Twenty Years in the Fire: A Love That Survived

High school was starting, and I was a mess. All I could think about back then was finding a soulmate. I met my first real girlfriend, let's call her Squeak, and I loved her endlessly, regardless of her actions. I was convinced she was cheating on me, and decades later I would learn that maybe it was true. I also found out that two people, my first “friends,” were paying her on a dare to date me. She broke my heart, and that heartbreak led me straight to my first psych ward stay.

Then came Penguin, my second girlfriend in high school. We were both unapologetic nerds, bonded over the same videogames, inside jokes, and long late-night conversations. Our time together was full of that nerdy joy and a natural physical passion that matched so naturally it felt rare at that age. I still look back on those days with real fondness and sometimes wish we’d had more time together, but life pulled us in different directions. We still talk even now, and there’s a part of me that still feels that spark—it’s quieter these days, but it never fully left.

But life kept moving, as it does, and other friendships shaped me just as much.

I met a friend on the bus when I overheard videogame music—Zelda, maybe Oracle of Seasons for the Game Boy Color. I struck up a conversation, and that guy became my wingman and ride-or-die through high school, let's call him "Link". His older brother was someone I’d been friendly with before, even helping him write a letter to his girlfriend—who turned out to be Squeak. When Squeak started dating Link, there was a rift, silent maybe, but real. Yet Link and I stayed strong. We spent nearly every day together, staying up late playing Smash Brothers and Naruto, and he showed me what it really meant to be a friend, to be loved as I was.

High school sucked. I was in remedial classes for some subjects, regular for others. I was bullied constantly, picked on, laughed at—but those same people would sometimes come to me in private to vent, to talk. It was the first time I learned how to show compassion in the face of cruelty. I didn’t care about my grades; I knew about No Child Left Behind, and I was so depressed that all I cared about was trying to have some fun. Home life is not what this story is about—some of it was bad, some good, but that’s a different telling.

There were other relationships, some online, some in person. Some of those people I still talk to and still count as friends; others drifted away, and even if they left, they’ll always have a place in my heart. I made friends in classes, too, moments I still treasure. Sometimes I wonder if the teachers would be proud of me, if they realize how much they helped when I didn’t know how to say thank you.

In 2007 I went on a cruise with family and met a girl with brunette hair, freckles, and kaleidoscope eyes. I was smitten. On the last day I literally ran down the ship’s hall to confess my love and promise I would visit. That’s how I met, to keep names anonymous lets call her Darling, who became my soul, my purpose.

High school was this strange combination of teachers who either loved or hated me, peers who thought I was a weird kid but deep down cared. I started to realize I wanted to understand why people did the things they did, and that became my obsession, tucked in between long nights of World of Warcraft, anime, and internet dives into the darkest corners. I was also taken advantage of online, in the exact way you think, because I was desperate to feel loved. I don’t talk about that much because it’s upsetting, but I use that pain now to help others.

I took my first trip to the UK that summer—just two weeks, but no one thought I could do it. I met up with Darling and lived with her for that short time. It was heaven. By the time I graduated high school, I was just thankful to be done with it. The only reason I survived was kindness: a few friends, a few teachers who didn’t let me get swallowed whole.

Between 2008 and 2011 I worked, saved, and went to live in the UK with Darling. Being there felt like freedom; I felt like myself, truly seen and loved. Tuesdays were Domino’s and Blockbuster movies. But when I was home in the States, I was a wreck—panic attacks, endless calls to her, afraid she’d leave. She once said it felt like she had me whole there, but back home I fell apart. She wasn’t wrong. I loved her, still do, in a way. I hope she’s well, happy, living the life I couldn’t give her. She dumped me on Christmas 2011, but now I see we were becoming two different people.

Part of me just wishes I could tell her thank you. She taught me to love art, encouraged my photography, gave me a serenity I still carry in every photo I take. I’ll never forget the day Link came to the UK and went with us to a modern art museum. We stopped in front of a painting of two geese. Link scoffed, angry that something so simple could hang on a gallery wall—“I could have done that!” he snapped. Darling just turned to him, calm and sharp, and said, “Well, why didn’t you?” That moment cracked something open in me. I realized art wasn’t about skill alone—it was about the act of seeing, of daring to put your vision into the world. Her family made me feel safe in a way I hadn’t known. And, to Darling, if you ever see this - Thank you, I'm okay, finally, I am okay.

Leaving her behind was like stepping out of sunlight into shadow, and college was waiting with its own lessons.

