I was already 44 years old when I was 14.
Somehow, I am also 14 though I am 44, and the photograph above is probably the only proof you will ever really need for that. I have no idea the circumstances in which that photo was taken, no idea why I was dressed that way, and that is strangely the most sincere proof that stuff like that happens so often it’s not even weird. This isn’t about being too young for my years though, this is about that time when I was too old for them.
Before I dive in, I just want to say that the response to these more personal essays has been phenomenal and inspiring and heartwarming and it means so much to me that you want to know about MY experience, about my life, about growing up as an undiagnosed autistic. Thank you, truly, for caring. I do not speak of this to anyone really, and so having a place where people are genuinely interested is amazing and therapeutic in ways I didn’t see coming. Anyway, onward.
The scene: It’s winter in Helena, Montana. It’s subzero temperatures and howling winds that bite your skin with frost within minutes if left unexposed. It’s moonlight shining off snow-covered fields, it’s ten million diamonds glinting back from the surface of those still scenes. The breath of two dozen teenagers rises like ghosts under high branches of frozen pine trees. Everyone is drunk. I am not there, not outside, I am in the comfort of the car with the heat blasting and “The Promise” by Tracy Chapman belting out as slow flakes fall and melt instantly on the warmer glass of my windshield. I am waiting to drive everyone home safely. I’m the old man dressed appropriately sitting quietly in the car while the kids have their fun. I’m the one that takes care of the rest.
The scene: It’s early Autumn on the playground of Jefferson School, one of the many neighborhood elementary schools scattered across the city. I’m wearing M.C. Hammer Pants, as I am 8-years-old and didn’t get the memo that Hammer Pants are now “out” and jeans are now “in.” Hammer Pants are comfortable, thinks little me. To hell with jeans. I think people probably laughed, I remember someone saying I had a saggy butt in those pants. I remember wearing them another year beyond that. Probably a few months beyond that year, too.
An unspoken challenge with growing up as an undiagnosed autistic, is that I have been pretty much the same exact person from 4 to 44. It’s that I never really fit in, and still don’t.
A simple thought experiment for you to try. Work with me here:
Close your eyes and try as hard as you can to time travel back to your middle school days. You are now in the early stages of being a teenager, however your brain is exactly the same brain that you now possess, whatever age you may be. You know what you know now, you have seen what you’ve seen, you understand the frivolity of the fascinations that youth preoccupies itself with. What would you do when faced with the fads of fashion? Would you acquiesce to the trends that seem to rise then fade as quickly as they came? Would you buy all new clothes the instant the “cool kids” decided to switch things up? Would you pretend to love music you actually hated, just to avoid standing out?
Probably not.
What about my first example. If you did time-travel back, would you be in the warm car, sober as a stone, waiting for the debauchery to end so you could get your friends home safely, or would you be out in the woods risking frostbite to chug down cheap beer and Fireball whisky?
This was me, then. This was my experience. Everything that consumed everyone else with stress and apprehension didn’t phase me at all. I didn’t bother with caring what clothes I wore, if the music I listened to was what everyone else was listening to. (I had a LONG phase of sneaking headphones into class and listening to Enya’s greatest hits. Yeah. In high school.) I didn’t notice, or if I did notice I didn’t care, when people were making fun of me, teasing, or if I didn’t fit in perfectly to the groups I spent time with. I just was, and while there was a freedom I can see now in this, there was also a pretty serious feeling of alienation from time to time. Of lonely isolation.
I felt like I now know an adult feels, only then. I was confused and confused often why things like drinking copious amounts of alcohol, fashion fads, even social status, seemed to matter to everyone else but not me. I wasn’t more serious than my classmates, didn’t take things like some curmudgeonly old man, as I was the Class Clown of my graduating class, it was that I just wasn’t bothered. I just couldn’t figure out how to Be bothered. With any of it.
It’s painful being self-aware from the moment your memories started forming, and I have always been this. To know you’re different without being able to understand why, without being able to name it, is a challenge. There is a quiet sadness that rises when you are young and you watch everyone else traverse their lives on a completely different wavelength.
I was friends with everyone, but never had a group I belonged to. I roamed, peripatetic in how I was social, and spent time with everyone that I found interesting, everyone that may have found me the same. My relationships with girls back then were shorter, brief stints of time where we’d get to know one another intensely for a week or two, then go our separate ways as friends. To this day I’m still either friends, or completely comfortably friendly, with anyone my lips have known as theirs have known me. I still don’t understand the machinations of this, despite the diagnosis I finally received. I see back with a clarity I didn’t have then, hindsight being 20/20 as we’re famously told, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that most of the time it was just overwhelmingly confusing.
So what then, what would I say to that 14-year-old me, that stumbling and fumbling teenager that stood out like a sore thumb, but didn’t really understand why? What would I say to anyone, of any age, that refuses to play the games? What would I say to those that might also be undiagnosed as neurodivergent but have found, have invented, ways to get by? What would the mid-40’s version of me actually say?
I’d say you’re doing just fine. I’d say that things will get better, things will calm, things will smooth, and you don’t have to do anything different than what you’re doing. You don’t have to be anything other than what you are, who you are, how you are. I’d say that one day you’ll see, you were never, you are never, wrong, it’s the world that is wrong and doesn’t understand what you do. I would say that what you see, that what you experience, that what you’re noticing and caring about and spending your time imagining is worth more than trying to follow the trends, trying to fit in where you’re not made to fit in.
I’d say you’re not weird, at all. You’re ahead of your time.
You always have been. You, young Tyler Knott, you, the neurodivergent that might not have the official diagnosis but has always known. There will come a comfort for you when you finally understand your own mind, there will come a peace when you realize that there is something special about the way you were made. That those who appreciate it will find you, that those who do not, you’ll never notice their absence anyway.
Youth is painful, no matter how you navigate it—teenage years doubly so. Undiagnosed and autistic, quadruply that. This is a reminder that no matter where we are, what age, what position in our lives, we can always do better, we can always be better to those that don’t fit where we fit, don’t feel how we feel. There is no “weird”, and we know that now more than any other time in human history. There is only you, only me, doing the best we can to get by in the ways we can figure out on our own.
Life has changed in a million ways since I found ways to understand the why behind why I was what I was, why I did what I did, why I felt what I felt. Sure, having a label, having AUTISM as a big bold stamped sign that I could wear as invisible armor made things easier, but truthfully, it was more accepting what I knew I could not change. A label maybe gave me something to call it, but nothing truly changed.
To all you reading who might feel similarly, this is for you. Especially all you adults looking back on difficult childhoods, those that leapt over hurdles they still can’t quite believe their little legs could leap, their little hope could survive, this is for you:
You’re perfect, as you are, as you were, as you will be.
Do not doubt this, though you might feel 14 at 44, though you might have felt 84 at 14. Embrace this.
Ask yourself: Did you feel this way growing up? I would love to hear YOUR story. If you experienced anything far enough outside the ‘norm’ as a kid that it still resonates to day, I’d love it if you shared.
Honestly, if you needed a why as to why you should subscribe here, I think this community is it. We are all so unique, so vital to the tapestry of not only this place, but this world, I find it infinitely beautiful that we’re able to congregate here, together, and share. That we can lift one another, that we can support, elate, and finally understand.
If this resonates with you, I would so adore your upgraded subscription. Join us, we’re waiting, we’re here, and our arms are made for wrapping you up.
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I never bothered
with all they worried about.
I was old when young.
Song of the Week
I heard that baby Tyler, the one you just read about, really wants you to please pre-order my upcoming book, The Never Was! It’s my favorite, ever, and your support could push it onto the best-sellers list!
