Color That Doesn’t Fade (Autism, BPD, C-PTSD…)

I’m 28 years old, and I just found out something that’s cracked me open in a quiet, devastating kind of way.

It’s not like I didn’t know I was different. I’ve always known. I’ve felt it in the way I move through the world… too soft in a place that demands sharp edges, too intense in a culture obsessed with “cool”…  too slow to bounce back when things go wrong. I’ve always been a little off-beat, a little too much, a little too fragile and yet somehow also the one who survives what many others couldn’t or wouldn’t.

But now… there are words. Patterns. A shape to the chaos I’ve been living in for as long as I can remember. And those words hurt… not because they’re wrong, but because they’re right. Because they explain what no one ever explained to me.

I experience 17 symptoms of C-PTSD.

14 of Borderline Personality Disorder.

33 autistic traits.

And another 17 that don’t quite fall neatly into any one category… symptoms that blur across diagnoses, like bruises that change color but never fade. Colors one can’t quite name all of.

I’m not diagnosed autistic, not officially. And not yet. But the traits are there. Unmistakably there. Like echoes from a childhood I’ve tried to forget. Like pieces of a language I didn’t know I was fluent in until I realized no one else around me spoke it.

And now I can’t unsee it. I can’t unknow what I know. I can’t pretend this is just a personality quirk or some fleeting emotional phase. It’s not just a list of symptoms. It’s my entire life. It’s the bruises I never asked for. It’s the hours I’ve lost to spiraling and shutdowns. It’s the words I never said because I didn’t think anyone would believe me. It’s the way I flinch when someone raises their voice, the way I can’t stop apologizing, I need everything precise, or I feel like I have no right to exist at all.

It’s the foster homes.

It’s the bungee cords and bruises and wooden boards with nails I experienced alongside my siblings from our grandmother, uncle and some cousins.

It’s the silence that followed my pain like a shadow.

It’s the feeling of being given up, again and again, like something deeply deplorable and defective.

And now I understand: these traits didn’t appear out of nowhere. They didn’t show up like uninvited guests. I’ve carried them. My body carried them. My brain, my nervous system, my spirit… all adapted around them. These traits became lifelines. They became armor. They became a way to stay alive.

C-PTSD lives in me like a second skin.

It’s not something I can shake off, not something I can outrun. I can be sitting in a perfectly safe room, with no danger anywhere in sight, and still feel like I need to escape. Like my muscles are waiting to be hit. Like the floor is going to drop out from under me at any second.

I flinch when someone’s voice gets sharp, even if it’s not directed at me. I read people’s expressions too hard, too fast, as if I can predict the next storm if I just watch closely enough. I say “I’m sorry” before I know what I’m apologizing for. It pours out of me reflexively, like an instinct.

I fawn. I adapt. I twist myself into shapes I think people want because I’ve learned… painfully… that not doing so has consequences. I’ve learned to disappear inside politeness, inside silence, inside someone else’s expectations. I’ve learned that being agreeable can be safer than being real.

But even when I do everything “right,” I still don’t feel safe. Not in my body. Not in relationships. Not in rooms where people say they care. There’s a sense of unsafety that clings to everything. Like the trauma lives in the walls of my mind, waiting for the next bang on the door.

Sometimes I dissociate. I float. I forget what I’m doing mid-sentence. I look in the mirror and don’t recognize myself. I walk through a day like I’m underwater. It’s not that I’m spacing out… it’s that I’m trying not to drown.

The BPD traits are like a fire I can’t put out.

They don’t ask. They consume. My emotions crash through me like tidal waves. I love people so deeply it scares me. I want to be known so badly it physically hurts. But the moment someone gets too close, the panic sets in. What if they leave? What if they see the real me and walk away?

Sometimes, when people are kind to me, I cry. Not because I’m touched… but because I don’t trust it. Because I think maybe I’m being tricked. Because it feels too good to be true.

I’ve lived so long in emotional extremes that I don’t know what to do with steady love.

I shift depending on who I’m around. It’s not that I’m lying. It’s that I lose track of myself. My identity, my values, my sense of being… it warps in proximity to others. When I’m alone, I don’t know what’s left of me. I feel like a blank slate that only makes sense when someone else is looking.

I bounce from self-love to self-loathing in the span of an afternoon. I create something I’m proud of and then an hour later I’m convinced it’s garbage and I am, too. I feel shame constantly… shame for how deeply I feel, for how much I need, for how often I fall apart.

And sometimes I think about dying. Not because I want to be dead, but because I want to be quiet. I want the noise inside to stop. The flooding. The aching. The too-muchness. Sometimes I don’t want to disappear forever. I just want to rest without guilt.

Then there’s the autism symptoms and traits…

The quiet rhythm I didn’t know had a name. The flow that’s been with me since the beginning.

I mask constantly. I perform without knowing I’m performing. I rehearse conversations, mimic others, memorize scripts. I’ve done it since I was little. I thought that’s what everyone did.

I take people at their word and then get confused when they meant something different. Sarcasm, small talk, vague implications… it all feels like a puzzle missing pieces. When I try to clarify, people look at me like I’m strange. Like I’m being difficult. But I just want to understand.

Even good social interactions leave me drained. I need hours… sometimes days… to recover. It’s not about disliking people. It’s about the energy it takes to exist in front of them.