College started great, then became hell. People pretended to be my friends to steal my secrets, made fake profiles, sent stolen photos, harassed my family, even my disabled younger brother. I dropped out. When I met my wife years later, one of her “friends” warned her about me, and I had to explain everything.

People did it for all sorts of reasons: jealousy, cruelty, amusement. Hurt people hurt people, I know that now. Link tried to fight for me but wanted to stay friends with them. I forgave him then and still do. I tried to go back to school later, but undiagnosed autism, trauma, and loneliness made it impossible. I chased friends and love instead, sometimes cheated, hated myself for it, drank for it, hurt myself for it. My biggest shame.

Still, I met "Tiger" during those years, someone I still consider a partner even now. My first night with them was interesting, and I will never forget it - my first kiss with them gave me images in my mind of the open night sky and the full moon, which turned out to be something special to us that night. I'm still with them to this day as well, and I love them just as much as I have since that day. Then came 2012 to 2015, mostly a blur of trauma. I loved someone deeply, "Hamster", proposed, but they ended things because they couldn’t stop hurting me. I told them I didn’t care, but they cared enough to let go. I still love them. Trilby, another, was a rollercoaster—wonderful but short-lived. Mouse, another undiagnosed autistic like me, became a different kind of connection. We were homeless together at one point, and there was weed, synthetic weed that almost killed me. But we made it through. Mouse and I are still close today.

From 2009 to 2015, my anchor was World of Warcraft. I poured myself into it, mastered spreadsheets, exploits, specs. I was the guy the guild came to. It made me feel important, competent. Meanwhile, I worked countless jobs—retail, food service, dietary aide—and always struggled with instructions, change, communication. Autism disables you in ways that are hard to explain.

Then there was Fish in 2015. Perfect at first, all the right words, all the love I craved. A month in, after moving into her parents’ basement, the mask slipped. Verbal abuse, physical abuse, financial control, threats. I was terrified, stuck. My friends staged an intervention to save me. Eventually I discovered she’d been active on dating sites the whole time, using photos I’d taken. When I confronted her, she laughed, told me she’d never want to stay with me. I hung up. Haven’t spoken since. Part of me still loves her, but I never want to see her again. I know now—if my friends hadn’t stepped in, she might have killed me.

After Fish came Stitch. We’d been friends for years. I proposed in 2016, thought we’d marry. But my immaturity, my issues, wrecked it. She broke it off. I swore off love completely. Two weeks later, just for curiosity, I paid for OKCupid and told myself I’d date my first match. That match turned out to be the woman I would marry.

Punk.

It started with a spark, small and ordinary, like all the best beginnings do. A message sent on my birthday, a photo from my favorite place. That was the first thread, and from there the tapestry unraveled into something I couldn’t have imagined. Our first date was at a diner halfway between us. I thought it would just be a nice dinner, something casual, no pressure. But when she walked in, when I saw her, my very first thought was, “Oh—she’s autistic. I shouldn’t say anything.” I knew it, though. And something in me recognized her instantly.

We sat down, and we talked. And talked. And talked. From lunchtime until the place closed, words just poured out. We covered everything—music, life, pain, joy, little nothings and big somethings. It was as if every wall I’d ever built just crumbled, and for once I was sitting across from someone who could actually see me. Even the background songs seemed to conspire with us: love songs, our favorite bands, tracks that stitched our souls together note by note. It was uncanny. It felt like the universe was DJ-ing for us.

That night, the car steamed up, and it was beautiful. The beginning of a rhythm we fell into easily: hours of connection, laughter, the electricity of being understood. Driving there with Spotify on shuffle, the songs lining up again like fate nudging us forward, I knew after the first date that I loved her. But she wasn’t ready to hear it yet. She knew I loved her, but she made me promise not to say it until she told me I could. So it became our secret. Our little inside agreement. “Tell me when it’s time,” I’d whisper. “Let me know when I can say it.”

We made it Facebook official on a date to the Liberty Science Center After Dark. Honestly, neither of us cared much for the adult-event vibe—it felt awkward—but the science center itself? That was us. Two nerds, two dorks, in love with the same kind of wonder. I remember posting that photo, making it public, feeling the rush of finally being able to write the words out loud: I love you.

Soon I was staying over more and more. The second time I stayed, her mother (issues aside) agreed to let me move in. Every day I didn’t work, I spent with her. Driving to her, staying until her mother said otherwise, until eventually I was just there, fully. The start of our relationship was everything I had ever been looking for, but also things I hadn’t even known to look for. She completed me in ways I didn’t know were missing. Our days were passionate, our nights too—we explored each other’s love and bodies with the kind of abandon you only feel when you’ve finally found your missing half.

