Some Autistic Thoughts on Joy, and a Sneak Peek at My Debut Fiction

You’ve Always Been This Way is a column written by Taylor Harris, a late-diagnosed neurodivergent woman and 1980s preschool dropout, who identifies every moment from her past that filled her with shame, and mutters, “Yep, that tracks. I see it all now.”

“I’ve been thinking about it all wrong,” said the town’s perimenopausal autistic woman every day, upon waking and going to bed. And sometimes whilst she sat alone upon the chamber pot, flipping through daguerreotypes from her bestie.

“What is it, my dear?” her husband asked. He’d once read a pamphlet on the four humors and feared she’d gone mad, oversaturated with black bile. “You’ve been all in a dither for a fortnight now. Shall I send for the doctor? Although… he is most adept at watching patients burn with fever before declaring the deceased, dead.”

“IT is everything, Peter. Don’t you understand?”

“Clearly not, for if I had understood, why would I—”

“Seal thine handsome lips at once. Just shut up and let me lie beneath the stars in my pantaloons and count the days until my eggs are no more. Here, hold my tea. And tend the children while I’m gone.”

That’s how my semiautobiographical novel, Dithering Lows, begins. It’s set in the olden days, and the autistic woman is loosely based on me, if you like her.

I’m lying. I’m not writing this novel. But if I were, I certainly wouldn’t use AI. How could ChatGPT produce the generous bounty of anachronistic high-end literature that my own unpruned synapses just did?

I digress, and reasonably so, given my diagnoses. If you read the title, you know this column is at least tangentially related to joy. Stay with me. I’m low-key Bad Bunny, but before glow-up.

Look, this country—fine, my country—continues to be run by white boys in wrinkled bodies and a type of white woman who will fall on the sword for a chance to sit at the popular lunch table. The roots of this mess are thick and incestuous, and though it might take an eternity to dig them up, I find relief in knowing they, too, will decay.

And the collective sigh from Black (and Indigenous) people sounds like: We told y’all.

About cops and ICE and the empire of whiteness. About the body count that the powerful call the cost of progress. That if they’re fine with genocide there, why would they honor the life of a person who dared to stand in their way here?

Remember, this way of living and governing and sending weapons that vaporize humans is supposedly blessed by Jesus (whom the Bible calls the savior of those who seek refuge).

But enough about them.

There’s a particular sound, within calls to resist, that’s perked up my ears: Joy as an act of resistance. It goes: Call your representatives and protect your neighbors, but don’t forget your whimsy. This is not a message for the status quo, for the privileged folk raising their kids to tell my kids, “If people just followed the laws, they’d be fine!”

For those of us who run on empathy, knowledge, and a sense of justice, there’s an invitation to resist and not burn out. Even as we fight, living and relishing shouldn’t stop.

My heart hears the invitation to joy and screams, “YES!” Then my brain whispers, “Girl, do you even like joy?”

Taylor, age four.

I don’t have synesthesia (although Thursday is purple—fight me), but when people say, “Choose joy!” I see a mash-up of pantyhose and Styrofoam, thick lipstick, and watered-down fruit punch in a bowl. Somewhere, my brain coded “joy” as corny, stuffy, and constricting. Something I’m supposed to feel when I just want to go home. And why do I want to go home? To be alone and authentic with ice cream and a small spoon. It appears my brain collected the memories and textures of church folks who didn’t really see me; receptions I was dragged to as a kid, where the food smelled too strong; and social codes I found to be rigid without cause, and served it all up on a Saran-wrapped to-go plate. Now I hear “joy” and think: “Aw, thanks, but I ate before I came.”

Don’t tell me to be happy. Don’t tell me what to choose unless one meat is chicken and the other is snake. Have we even met? Do I like your hairstyle? How do you smell? (Some old ladies smell like ground black pepper.) Be honest, on a scale of 1–10, how’re your pinky toes lookin’?

Fine. I have a dollop of demand avoidance.

At the same time, I hail from the land of Tell Me What to Do, and I Will Follow the Rules, and I Will Get an A+ Because That Is How a Good Autistic Girl Survives. Following rules and exceeding people’s expectations helped me get a full ride to a university where I found people who looked like me—and some even liked me. One even asked me to marry him. I was like, “Whoa, whoa… you bought me Five Guys? Bet.” But that’s another column.

So my brain reflexively labels joy as inauthentic or unearned, and I don’t think anyone who knows me would jump to describe me as “joyful.”

I’ve thought a lot about death, reasonably so, given I’m fluent in existential dread, and I’ve realized the living are the remember-ers; they can color the dead as they want. I don’t mind if people lie on me after I’m gone. Please, exaggerate my intellect and wit. Say I only ate the finest ice cream, never scraped the bottom of an Edy’s half-gallon in desperation. But if someone at my memorial says I always chose joy, they’re Mafia. If they say, “You could never tell when she was sick or feeling down because she refused to complain and always smiled,” please burn them at the stake prior to the repast. More mac ’n’ cheese for you.

There is one final consideration. What if I’ve been thinking about joy all wrong?

I might never wear stockings on purpose or crash a child’s baptism in search of 7Up punch. I might resist the HomeGoods version of joy that feels thin and forced.

But I actually laugh a lot and say weird things to my dogs when we’re alone (one works at a vape shop and the other is an unemployed professor), and dress up in ridiculous outfits, often anchored by goggles, whenever I get the urge so several times a year, and write flash historic period dramas like the one you were blessed to read above. I’m working on another manuscript, only futuristic, in which an autistic cult leader with dazzling gray hair (that’s me) gets coffee delivered whenever she wants from newly diagnosed neurodivergent women who literally believe she can help them lead fulfilling lives. I’m sure it’ll sell at auction in a really very major big deal to an indie publisher who turns out to be a cat with a keyboard and overdue vet bills.

Looking back over my life, the throughline for my brand of joy is the spontaneous creation of ridiculousness. Shoutout to my mom, who let me paint a giant creepy sun on my bedroom wall as a teenager. (We were renting, by the way!) And to my religious grandma, who pretended not to be deeply concerned when I asked her to wear a devilish mask and pose.

Taylor’s grandmother in mask.

I’d also like to thank the group of girls I met in college, who innately understood this practice of wearing foolish outfits, all for the sake of our own foolish selves. We were the gaze. I’ve cropped them out of the photo here because they all literally have jobs. They’re not out here selling their autism for clicks, but I digress, as I sense my stimulant wearing off.

Taylor in college.

I’ll save the deep dive into unmasking, masking, and humor for another day, but I cannot return to my cave before mentioning, perhaps, the most critical precursor to experiencing joy:

No expectations.

No demands.

Just me and my overgrown synapses throwing a strange party that no one has to RSVP for.

I set out to write my dull take on joy in the era of American rot, and the line, “I’ve been thinking about it all wrong,” led me to an autistic woman on a chamber pot who is clearly an ancestor of Schitt’s Creek’s Moira Rose. You’re welcome. And please come again. What’s that? Oh, no, I can’t give refunds for the time you spent reading my column. This is my professional blog, not an ALDI cart corral. I keep your quarters.

Remember, be blessed and choose joy. NOW.

Taylor, all grown-up.