“To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations…”
                         — Emily Dickinson

Living in a world that overwhelms your nervous system is exhausting. You are constantly in hypervigilance mode and startle easily,at least, that has been my personal experience.

Let me set a clear scene for you.

Waking alone can send my heart rate soaring past 100 beats per minute as my nervous system suddenly powers itself on for the day. I often begin mornings shivering; not from cold, but from activation. My body reacts before my thoughts even have time to form.

This places me immediately on high alert for hours to come.

Every unexpected noise, touch, movement, or scent has the power to jolt me.

Smells don’t simply drift by, they arrive as if confined in a small space with only me.

Light doesn’t gently illuminate, it presses, demanding to be endured. Colours can ache against my eyes.
Someone passing unexpectedly can make me jump, and I will apologise to the mannequin I nearly collided with as if it were my fault for existing in its path.

Sound layers upon sound until irritation blooms. Low pitch, high pitch, even silence carries a hum on days like this.

My clothing begins to feel restrictive, scratchy, misplaced; simply wrong.

Foods I loved yesterday turn harsh without warning. Crisps are too sharp. Chocolate too sweet. Tea too bitter.

Hours of this is too much for one nervous system to carry.

Mine begins to fray. Signals misfire. Confusion slips in quietly. Words I knew moments ago drift just out of reach. Then comes the familiar procession: headache, visual disturbances, nausea.

By this point, my body is no longer asking.

It is insisting.
I should stop.

But society rarely makes room for stopping, especially when only a few hours have passed.

For some, that may seem like very little.
For a nervous system like mine, it is the expenditure of nearly all available energy.

I was called lazy. Unmotivated. Lacking aspiration.

Yet I have always carried aspirations; sometimes ones far too large for the body tasked with holding them.

When I was younger, my dreams towered beyond my capacity. I see now that I was measuring myself against expectations that were never designed with minds like mine in view.

So I pushed.
And pushed.
Trying endlessly to prove my worth inside a framework that could not properly see me.

Understanding how my mind truly works has softened something essential.

My goals have become more humane.
My life, less startling.
More beautiful.

But beauty asks something brave of me — that I allow myself to be who I was always meant to be.

The child once told her imagination was excessive. That daydreaming was a failure to live in the “real world.”
The little girl who found sacred joy in small things. Who bounced with excitement when something beloved appeared.

She is not someone I must outgrow.

She is someone I must return to.

I will no longer seek permission to express autistic joy in public. Adults are not machines built for composure. We are living beings, deserving of visible delight.

I will not deny myself what brings me alive simply because the world has mislabeled it as childish.

When you begin to see yourself clearly, when perception deepens, identity becomes something you can reclaim rather than perform.

And the world changes with you.
Something else shifts too, quietly, almost without announcement.

The senses that once felt like intruders begin to soften their approach.

Smell no longer attacks.
It lingers… gently threading itself through the air until I notice it.

Light stops pressing quite so hard and instead begins to illuminate. Colours feel less like an assault and more like invitations to look closer.

Sound becomes layered rather than chaotic. I hear birds beneath traffic, wind beneath conversation, and the world revealing its textures instead of collapsing into noise.

Fabric still rests against my skin, but now I am quicker to choose what comforts rather than endure what does not.

Even taste changes. Flavours open slowly rather than crowding my mouth. Tea becomes warmth instead of bitterness. Chocolate, richness rather than overwhelm.

None of this means my sensory system has become typical.

It hasn’t.

I can still be overwhelmed. I still reach my limits. I still require pause, quiet, and retreat.

But when my nervous system feels safer inside my own life, sensation transforms from something I must survive into something I am allowed to experience.

The intensity remains, yet it is no longer always frightening.

Sometimes, it is breathtaking.

This is the part no one tells you:
Sensitivity does not only deepen pain.
It deepens beauty too.

And once you begin to notice that beauty, the world, for all its sharpness, becomes astonishingly worth inhabiting.

Living may always startle my nervous system.
But now, more often than not,
it startles me with beauty.

And in that beauty, the overwhelm does not vanish, but it softens… until it feels almost worth it, simply to have experienced the world so deeply.

– Frost ❄️