NEURODIVERGENT NARRATIVES - CHAPTER 13: SPACE

The Quiet Places We Carve for Ourselves

There comes a point in every late-discovered autistic life when the question is no longer Who am I? but Where can I safely be myself? Space becomes the real biography. Not square footage or walls, but the rare pockets of the world where your body unclenches and your mind stops bracing for impact. Sometimes it is a room. Sometimes it is a forest, a city pavement, a stretch of sky, a stolen hour. Sometimes it is simply the moment you realise you do not have to hide.

This chapter rests inside that truth. It honours the places we claimed before we had language for why they mattered, and the places we found only once we knew. Space is not a luxury for us. It is a way of staying intact in a world that mistakes our quiet for absence. Here, the writers return to the rooms that shaped them, the landscapes that steadied them, the sensory worlds that sheltered them long before they could name what they were seeking.