I notice everything. The hum of lights. The fabric of my shirt. The itch of a tag. The sound of someone breathing. I get overstimulated fast. Smells, lights, noise, movement… it crashes into me all at once. And when it’s too much, I can’t think. I get irritable, anxious, or I completely shut down.

I crave routine with a desperation I can’t always explain. I need sameness. I need structure. But even when I try to create those things, my executive function betrays me. I forget meals. I procrastinate on simple tasks. I live in a loop of craving control and failing to maintain it.

I hyperfocus on things that feel sacred… certain ideas, quotes, aesthetics, songs. I collect them like treasure. I memorize them. I organize them into meaning. They help me understand myself when the rest of the world doesn’t.

And sometimes, I feel more real in my inner world than I do in the actual world. I feel like an observer. Alien. A spirit wearing a body that doesn’t quite fit. But I also feel connected to beauty in ways that make me ache. I can see patterns in pain. I can create whole galaxies out of silence.

Then there’s the stuff that doesn’t fit neatly anywhere.

The parts of me that refuse to be filed into tidy diagnostic categories. The overlapping traits, the slippery symptoms, the blurred lines between survival and disorder. The things people notice, but can’t quite name… so they label them wrong, or worse, dismiss them altogether.

There’s the black-and-white thinking that people mistake for stubbornness, when it’s really the only way I can make sense of a world that feels chaotic and unpredictable. I need structure, certainty, definition… because the gray areas are where I’ve always gotten hurt. There’s safety in absolutes, even when they trap me.

There are the meltdowns that get written off as overreactions or dramatics. But they’re not tantrums. They’re system overloads. Emotional or sensory or both. I’m not angry… I’m fried. I’m drowning in input, and my nervous system doesn’t have a quiet way of saying so.

There are the shutdowns that people call laziness. They see the bed, the silence, the half-finished tasks. They don’t see the weight in my chest, or the thousand spinning tabs in my brain, or how much energy it takes just to lift a hand sometimes. It’s not that I don’t care… it’s that I can’t move.

There’s the perfectionism that paralyzes me. I want to get things right so badly it hurts. I delay, procrastinate, avoid… not out of apathy, but because the fear of failure has wrapped itself around my will. If I can’t do it perfectly, my brain tells me not to do it at all.

And there’s the ever-present confusion between masking and identity. Who am I really? Where do the survival strategies end and the real me begin? Am I being myself, or just an echo of who I think I need to be to stay safe, liked, included?

Even when I’m with people I love… even when I’m enjoying myself… I feel the slow leak of energy, the social battery draining minute by minute. I can’t always explain why. I just know that no matter how good the moment is, I’ll need hours to recover from it later.

Transitions are a battlefield: waking up, leaving the house, finishing a conversation, shifting focus. Every gear change feels like grinding metal. I stumble through them like a car stalling in traffic.

I feel rejection in my body. Not just emotionally… physically. It knocks the air out of me. And when someone misunderstands me, I spiral. I pick apart every word, every glance, every pause.

I long for connection so deeply it aches. But every time I try, I end up hurt. Or worse… misunderstood.

And the worst part is… I often look “fine.”

People think I’m functioning. I write clearly. I speak eloquently. I smile. I show up.

But no one sees the storm underneath. The effort it takes to appear okay. The masking, the internal negotiations, the emotional labor. No one sees how deep the pain goes, because I’ve learned to tuck it behind performance.

Finding this out at 28 isn’t a revelation.

It’s a reckoning.

It’s looking back and realizing how much was missed. How many years I spent thinking I was broken. Thinking I was weak, dramatic, difficult, lazy, needy, weird. How many times I internalized other people’s inability to understand me as my own failure to be understandable.

It’s grieving the little girl who was punished for stimming throughout school, foster home… everywhere. Who was told she was being “too sensitive.” Who cried in secret because she thought something was wrong with her. It’s grieving the teenager who was told to calm down, toughen up, grow up. Who was rejected, misunderstood, erased. Never adopted and forced to learn adulthood mostly on her own.

It’s grieving the life I could have had if someone had noticed sooner. If I’d been supported, accommodated, believed. If I’d had the language I have now.

But it’s also a beginning.

It’s the start of letting go of shame.

The start of saying: “This is who I am, and it makes sense.”

The start of refusing to apologize for my wiring.

Maybe autism (if I have it and I truly and deeply feel I do) gave me my creativity. My way of seeing the world. My deep love of words and meaning and beauty.

Maybe BPD gave me the capacity to feel deeply, to love fully, to sense people’s emotions in ways that are both a gift and a curse.

Maybe trauma taught me how to survive. How to bend without breaking. How to find light even in the dark.

I still struggle. I still collapse. I still feel lost. But now I understand.

I know that these parts of me are not failures.

They’re responses.

They’re adaptations.

They’re truths.

I am not a broken puzzle.

I am a mosaic.

And maybe… just maybe… I’ve always deserved understanding.

Maybe I didn’t need to be fixed.

Maybe I just needed to be heard.

To be translated, not erased.

To be met where I actually am.

So here I am.

Finally speaking in my own language.

Maybe someone out there will understand.

But even if they don’t… I certainly now do.

And I’m not sorry anymore.