The Architecture of a Daydream
There’s a cabin in my head, tucked into a pine forest where the light slants just so, and I’ve built it board by board since I was twelve. It’s not a vague dream—nothing blurry or half-formed—but a precise thing, with cedar walls I can smell, a window angled to catch the morning without blinding me, and a door that locks three times because once isn’t enough. I go there when the world buzzes too hard, when voices overlap and lights flicker like they’re yelling. People call it daydreaming, but it’s not idle—it’s work, the kind my brain does to carve out a corner where the rules make sense. I’m told minds like mine—spiky, spectrum-bound—see patterns where others see air, and this cabin is my pattern, my proof I can build something whole.
The main room is small, because too much space makes me dizzy. The floor is polished oak, smooth under my feet, and there’s a rug I wove myself—blue and gray, no loud reds to jar me. A single chair sits by the window, wooden with a high back, because cushions feel like lies sometimes, too soft when I need edges. I’ve spent hours—real hours—deciding the grain of that wood, the exact tilt of that chair, because details aren’t optional for me. They’re the scaffolding. When the grocery store hums with too many carts or a conversation splinters into noise, I’m here, tracing the lines I’ve made, breathing air that doesn’t fight me.
There’s a loft, too, reached by a ladder with seven rungs—no more, no less. It’s where I keep the quiet things: a quilt I’d sew if I could, a notebook for thoughts too big to say, a clock that ticks but doesn’t chime. Up there, the roof slopes low, pressing close like a hand on my shoulder, and I like it that way. Openness unravels me—too many choices, too much sky—but this is containment I chose. I’ve heard autism called a cage, but it’s not. It’s a lens, and this loft is where I focus it, where I sort the world into shapes I can hold.
The kitchen is practical, because even in dreams I need to eat. The counter is slate, cool to the touch, and there’s a kettle that whistles exactly five seconds before it boils—I timed it. No radio, no chatter, just the sound of water and my own breath. I cook the same meal every time: rice, butter, a pinch of salt. Repetition isn’t boring; it’s armor. When I was little, they’d say, “Why can’t you try something new?” and I’d shrink, not knowing how to explain that newness stings sometimes, that my brain maps safety in loops. Here, I don’t have to.
I didn’t build this cabin to escape forever—just long enough to remember who I am. The real world is a kaleidoscope, spinning too fast, and I’m the kid who’d rather watch one color at a time. People don’t get that. They see my silence, my scripts, my need for sameness, and think I’m broken. But in the cabin, I’m not fixing anything. I’m designing it. The locks, the rungs, the kettle—they’re me, unapologetic, built to fit a mind that doesn’t bend like theirs.
Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to live there for real, to leave the buzzing behind and step into my own architecture. But then I think: maybe I already do. Maybe every time I retreat, I’m laying another plank, sanding another edge, making a home that no one else can see. It’s not finished—nothing ever is—but it’s mine. And in its walls, I find a truth I’m still learning to say: I’m not too much, or too little, or too strange. I’m a builder, and this is my proof—a daydream with a pulse, a place where I’m whole.