Author’s note: This post contains discussion of suicide. Unfortunately given the reality of the extremely high suicide rate among ‘high functioning’ autistic people the topic cannot be entirely avoided.

You can hold on to the bars till your knuckles turn white, yet to them your hands float in midair. All they see is the inadequacies and failings that muck your blood, that are written on your face. It doesn’t really matter what their attitude is: one of disdain, one of pity or even one of neutrality: they do not see the cage.

They do not see how the cage was built, how steel is gilded with profit and lies.

They do not see how those who tried to bend the bars so that you could stick your head out through the gap were dragged away.

They do not see those who could not bear the cage any more and strung themselves from the bars, who still hang limp.

What do they see?

They see the TV projected on a flat wall, the talkers united in their message.

They see a pariah, madman, fraud pulling at nothing, trying to release no-one.

They see single isolated tragedies arising from limited failures: ‘a lack of support’, a pledge to do better.

They do not see the cage.

They will talk to you as if there is no cage, their eyes sliding from the bars the way yours will slide from their face. All that you can say is premised on the existence of the cage. All that they can say is premised on the fact that they aren’t in the cage, and in fact there is no cage. You beg them to squint to try to make out its contours and they will walk away.

You will sit on the cage floor, normal humanity cut from you, and you will beg for release. They will walk onwards, glancing back at the madwoman but paying no other interest. Your eyes flicker upwards to those still hanging from the cage. Those walking past say and do nothing. Maybe it’s your time, to rest against the bars constructed for you. Shaking you look up to find a spot that isn’t already taken.

Someone leans on the other side of the cage, looking at you. You realise you recognise them: one of those who tried to bend your bars.