Then the health scares began. Panic attacks, high blood pressure, chest pain. Six days in a row I went to the ER, dangerously close to the edge, and she was there for every single one. Sitting beside me, holding me, refusing to leave. On that sixth night, half asleep at three in the morning, delirious from stress and fear, I proposed. It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t perfect. But it was real. I was terrified of dying without being hers. And she said yes.

The next morning, I woke and had to ask if it had been a dream. She smiled and told me it was real, that I was hers and she was mine. We promised each other we’d have a bigger wedding later, but when safety became an issue, when there were real threats at her mother’s home, we knew we couldn’t wait. We got married quietly, with just a few of her friends, officiated and sealed by the state. For a while, it was our secret. A hidden truth we only revealed when we had to—when the danger was at the door and the person who meant us harm realized they couldn’t touch us anymore.

Afterward, things got dark for a while. We left, on professional advice, for our safety. But we had nowhere else to go. My parents refused to take us in at first, even when I told them we were married and I would never abandon her. So we lived out of motels for three months, until the money ran out and winter closed in. Eventually my parents relented, and we moved back into the same bedroom I’d lived in since 1996. For the next four-ish years, that tiny room was our home.

2019 was a different kind of hard. My parents and I clashed constantly, and Punk had to see it all firsthand. But for the first time in my life, I wasn’t alone. She defended me, stood up for me, showed me what love truly is supposed to feel like. That was the year we bought our first Squishmallows, the beginning of a collection that’s now over 200 strong. Small joys like that carried us.

That year also brought discovery. We found medical documents about her—hidden away by someone in her life—that showed she might be autistic. In helping her understand that, I found a video about autistic shutdowns by Agony Autie. I sat there, watching, and broke down in tears. For the first time, I realized that what I thought was brokenness in me was simply autism. I wasn’t broken. I was autistic. Later, when we saw a specialist in adult autism, I still remember tripping over the very first question, overthinking it so hard that both my wife and the therapist laughed. I didn’t understand the joke until later, but by the end of that session I had my diagnosis. Finally—an answer.

There was a brief hospital stay that year too, and when I came out, my therapist told me I was ready for full-time work. My wife and I started planning a proper wedding, ordered an engraving, made invitations. And then I saw the first reports from China—news of a novel virus. I read the papers, the small studies, the warnings tucked into the details, and I told my wife: this is the end of the world as we know it.

And then it was 2020, and everything changed. She caught COVID at work, brought it home. We both got sick, sicker than we’d ever been in our lives. Weeks of pain, of struggling to breathe, of feeling like our bodies were being dissolved from the inside. When she finally went back to work, she learned management had allegedly known she was exposed but hadn’t told her. It shattered her trust. She took FMLA, and for six months it was just us, quarantined together, watching the world unravel outside. Between Animal Crossing and refrigerated trucks full of bodies, I buried myself in research, devouring every study as it was published, piecing together how the virus worked, how it broke the body, how it would break the world.

I told her we were about to see worldwide mass psychosis, that this would mark the end of life as we’d known it. She laughed, set an alarm for five years in the future, to remind me how wrong I was. That alarm went off this year. She looked confused at first until I reminded her. Then she looked at me, and I looked back, and no words were needed. We just sat in silence until one of us cracked a joke. What else could we do?

But those years weren’t only about fear. They were also about discovery. She encouraged me to explore polyamory, to accept that I could love more than one person without harm. She helped me embrace my gender identity and sexuality, to understand why I’d never fit neatly with the boys or the girls. With her, I found the truth: I am nonbinary. I am bisexual. With her, I also stepped fully into autistic advocacy, starting The Autistic Lens, learning more about myself, about the world, about trauma, greed, systemic harm. I made mistakes, I broke down, I stepped back—but through it all, my Punk stayed. She never left.

Now, as the world tilts further into chaos, as fascism rises and the old systems rot, she and I have sworn to fight together, in whatever ways we can—with words, with love, with compassion.

We swore to be together in the end of it all. And every word I write now, every piece of advocacy, every photograph and blog and act of resistance, is written with her at my side.

Looking back now, twenty years feels like a storm I somehow lived through—love that broke me, cruelty that reshaped me, survival that almost ended me. But through it all, the thread that carried me forward was this: I was never meant to make it here alone. I found my people, my Punk, and in the end I found myself.

After everything, I know this much:

The storm doesn’t last forever. The sun will rise tomorrow.

Remember, hate is always foolish. and love is always wise. Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind.