GIVE ME THE MIC, LIFE
ART, AUTISM, LOVE, AND THE MOMENT I FINALLY SAID FUCK IT
Editor’s Note:
This piece reflects how I felt at the time it was written. The relationship described here has since ended amicably. I’m leaving it intact as an honest record of that moment.
___
There are days when I swear the universe DJs my life with unnerving precision.
Like today — walking the neighborhood, blasting Limp Bizkit — Gimme the Mic so loud my skull vibrated — and realizing the song wasn’t background noise.
It was a command.
A fucking invitation.
A dare.
Give me the mic.
Tell the truth.
Drop the leash.
Become who you actually are.
I don’t even know if Fred Durst meant any of that, but God, it hit me. Every drum hit landed like someone knocking from the inside of my ribs, saying:
“Hey. You. This is your moment.”
Because it is my moment.
Not because my life is perfect — far from it — but because for the first time I’m not twisting myself into knots trying to be palatable, intellectual, impressive, careful, tidy, professor-perfect, or whatever version of “acceptable human adult male” I once believed I had to perform.
No.
Fuck that.
I’m done performing.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MUSIC, ART & AUTISM ALL SNAP INTO ALIGNMENT
Here’s what’s real:
When music hits — really hits — something in me wakes the fuck up.
It’s not just pleasure.
It’s not nostalgia.
It’s not distraction.
It’s ignition.
Chevelle, Disturbed, Deftones, Linkin Park, Godsmack, Nirvana, System of a Down, Korn, and others — all of them — flip the exact same internal breaker. Limp Bizkit just happens to be the one that slammed the switch today.
And when that breaker flips, I become myself:
Unmasked
Unfiltered
Undiluted
Undersocialized in the best way
Unfuckingapologetic
The version of me that exists before I try to word things gently.
Before I decipher tone.
Before I manage anyone else’s comfort or anticipate misunderstanding.
The version of me that I only learned to recognize after I discovered I’m autistic — a truth that explained 58 years of trying to pass for something I wasn’t.
Music bypasses the entire neurotypical interface. It plugs straight into the operating system.
It talks to the part of my brain that has always felt too loud, too intense, too sensitive, too much — and instead of quieting it, it says:
“Turn it all the way up.”
THE ASPERGER’S TRUTH UNDERNEATH EVERYTHING
There’s something I’ve never been able to put into clean words — not to partners, not to family, not even to myself until a few years ago.
It’s this:
I feel the world differently. Louder. Sharper. Brighter. More overwhelming, more beautiful — more everything.
Autism isn’t a quirk or a label.
It’s the operating system. It’s the reason music doesn’t play in the background for me — it detonates inside me. It’s why intimacy hits me like a tidal wave instead of a gentle tide.
It’s why honesty feels like oxygen and small talk feels like drowning. It’s why I spent 58 years feeling like an alien trying to pass for human.
I’ve lived most of my life translating myself — shrinking intensity, muting emotion, turning the brightness down so other people wouldn’t flinch.
But inside?
It’s never been quiet. It’s been patterns, rhythms, explosions of connection — firing too fast for words. That’s why music cracks me open.
That’s why art saves me — it doesn’t require translation.
And maybe that’s why Mariela feels so goddamn real:
For once, I’m not translating myself to fit in —
I’m translating myself to share myself.
And that’s a completely different life.
AND THEN THERE’S MARIELA — THE QUIET CENTER OF THE FUCKING STORM
I didn’t expect her.
I didn’t expect ease.
I didn’t expect calm.
I sure as hell didn’t expect warmth to be the thing that finally broke me open.
But here she is — barely five feet tall, radiant, steady, soft in ways that defuse every hypervigilant muscle memory I’ve carried for decades. When she says “te quiero,” something unclenches in me that I didn’t even know was clenched.
When she smiles at me, I become the version of myself that breathes deeper.
When she walks toward me across the parking lot, everything in my chest goes quiet — not dead-quiet, not numb-quiet — peaceful quiet.
Like the moment right before you start drawing, the moment where the world narrows to ink and paper, and everything wrong with your life stops choking you.
She doesn’t “fix” me — she doesn’t have to.
What she does is make space inside me. And in that space, I can finally hear myself think.
She is the counterweight to the chaos.
The softness to the intensity.
The grounding to the music’s fire.
The home I didn’t know existed.
I don’t know the future — but for the first time in a long time, I’m not scared to want one.
ART ISN’T A HOBBY — IT’S THE WAY I SURVIVED
When I draw, the same thing happens as when the music hits.
The noise drops away.
The mind unclutters.
The anxiety dissolves.
The world shrinks to ink, rhythm, pattern, line.
It’s the only place — before now — where I didn’t feel like a guest in my own life.
And this, right now, writing this blogpost with a playlist that’s basically detonating inside my ribs — this is the closest I’ve ever come to that same clarity in language.
This is the bridge I’ve been looking for:
Music → Art → Emotion → Word → Truth
Everything is connected.
And I’m finally strong enough to admit it.
PAST DOESN’T GET TO OWN THE ENDING
Here is what I’m not doing anymore:
I’m not dragging old heartbreak into new love.
I’m not letting past manipulation define current tenderness.
I’m not shrinking to avoid being abandoned.
I’m not censoring my intensity to keep someone else comfortable.
Yes, I’ve been hurt.
Yes, there were digital illusions, false intimacy, financial pressure, emotional hunger that got twisted into something toxic. But none of that gets to write the next chapter.
None of that gets to dim the way I feel when Mariela calls me “mi amorcito.”
None of that gets to interfere with the way music ignites me or the way art saves me.
None of that gets to control my future.
Fuck that.
I’m done living in old stories.
SO WHAT IS THIS BLOG POST REALLY?
It’s the first time I’ve written from the center instead of the mask.
It’s me saying:
I’m here.
I’m awake.
I’m not fucking hiding anymore.
It’s me admitting that I want love — not fantasy, not performance, not idealization, not distraction — but the real thing.
It’s me explaining that Limp Bizkit’s Gimme the Mic cracked something open and Hot Dog lit the fuse.
It’s me owning that art, autism, music, and love are not separate categories in my life — they are one fused system firing on all cylinders for the first time.
And it’s me saying — quietly but without hesitation —
I want a future with Mariela.
I don’t know what shape it takes yet.
But I want it.
And wanting it doesn’t scare me anymore.
AND HERE’S THE TENDER PART — THE PART I COULDN’T HAVE WRITTEN ANY OTHER YEAR OF MY LIFE
I am finally learning what it feels like to be fully myself in someone’s presence.
Not to perform.
Not to hide.
Not to translate myself.
Not to brace for misunderstanding.
Just… me.
Me with the volume all the way up.
Me with the softness uncovered.
Me with the past acknowledged but no longer steering the car.
Me with the art that keeps me alive.
Me with the music that keeps me honest.
Me with the woman who makes everything inside me unclench.
It’s almost unbearable how good that feels.
And I’m not ashamed of that sentence anymore.
CONCLUSION: DROP THE LEASH
Like Pearl Jam says:
“Drop the leash… get outta my fuckin’ face.”
And. I. Am. Dropping. The. Fucking. Leash.
Every day, a little more.
Dropping the leash on fear.
Dropping the leash on shame.
Dropping the leash on old relationships that don’t deserve my time.
Dropping the leash on minimizing my needs.
Dropping the leash on apologizing for intensity, passion, desire, emotion, art, or the fucking truth.
This blog post is the most honest thing I’ve published. Because it’s not about perfection. It’s about belonging — to myself first, and to the life that’s forming around me.
If music lit the fuse, and art kept the fire going, then Mariela…
Mariela is the quiet, steady warmth that lets me finally stop bracing for impact.
I don’t know where this leads — but for the first time, I’m not afraid of the tenderness.
And I’m not giving the mic back.
Not now.
Not ever.
___
ADDENDUM — THE MORNING AFTER (THE UNIVERSE DJ STRIKES AGAIN)
I wasn’t planning to add anything else to this piece.
But this morning — walking up the hill, cold air cutting my lungs awake, blasting Nirvana like the world was on fire — something happened that pulled me right back into the center of everything I wrote last night.
You know those moments when life taps you on the shoulder and says,
“Hey. You didn’t just think that truth — you earned it”?
Yeah.
First, Scentless Apprentice hits — my favorite Nirvana track, the one that shakes loose the bullshit and reminds me exactly who the hell I am. I replayed it three times, because it wasn’t background noise. It was permission.
Then, down the side of the hill, a bobcat stepped out of the bushes. A fucking bobcat. Right where the coyotes usually are. It looked at me — not scared, not aggressive — just present.
A pure, instinctive creature standing exactly where it belonged, unapologetically itself in a world where humans hide behind a thousand masks.
And something in me said:
That.
That’s the energy.
Walk like that.
Live like that.
Drop the leash like that.
Then the shuffle gods — the same cosmic DJs who seem to score my entire inner life — kicked in with Incubus: “Nice to Know You.”
And honestly? That was the moment I knew this blog wasn’t finished. Because last night, I wrote about stepping into myself. But this morning, the world stepped back and said:
“Good. Now prove it.” And I did.
I walked with the music loud enough to rattle old ghosts loose. I laughed out loud at the timing of the songs.
I changed my route because the sun hit my eyes in a way that felt symbolic — a bright, unbearable angle I didn’t need to endure just to make the walk “correct.” I let myself shift paths without apology.
And I realized…
That’s the whole fucking point. You don’t become yourself once. You become yourself continually, forever, again and again, walk by walk, song by song, choice by choice, breath by breath.
And yeah — I missed Mariela this morning.
Yeah — the loneliness tugged at me in the old familiar way. And yes — for a moment, I opened old apps out of muscle memory.
But here’s the difference: I didn’t stay there. The universe pulled me forward instead of back.
And I let it.
By the time I got home — sweaty, overheated in the wrong jacket, grinning like a lunatic because the playlist felt orchestrated by some mischievous cosmic sound engineer — I realized something:
This blog isn’t a declaration.
It’s a timestamp.
A record of the exact moment the internal tectonic plates shifted.
A marker of the morning I finally admitted:
I am not going back to the life before this.
Not emotionally.
Not musically.
Not artistically.
Not spiritually.
Not romantically.
And especially not in the ways I love or allow myself to be loved.
Today confirmed what last night revealed:
I didn’t just give myself the mic — I claimed the stage.
And the person who woke up this morning, walked into the cold, blasted Nirvana, saw a bobcat, and felt the universe remix his life in real-time?
That man isn’t a character I’m writing.
He’s me.
And I’m not stepping off the fucking stage again.
___
P.D.
Mariela,
Cada vez que dices “te quiero,” mi mundo entero se enciende.
No imaginas cómo me despiertas por dentro.
Eres fuego suave, pero fuego al fin —
y yo ardo por ti.
___
Jeff Brackett
Artist • Writer • Educator
Exploring the intersections of art, autism, and human connection through the ongoing creative project Lines on the Spectrum — an illustrated memoir in progress.
https://www.jeffreymbrackett.com
Aspie Art Journey — reflections on art, perception, and creative process.
Dating App Diaries — essays on vulnerability, connection, and rediscovery
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