Who is Laurentia Spirek?
That would be me! I am a 24-year-old sapphic-transfeminine autistic writer, born to white-working-class parents in Illinois in 2002. In my formative years, I didn’t speak much at all, and my mom noticed that. She enrolled me in therapeutic interventions intended to support kids like me, but was unable to get accommodations and further services without me getting a diagnosis. I was diagnosed as autistic before I could talk, and I didn’t start talking until I was 5-6 years old. I don’t remember much from then, but I remember my parents not getting along well, and I remember often feeling perturbed by my siblings for reasons I couldn’t articulate.
After my parents divorced when I was 8 years old, I lived in Indiana, where I went to two different elementary schools and two different middle schools as my mom tried to find a permanent residence for herself, me, and my siblings. As a result, I didn’t really engage socially as a tween-going-on-teen, so I retreated into books, films, and video games. I only went to one high school, though, and I began to write profusely on my own time. I wrote essays inspired by films I liked, such as Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York (2009), and I developed a budding interest in how humans think and communicate. My social isolation caught up with me, though, and I was diagnosed with major depression & generalized anxiety following a few hospitalizations for suicidal ideations in 2017. I didn’t really know how to relate to myself, let alone other people, so I tried learning card magic & other sleights-of-hand as a way to connect, but I still felt unfulfilled. Something didn’t really click with me.
By 2019, I had won a Scholastic Art & Writing Silver Key for a writing portfolio submission, and by the summer of 2020, I had earned my diploma. I enrolled in virtual classes at a local community college, and I grappled with being more isolated than ever by retreating into queer literature and theory. I learned how to articulate my identity, how to relate better to myself, and I came out as transgender to my friends and coworkers in 2021, but not my family.
After working in food service for a few years while I continued taking classes at a local community college, I continued writing and ruminating about writing . By 2022, I had attained a two-year degree, but I felt disillusioned by further pursuing higher-education. As the COVID-19 pandemic continued to rage on—just swept under a normalcy rug—and as I dealt with the harassment from my stepdad whom I lived with, I grew more isolated and stagnated in my creative endeavors, so I quietly saved up funds to move to a better place. By 2023, I had moved to Wisconsin to live with a partner, and I had completed board-certified exams to become a therapy assistant. My experience of working full-time in a clinical setting while financially supporting myself and a partner overwhelmed me, and I very quickly learned that there were no better places. I could only adapt to my new environment, and manage my mental health in a new place—neither of which I did very well on my own, which placed strain on my partners and cost me my relationships.
Nonetheless, writing remained my outlet, and by 2024, I had completed my first poetry & prose collection, Sighs of a Once-Defeated Heart. By 2025, I quit working as a therapy assistant to move further upstate with someone I became engaged to. She wanted to support me while I worked on my creative endeavors, but the dream was derailed early by me having a horrendous 3-month long psychotic episode. In the aftermath of said episode, I didn’t seek out follow-up recovery services. I grew isolated, stagnant, bitter, and resentful for over a year, and I externalized those feelings onto the person I was engaged to and her sister. By mid-2026, I had resumed writing, and I completed my first critical memoir titled An Authentically Autistic Perspective, wherein I documented my observations in a multidisciplinary clinic and situated them in the wider sociohistorical context of therapeutic institutions as well as their impacts on neurodivergent people like me. Unfortunately, I was unable to find traditional publishers for either of my complete manuscripts, and I stagnated further, retreating into distractions to distract myself from the problems I had developed following my psychosis— problems that only worsened. Subsequently, I damaged my relationship and deeply hurt the people I lived with, and I returned to Indiana in the late summer of 2026 to help take care of my grandmother in hospice while also giving space to the person I was engaged to, and giving space to her family.
I felt more isolated than ever, but I turned the loneliness into focus, and I gradually began rebuilding my discipline through exercise and seeking out medicine and therapeutic services to address my problems. I began writing and worldbuilding daily, and I started the website that you are reading this stranger’s rambling about herself on right now. Speaking of which, ‘nuff about me. Let’s talk about my writing for a bit.
Updates #1
Copyright filed for Sighs of a Once-Defeated Heart on 8/24/2026. Status is open at time of writing.
Kindle-Direct-Publishing and ACX accounts for self-publishing created on 8/25/2026.
Daily rigorous researching of termite eusociality & evolution to integrate into Abode to Terrodia for immersive world-building and character development, as of 8/27/2026
Cover art drafted for Sighs of a Defeated Heart and designed via Kindle-Cover-Creator on 8/31/2026.
SquareSpace site trial started on 9/6/2026. Additions to site took place from then to time of writing.
Obsidian Vault opened on 9/8/2026. All available research, worldbuilding, and writing is being transferred, organized, and edited therein daily at time of writing.
Tutoring job acquired on 9/14/2026, and with it, additional income to pay for the website.
SquareSpace site subscription and domain purchased on 9/22/2026
Copyright filed for An Authentically Autistic Perspective on 9/29/2026. Status is open at time of writing.
Cover art for An Authentically Autistic Perspective is still being drafted, but drafted has begun as of 9/29/2026.
