The Limbo of Unanswered Questions for the Autistic Mind — An Emotional Plea to Neurotypical Society

You hold the key to the feast while we starve, all the while asking us ‘what’s wrong?’

“Thank you. This helped me to understand my 15-year-old who asks a lot of questions.”

This was a comment I received in response to my article “Autistic People Ask Questions to Get Answers — Period”. There’s nothing wrong with what this person wrote, and I’m glad my article helped them.

However, I found myself becoming irrationally angry over this comment, and just as I was typing a response that wouldn’t have made any sense to the person, I sat with my feelings and realized that my anger wasn’t really directed at them.

It’s just that I realized something: Unanswered questions keep autistic people in a type of social-emotional limbo. When we’re young, and our caregivers and teachers become frustrated by our questions and refuse to answer them, our autistic brains have to grow around a huge black hole of missing knowledge.

There’s a gap that never gets filled in, and we find ourselves stumbling around in adulthood, blindly making the same mistakes, choosing unsafe people, and unintentionally hurting ourselves because we don’t have a fundamental piece of knowledge that neurotypical people seem to gain by simply living in their environment.

And this happens over and over again. Each time the neurotypical people around us won’t answer a significant question we have, we don’t remain confused and in the dark for a few hours, days, or weeks, a part of us stops growing completely. This gap in our knowledge stifles our ability to build the foundation we need to mature–but the real issue is we don’t even see the gap, we just see the effects of it because we don’t know what we don’t know!

And, the older we get, the less likely it is that these questions will ever get answered because once we reach a certain age, we are simply expected to know.

The only reason I know this happens is because I’ve been hit with knowledge that I finally understood like a punch to the gut in my 30s when I should have known whatever it is when I was a child. It’s only then that I realize I’d been asking the question, searching for the answer, for years, but yet nobody would explain, even if I begged them to.

And it was so simple. All it would have taken was for a neurotypical person to give me a concise, straightforward answer to the literal question I asked when I was younger and more inexperienced. That’s it. It could have saved me decades of grief.

Honestly, I don’t even know if this particular piece is making any sense. It’s like trying to describe an otherworldly experience with literal language. All I know is that the answering of any and all questions is absolutely paramount to autistic understanding. Not answering them, getting irritated by them, dismissing them, or misunderstanding them as attempts to be insolent, is like taking away our air. It stunts our growth so profoundly, and we already struggle so much as it is as autistic people in a neurotypical world.

I really wish I could give examples of things that have hit me like a wrecking ball that knocked the wind out of me, but it’s almost impossible (even for me) to describe in words.

Just understand that this is my plea to the neurotypical people, especially parents and caregivers, who have autistic people in their lives; please answer our questions even if you have to tell us you’ll get back to us with the answers. Even if you have to go off and think about it before you get back to us. Even if you have to tell us you don’t know, and we can look it up together. Please don’t deny us this access. Please don’t let us float around in limbo for years or decades before life finally smacks us with the answer the hard way–and often way too late.

I will never be able to express to you how fundamentally important it is to see questions from autistic people only as a way to get answers and understand the world, and to also see each answer that you give as a building block on which we can build the foundation of our lives.

The unique pain that comes as a result of unanswered questions is something I’d never wish on anyone else, and even if this post is a bit of an emotional ramble, I hope my earnestness comes through, and that your autistic loved one will never have to experience this sense of emptiness.

May all autistic questions be answered, may all knowledge be freely given–without repercussion. Always.

For more insights into the autistic mind, visit: www.thearticulateautistic.com.