Autistic Not Defective

I am not broken and I don’t need to be fixed. I am not a defective human, there is nothing wrong with me as a person. I am autistic. That’s it. I’m just a girl in her 30’s who spent the majority of her life feeling like I was defective and it’s only been in the last few years, since learning about and embracing my neurology, that I have come to understand and except that simple fact. I am NOT defective, I am autistic.

I lived my life in autopilot, trying to do all the things I thought I was supposed to. Like the things they like. Wear the clothes they wear. Talk the way they talk. If I could just build up enough layers I could continue to pass as one of them. But the truth is, I’m not neurotypical, and no amount of studying and masking and attempts to retrain my thoughts and words and actions is going to change that. In general I exist in a state of “almost normal.” There is nothing about me on the surface that screams, “I’m not like you.” And so then when I screw up, I talk too much, I say the wrong thing, or I react differently than is expected, others opinions of me switch.

I have always been a good story teller, but I like to tell the same stories. I like to perfect my retelling of an exceptionally traumatic experience, and then when I am able to regurgitate all the painstaking details I leave the listener in awe of the pure ridiculousness of the circumstances of the events I just described. But this isn’t what they set out for, they didn’t intend to have to listen to me spew so much heavy shit their way and quite frankly its a bit of a turn off for most people.

A few months ago while I was pushing my toddler on the swing at the park after school I found myself talking to the mom of one of my other daughter’s friends. I’d been in California for over a year and had still only made one real friend, two if you count my physical therapist, though most would debate that friendship since she was literally my doctor and nothing more, but we had great conversations. As it always does when moms talk the conversation went to number of kids. Her, “wow, 5 kids…” me, “well the last one was a ninja baby. She was conceived while I was on birth control and nursing and my husband had a vasectomy scheduled but had to reschedule it and then sure enough I ended up pregnant. Thankfully he has got a vasectomy since her birth because I could NOT do this again…” Her “………” and she never made eye contact with me again.

Yep that quickly I just obliterated any chance of friendship with this woman and likewise for my daughter and hers. Because lets face it, when at all possible, particularly when they are young, the parents of our kids friends matter. If you can’t stand a person, it’s hard to want their kid hanging around yours.

Honestly, I walked away from that conversation feeling like it was a good interaction. We were settling into our community and for a second I thought, “hey, maybe I can just make this place home, maybe I can have friends and a normal life.” But the next day at the park she didn’t say hi. I thought maybe I was supposed to be the one to say hi first? But as the days went by I realized it wasn’t about whether or not I said hi first, she had decided that I was not her kind of person, and just like a million other times in my life, I was once again invisible to her and the other moms.

This scenario has played out so often in my life that it has just become my default expectation when talking to new people. I used to try really hard. Calculate out every word or phase that I would need to say in a conversation. Make sure I had the scripts right and knew all my lines. Make sure I’ve got the tone and facial expressions down. But that just created a false sense of acceptance. People seemed to like and accept me when I did all the right things. I created this internal pressure on myself to be the person I thought people wanted me to be. The problem with changing who you are to be what you think others want you to be is that you really can’t know what others actually want. You can think you are doing all the right things, but maybe they are things that they really don’t actually care that much about. And eventually if you spend enough time with a person the conversation will end up going off script. It’s in those moments that I struggle most. I don’t know what is expected of me. Should I just sit silently until you start talking again? Should I just keep talking forever?

I think it’s funny that as a society we diagnose autism based on things like communication challenges and social awkwardness. But then we still continue to judge people who are socially awkward and lack “appropriate” communication skills. We say things like “autistics talk too much about their special interests and don’t pick up on social cues when someone is no longer interested in the conversation.” But no one actually takes the time to communicate these things to us. So we, already being awkward and unaware, continue to be awkward and unaware.

If I am talking too much, just tell me! If you don’t want to talk about the topic we are discussing (or more accurately, I’m discussing) let me know. Sometimes it feels like poeple just don’t want to be rude or hurt my feelings. But what they don’t realize, or maybe they do and it’s their intention, is that by ghosting me, or going out of your way to avoid interacting with me it leaves me feeling like garbage. I don’t know what I did wrong. Is it something I can fix? Did I say something stupid, do I owe you an apology? Is there something I am doing that makes you uncomfortable? What changed? What specific events led to the situation we are now in?

I think that for many neurotypicals its easy to just walk away. To say, “eh this relationship isn’t serving me, I’ll just move on.” But from an autistic perspective it’s a lot harder to just move on. I will analyze every interaction over and over again trying to figure out where exactly I went wrong, because, despite what many believe, as an autistic person I care deeply about the people around me. I do lack awareness. It’s part of who I am. When I’m aware of an issue I can work to fix it. I want to be the best version of myself, but I’ still learning who I am.

If you are like me and you are struggling, stop. Stop letting yourself feel like less than, because you are not. If you are neurotypical and you have ever been guilty of treating someone differently after deciding that they were off/different/weird/awkward, whatever…I’d like you to consider what that other person is going through. In general we all try to put our best face forward. Most people are just trying to do the best they can and awareness is key to acceptance. Don’t be afraid to (politely) let your friend know you want to talk about a different subject, that you would like the opportunity to talk and that that thing they are doing is bugging you. You don’t have to be an ass about it, but you also can’t expect a person to just know either.

For over 30 years, I have been the weird girl. The girl who would bounce between word vomiting and selective mutism and could never quite master what normal looked like. Turns out I’m autistic. I was autistic when I was 6 and 16 and 26. I just wasn’t aware. I didn’t have a name or a reason for why I would inevitably screw up interactions with friends and the people around me would just move on with their lives. I was often left with so many unanswered questions. If you have a friend, a family member, a coworker, with a diagnosis or not, and their is something that they do that they maybe seem like they are not aware of, they probably aren’t. I can’t even begin to try and imagine how many times I thought I was nailing it and I was so far off. Sure it would have hurt my feeling to have a friend say, “hey Amy can you try not to interrupt me when I’m talking.” But I would also be aware. It’s impossible to change what you are not aware is a problem. So please be kind and have compassion for those of us who don’t seem to get it. We probably just don’t know better and would be more than happy to work on our weaknesses if we know they are a thing.