Began editing and writing more of the first 3 chapters of Abode to Terrodia as of 10/2/2026
Website published on 10/4/2026. I also wrote this blog post to introduce myself and my writing projects!
Cover art for Cries of a Quite Calloused Mind was drafted & uploaded to the relevant page at time of writing (10/4/2026). More drafting of the cover art will likely come soon.
Volumes 1-3 of Sohlmulacrum have been teased with synopses, relevant concept art, and or excerpts to accompany each title on their respective pages at 10/4/2026
Moving Forward
In the future, I will add alt-text to as many of the images on each Project page to facilitate site accessibility. Additionally, I will insert links to respective Project pages in titles of works discussed in these Update posts to enhance this site’s navigation. Maybe I will also introduce updates in more detailed chronological order (will certainly go back and edit this post to match), and I will certainly seek to organize and format this site and these update posts more aptly as time progresses. Perhaps I will be less abrupt with my transition from typing about myself and my life to the writing updates. Writing-wise, I will continue editing and writing Abode to Terrodia, drafting cover art for Cries of a Quite Calloused Mind and An Authentically Autistic Perspective, and I will keep you all notified on publishing and distribution of Sighs of a Once-Defeated Heart. In the meantime, here are the first poems from both Sighs of a Once-Defeated Heart and Cries of a Quite Calloused Mind for your enjoyment!.
Love, frozen, frozen in time — from Sighs of a Once-Defeated Heart
Near the freezing forest of separation,
Where I have wandered by hikers’ ways,
I see only the silhouette and imitation,
Of the formerly festive days.
I was frozen—I could not shout.
But when the ice began to wear thin,
My cold route compelled me to cry out,
As the stoic frost could no longer win.
Edging the freezing forest of separation,
Silently, I listen from my place of seclusion
To the murmurs of antiquated adoration;
Oh barely, can I escape my dreary delusion.
While there is much gone with the wind,
My mind could never forget how you smiled.
Oh, how you made my sorrow rescind!
But without your warmth, from joy I’m exiled.
If you be buried, there was no proclamation
That alarmed my gaze up the cold, gray tree.
Alive, then the freezing forest of separation
Severs forever your spirit from me.
With eyes swollen and feelings thawed,
I see now that you rekindled my dormant fire.
Yet with the cold of the freezing forest here and abroad,
I have long been befallen to tearful ire.
They are nearly unrecognizable now,
My frozen heart and my frigid mind.
Once onstage, willing to bow;
Now a melancholic who's left that behind.
With passion awoke, I see no use for voice,
Or the frivolous torment of a kiss.
I have grown tired of my forlorn choice,
And I have yearned for your spell of unbridled bliss.
My heart grows ill without your consolation,
Unbeknownst to you, it has changed.
For in the freezing forest of separation,
My vain indifference has grown estranged.
Now I contemplate with careful consideration,
“How could I have led you astray?”
Leaving the freezing forest of separation,
Still yearning for your embrace to this day.
As spring nears, I drown in sinking thought,
For your absence plunges me into disarray.
As my enchanted shows were all for naught,
I find comfort under the willow of dismay.
No one knows of my dire desolation,
My recollection pales of my perilous plight,
Though as I leave the freezing forest of separation,
It still weighs on to me, in the ultimate night;
For in a sky peppered with stellar illumination,
Nothing rivals your ability to ignite.
The Life Worker — from Cries of a Calloused Mind
Unfettered familiarity, enjoyed at the witching hour;
devoid of strangers before whom we’re taught to cower;
with peaked peculiarity between lovers united from afar,
I cower no more beneath such stars;
the Gods who guided wanderers and sailors—
Gods by whom my tempestuous soul is tailored.
Such old dreams, such tired nightmares
can never fully droop their heads and die;
the men who tried worming their bony fingers
between and around my thighs;
the attempts of my fathers to cure me that linger;
a world that yearns to ring my neck;
but all I do now is sigh,
not forgetting such terrors,
but lavishing dreams that reflect from
Yggdrasil’s leaves coated in fresh,
cosmic frost, thawed and drenching
Its branches with divine dew,
Residue rich with reminders
of the depth of my love for you,
Like the feeling of your lush undergrowth;
reminiscent of rubbing against a World Tree’s mossy roots—
tickling, prickling, and tingling
when you fill me with your Love;
whenever you paint me with your Life;
and when you share with me your Laughter
when I lift you above the Earth
and the elated air rushes in and out of your lungs
Like it’s rustling leaves of a Tree of Life
that just, for a moment, forgets you of strife
that belittles the Joyous being you wish to be and are,
filling me with the same feelings embodied by your existence
as I hold you to remind you
that you’re still here
and that I’m beside you,
my dear.
To Close
Thank you for taking the time to visit my site, view my work, and read this post if you have gotten this far. I deeply appreciate your engagement with my work, and I hope you continue to engage with my work as I continue sharing it with the world, starting here. One post at a time.
Clarity in Action and Solidarity in Purpose,
~ Laurentia.
