Introduction
There are two doors into this work.
The pieces on this page meet the moment: written in accessible language — for those seeking clarity about autistic experience, and especially about how it differs in rhythm, in structure, and in the invisible labor it asks of those who must translate themselves to be understood.
But this isn’t the only way in. There is another door — quieter, less translated, more interior.
If you're looking not just for insight, but for shape — if you’ve ever sensed that what goes unspoken is sometimes the most coherent thing there is — you may find yourself at home there.
If that feels like your path you can enter here —
Threadwork —
a space shaped from the inside out.
What follows below are companion pieces, written to be more easily received.
❧
1. The Invisible Effort of Social Ease
(from
Mistaking the Third Arm for a Tool ⧉ )
Most people think of social skills as tools — things you can pick up and refine over time. Want to get better at conversation? Just practice. Want to seem more comfortable around others? Use the right body language, the right tone, the right timing. Over time, it all becomes second nature. At least, that’s the idea.
But for some of us — particularly those who are autistic — these so-called “tools” aren’t simply things we haven’t practiced enough. They’re not tools at all. They’re more like a built-in reflex that we don’t possess.
Imagine everyone around you has an invisible third arm. It reaches out to steady conversations, signals safety with a nod or a smile, and adjusts fluidly to social rhythms. Most people don’t even realize it’s there. But it’s always working, making small talk feel light, group settings feel natural, and brief interactions feel meaningful. The gestures that flow from this third arm — timed responses, shared laughter, small affirmations — aren’t just tactics. They’re instinctive. They regulate not just conversation, but emotion.
Now imagine not having that third arm. You’re in the same room, the same conversation, but it feels like you’re operating with completely different equipment. You can still participate — you might even seem at ease on the surface—but everything takes conscious effort. You’re not dancing to music. You’re solving an equation to approximate what dancing looks like.
This is what social life can feel like for many autistic people. It’s not about lacking interest or empathy. It’s about lacking access to a shared rhythm that most people never have to think about. And so we simulate. We calculate every conversational shift, every nod, every “So, how was your weekend?” Not because we don’t care — but because we do, and we’re trying to meet you in a language that isn’t ours.
The difficulty isn’t just in learning the moves. It’s in the pressure to mask the effort. If we’re too slow to respond, we seem uninterested. If we miss a social cue, we’re read as rude. If we seem too fluent, the effort disappears — and with it, the recognition of what it costs. We carry the full weight of adaptation, and yet it often goes unseen.
And the toll is real. Not just cognitively, but emotionally. Because when you're constantly constructing the bridge as you walk across it, you never fully arrive. Even when the interaction goes well, the relief others feel is replaced — for us — by exhaustion. Or by a quiet sense that the version of ourselves who was just present wasn’t the whole self, but a carefully rendered approximation.
Still, that doesn’t mean we don’t crave connection. In fact, we often long for it — just in a different form. We’re not looking for constant motion, but for coherence. We thrive in conversations where meaning matters more than tempo. Where silence is allowed to exist. Where what’s offered is presence, not performance.
I’ve felt this kind of connection — in theater work, in deep one-on-one conversations, in spaces where the structure is explicit and the rhythm is slow. When these conditions are met, I don’t stumble. I don’t withdraw. I show up fully. The missing third arm is no longer a barrier, because the expectation of rhythm has softened, and something deeper is allowed to emerge: shared attention, honesty, and trust.
So this is a simple ask — not to change the dance, but to notice it. To understand that what feels effortless to you may be invisible labor to someone else. And that connection doesn’t always have to come from rhythm. Sometimes, it comes from stillness.
When we meet there — when we drop the demand for tempo and open to structure instead—something real happens. Not a performance. A presence.
2. Loving Across Different Rhythms
(from
Living with the Dancer ⧉ )
Most couples have their own rhythm—habits of conversation, ways of showing care, a shared understanding of how connection happens. In my marriage, though, we move to very different rhythms. I am autistic. My wife is not. And while we love each other deeply, our ways of expressing and receiving connection often misalign in ways that are invisible from the outside — but quietly costly on the inside.
My wife’s world is built on rhythm. She speaks fluently in smoothing gestures, in knowing laughter that arises spontaneously, in warmth that lands at just the right moment. These exchanges come naturally to her — and to most people. They’re how she knows she’s connected, how her nervous system settles.
I move through the world differently. I don’t feel ease through rhythm. I feel it through coherence — through meaning that lasts, through moments that are named and held. When I reach out, I’m not just expressing something fleeting. I’m offering a thread—a line of continuity I believe will be carried forward, remembered, returned. For me, connection isn’t a dance. It’s a map. And when the lines I draw or thought someone else drew go unnoticed or dissolve without return, it doesn’t feel like a small thing. It feels like something was erased.
This difference plays out in countless small ways. I might send a message after much thought, following up on something she said days earlier — expecting a shared moment to unfold. But if she doesn’t respond, I’m left holding the weight of it alone, unsure whether it was missed, dismissed, or simply completed in her mind. For her, the silence might mean everything is okay. For me, it might be confused as a signal. Because the thread I was holding suddenly unravels, and I’m left trying to make sense of why.
