The terrifically open C. M. Condo has a good, incisive look at the mental bruisings actually-autistic people can take—if not inflict upon ourselves—from just trying to navigate the world, and how this can spiral into beating ourselves up.

This failure now looks utterly predictable and I am bouncing back and forth between berating myself for having the meltdown in front of the teenagers and berating myself for not seeing it coming. I could have leaned on my sister more and I didn’t. I saw myself running low and pretended that running low was not inevitably followed by running out. I figured I just needed to hang on through whatever happened and I would be OK.