I have this persistent fantasy that I have never quite been able to let go of, which is that I retreat alone to a hotel room or a small apartment not too far from my house, and when people ask where I am going I tell them I need to go there to write, but the truth, the real and unvarnished truth, is that I just want to go somewhere and not be perceived by anyone for a little while, and simply be myself in the way that is only possible when no one is watching and nothing is required and the performance of self that happens even in the most loving relationships can just, for once, stop.

I have been thinking about why this fantasy requires a cover story at all, why “I need to go be alone and unobserved and accountable to no one for a few days” does not feel like a complete and sufficient sentence, why it needs the legitimizing armor of productivity wrapped around it before it becomes something I am allowed to want out loud, and what I keep coming back to is that we have built almost no cultural space for the radical and necessary act of a woman, and particularly a neurodivergent woman, simply disappearing from other people’s awareness for a while without it meaning that something is wrong.

Nothing is wrong. I’m just a person who needs, sometimes with a ferocity that surprises even me, to exist for myself and no one else for a little while, maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe a month, and I think a lot of you know exactly what I mean.