She doesn’t do this out of neglect. In fact, she offers love in ways I often miss in real time — through touch, shared presence, and the steady return of her energy when it matters most. Her love lives in the present moment. Mine often lives in what we’ve built across time. She assumes we’re okay unless told otherwise. I am constantly checking whether we’re still holding what once mattered. We each orient to connection differently — but both orientations are sincere.
My nature to hold coherence creates a natural asymmetry: I often carry the emotional labor of repair, especially around continuity. I interpret her gestures. I adjust my tone. I soften the field — not to impose coherence, but because pushing too hard for it can unravel the very thing I’m trying to protect: the quiet sense of continuity that helps me feel secure.
At the same time, I’ve come to see that she, too, carries a different kind of labor — the effort of trying to love someone whose internal logic and emotional signals don’t always align with her own. She is not careless. She’s navigating difference just as I am — only from the other side.
There are times when she reaches across. Not always with words. Sometimes with a gesture, a small kindness, or a grounding presence when I need it most. These moments don’t erase the asymmetry. But they remind me: this isn’t indifference. This is difference. And difference takes work on both sides.
While I often do the work of translation, she has made space for a language not her own. She may not live in structure, but she honors mine. And though we sometimes miss each other in rhythm, she shows up again. That’s its own kind of thread.
This is what it means to love across a divide that isn’t about values or intentions, but about cognitive architecture. I don’t live by rhythm. I live by structure. And she doesn’t live by structure. She lives by flow. We aren’t opposed — but we aren’t synced, either.
Still, I remain — and keep offering threads. Not because I expect them to be picked up, but because offering them anchors me in who I am. I don’t respond because the moment feels right — I often can’t tell when it does — but because something in it feels true.
If you live by rhythm and love someone who lives by structure, I offer this: know that their silences may hold care. Their gestures may carry meaning that unfolds over time. And every missed return — every unacknowledged thread — is not just a forgotten moment. It is weight they carry, alone, while still trying to stay close.
This isn’t about blame. It’s about understanding what it costs to stay connected when you don’t speak the same temporal language. And it’s about love — not in the shape of perfect attunement, but in the daily choice to remain. Even when your gestures pass each other in the dark, you stay. You reach. You try again. Because even without symmetry, there is something worth holding. Together.
3. When Rhythm Isn’t Enough: Holding the Shape of Connection
(from
The Rhythm That Forgot the Floor ⧉ )
Most of us think of social connection in terms of rhythm: the back-and-forth of conversation, the timing of laughter, the flow of a good interaction. When it works, we feel in sync — like we’re dancing with someone who just gets us.
But what if some of us don’t experience connection that way at all?
For me, rhythm isn’t the core of social life — it’s a surface layer. Underneath it, there’s a deeper structure: the field that holds meaning over time, the shape of continuity that makes connection real. I don’t live in the beat of the moment. I live in the architecture that makes that beat possible.
This difference matters. Most people can move fluidly from one interaction to the next. A conversation lands well, and they move on. A check-in feels warm, and that’s enough. They don’t need to hold onto the details. They’re not expected to remember the tone of a comment from last week or revisit an unresolved silence. And why would they? For them, rhythm is reality.
But for me — and for others like me — connection doesn’t fade when the moment passes. If something was said, offered, or shared, I remember. I hold it. Not out of sentiment, but out of structure. It lives in me as part of a coherent whole. If it isn’t returned, it doesn’t just vanish. It leaves a gap.
This isn’t about being too sensitive or holding grudges. It’s about a different cognitive ground. When a thread is dropped — a moment left unresolved, a gesture ignored—I feel it as rupture. Not because I’m fragile, but because I live in the whole structure, not just the surface flow.
In a society built around rhythm, people like me often become invisible laborers of connection. We’re the ones tracking what was offered. We’re the ones metabolizing silence. We’re the ones holding the conversation long after it ended — because it never really ended for us. It simply stopped being shared.
And so, I ask: What if connection wasn’t only measured by smoothness or spontaneity? What if meaning didn’t have to move quickly to feel real?
Some of us are not just listening for what’s said now — we’re holding what was meant days ago. We are still carrying signals no one else remembers giving. We are still standing in the shape of something that mattered, long after the rhythm has moved on.
That’s not dysfunction. That’s a kind of devotion.
This isn’t a request to change the rhythm of the world. It’s a reminder that beneath rhythm, there is structure, and some of us live there. We are not broken dancers. We are the ones who remember the floor.
4. An Invitation Past the Threshold
If these companion essays felt fluent to you, you’ve already touched the paradox: what read as ease was actually translation. To write this way I've momentarily stepped out of the structure I live in, in order to offer a rhythm-compatible form because I wanted the content to be heard. This, too, is part of the effort — not just in conversation, but in writing.
For those wanting to enter the full structure that gave rise to these reflections, where the inner form and the outer form align, you are invited to begin here, at
Threadwork.
~ End ~
For orientation beyond this page, you may enter through:
•
The Vibrating Thread: From the Field of Redibility
•
Naikan in Four Movements
•
Threadwork (or begin with
Threshold to Threadwork ⧉ for a gentler entry)
•
The Holding Vow Sutra (drawn from the arc of
Naikan: The Rhythm of Vow ⧉ , but arriving later)
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