Reconstruction Project
Since stopping the therapy back in summer—those chemical restraints that had kept her mind wrapped in artificial fog like a museum piece under protective glass—and slowly surfacing back to what felt like a normal mental state, she had begun the deliberate work of self-reconstruction. The autism diagnosis hadn't been a limitation; it had been a user manual she'd been missing her entire life, like trying to operate complex machinery with only the warranty card for guidance.
She approached recovery with the same methodical precision she'd once applied to laboratory protocols. If she was going to exist as her authentic self rather than the chemically modified version everyone had seemed to prefer, she needed to learn how to care for this particular type of nervous system properly.
It was like discovering she'd been driving a high-performance sports car while thinking it was a broken-down sedan—no wonder everything had felt so difficult when she'd been using the wrong operational instructions.
Finding Dr. 47 felt like discovering the right frequency after years of static interference. He was a biologist—tall, athletic, with the kind of calm competence that suggested deep understanding of how bodies actually functioned rather than how they were supposed to function according to outdated textbooks written by people who had never met an autistic metabolism.
His office overlooked a garden, walls lined with books on nutrition, metabolism, and neurological health that suggested someone who understood the connection between chemistry and consciousness.
"Autistic people process nutrients differently" he explained during their first session, taking precise measurements not just of her body but of her habits, her cooking abilities, her sensory preferences and aversions. "Your brain burns energy at different rates, your gut processes certain foods more slowly, your stress responses affect digestion in ways most nutritionists never consider."
Finally! Someone who understood that her digestive system wasn't just being difficult for entertainment purposes, but was actually operating according to different biochemical rules that no one had ever bothered to explain.
The plan he designed was elegantly simple: daily meal preparation that followed a structure but varied in content. Lunch and dinner completely different each day, preventing the boredom that had led her to survive on cigarettes and whatever was convenient. The routine became her anchor—thirty minutes each morning planning, shopping, preparing. Thirty minutes at midday executing. Thirty minutes in evening creating something new.
Walking became meditation in ways she had never anticipated. Three times daily, thirty minutes each, up and down the hills surrounding the village. Morning walks to process the day ahead, afternoon walks to reset her nervous system, evening walks to discharge whatever emotional residue had accumulated.
The repetitive motion, the rhythm of footsteps, the changing light—it was like a drug her brain had been craving without knowing it. Not the pharmaceutical kind that had made her compliant and giggly, but the natural neurochemical reward that came from giving her nervous system exactly what it needed to function optimally.