilted. Quarantine. Health anxiety louder than my own thoughts. Games as lifeboats. Therapy as a room where I could lay the puzzle out and not be rushed. I made amends where I’d failed. I stopped capital-A “Advocate” and started “a person telling the truth about their own life.” I said I’d keep learning. I meant it.

Since then, the core of me hasn’t shifted so much as sharpened. The belief part—the refusal to give up on care in a world that profits from indifference—stayed. The method changed.

Before, I tried to include everyone, always. I still want us at the same table. But now I draw the table on paper first. I write the red lines in pen. Kindness, yes. Boundaries, also yes. I learned that “understanding WHY” can’t be a hall pass for bad-faith patterns. So I ask WHY…and I also ask when. As in: when do I leave, when do I disengage, when do I document instead of debate.

That’s another change: I document. I timestamp. I keep observable facts separate from interpretations. Two tracks:

• One is human—free-verse, metaphors, history, the whole ocean.

• One is sterile—dates, times, “what was said/what was done,” no adjectives.

I don’t mix them anymore. (It took me a while to learn that.)

I still believe in unity, but it’s a both/and unity: make space for separate rooms when people need them; come back together when we can. I still hold autism as a disability and a source of strength. I still refuse to dehumanize; even the “demons” in angel wings are human. That’s not mercy for harm; it’s accuracy. If we forget they’re human, we forget we can require them to be accountable.

The themes stuck:

• Behaviors are communication. Speech isn’t the only valid tongue.

• Labels are shortcuts, not maps. Drop them when they mislead; discuss concrete needs instead.

• Care earns its name. If a thing risks trauma and refuses to study its own harms, it is not care.

What I’ve added is quiet. Not silence—quiet. Less shouting into the void, more choosing my inputs. Less doom-scrolling, more routine. Less “I must fix this system with my bare hands,” more “I will keep my people safe while I decide where my hands matter.” Compassion with teeth.

And I’ve learned to love constraints. Ask me a specific question and the gate opens. Give me a blank page and I write the map first: who is this for, what do they need, what is the one true sentence I won’t compromise.

Where I’m going next?

I’m keeping the mantra: Don’t ask HOW. Ask WHY. And I’m adding two more:

Ask FOR WHOM. Who benefits, who pays, who is in the room when decisions are made, who is missing, who is speaking for whom, who gets to be wrong without being destroyed.

Ask UNTIL WHEN. Until when will I give chances; until when will I wait for change; until when will I stay in conversations that turn me into someone I don’t want to be.

I’m going to keep writing as a person, not a pedestal. I’m going to keep citing when I make a claim and saying “I’m not a professional” when I am not. I’m going to keep the both/and: disability and strength, softness and steel, unity and lines that don’t move. I’m going to keep ending with love because ending with love keeps me human.

There are rooms I won’t enter anymore. There are rooms I will help build. There are gates I will hold open for others, even on days when mine is stuck. There are systems I will critique with my whole chest and also navigate with surgical calm. There are people I will forgive. There are patterns I will not.

If you’ve known me since the first printer-jam post, you’ll recognize the bones. The difference is I carry a toolkit now: a stopwatch, a notebook, a boundary script, a small lamp. When the power cuts, I can still see enough to move.

If you have questions, ask me. If I get something wrong, tell me. If you need help finding your own gate, I’ll sit beside you while you look for the latch.

As always, I love you all.

🕉️