Personal history has proven the experiment of my life does not mix well with outside variables.
Calvin Evans, in Lessons in Chemistry, on why he’s usually on his own
I binge-watched the TV show Lessons in Chemistry a couple of months ago and it had me hooked – it didn’t take me more than two days to finish it and I loved every second of it. I won’t go into detail about the story (so no spoilers ahead!) but I would definitely recommend it to a friend. I loved the main characters Elizabeth Zott and Calvin Evans, both of whom are neurodivergent-coded. When Calvin dropped the line I quoted above, I had to pause the episode for a second to process how much it resonated with me. I feel that same way often.
Being on my own means that I get to just exist as I am. I don’t need to constantly monitor how I stand, move, act, speak or how much eye contact is appropriate, whether I’m smiling enough or too much or whether I’m too fidgety. I don’t need to constantly be prepared to exchange pleasantries or say the right thing.
It’s been more than a year since I received my autism diagnosis and I’m still coming to terms with how much growing up as an undiagnosed autistic has impacted me. This is also the reason why I’ve been writing much less on here. I’m still dealing with some grief and I keep getting overwhelmed by how much of a tangled mess everything seems to be. Everything I’ve done and felt up until now has been shaped, or at the very least tainted, by how I was taught I should be.
You need to be […] in order to become a capable adult.
You’re too [insert undesirable quality]. You need to be more [insert desirable quality].
You need to toughen up or you’ll never make it on your own.*
And, frankly, the most damaging of all:
You’ll never find a man if you keep being like this.
To this day, being autistic and having been afraid of not being a good enough human all my life, I still struggle with being perceived, be it at work, at the grocery store or even while driving my car. I might be an expert at something, but as soon as I feel like somebody could possibly watch me, I seem to lose the ability to function. There’s definitely an overlap with social anxiety (which is common among autistic people) but I’ve found that there’s no way for me to completely overcome this, whereas anxiety sufferers often benefit from exposure therapy, which essentially means practising a situation. The better I get to know a person or the surroundings, the better I tend to function, but I’m always stressed when I know (or think) that people are watching me.
Being perceived is just one more element I need to manage among the many other variables that are usually at play. For instance, if I go to a place I’ve never been before, I easily get overwhelmed by my environment, as my brain doesn’t filter anything out (this is especially true for noises). When I walk into a café for instance, I notice all the people, I hear every single conversation, the noises from the kitchen, the coffee machine, the music… and I have a hard time focusing on what the barista or a friend might be saying to me, because it gets lost in all the background noise – which isn’t background noise to me at all.
At the same time, walking into a crowded place – as hard as it is on my nervous system – is easier for me in terms of (not) being perceived. It makes me feel like I can just blend into the crowd and most people therefore won’t even notice me.
This, unfortunately, is also the reason why I ended up studying economics. I knew that if I chose one of the subjects I was actually interested in, the class would be very small and people would definitely notice my presence, and I’d have to do presentations and participate in class. So I picked economics, which (for the most part) allowed me to be one of many students and to basically not be remembered. Needless to say: I chose poorly.
This is also part of the reason why high school in particular was my own personal hell, and, when I first had to share my office at work, I struggled quite badly with getting into tasks because I felt watched all the time (luckily I don’t work in an open space office).**
All this to say that I’m (still!) constantly baffled by how much being autistic impacts my life on a daily basis. For most of my life, I just figured everyone was having the exact same issues as I do, and figuring out that a lot of people do not, in fact, have them at all is just mind-blowing to me.
The amount of mental space and energy that goes into preparing for a social event***, participating in it, and then processing it afterwards is probably very difficult to even imagine for neurotypical people.
And I constantly find myself in this undefined space between wishing things were easier and not wanting to be anyone else but me. ✨
* I am now a hyper-independent adult who often struggles to ask for help – why yes, I’ve always been an overachiever!
** Fortunately, this has become way better and I’m now quite comfortable around my office mate – well, as comfortable as I can get in an office environment.
*** By “social event” I don’t mean any major events: just a simple hangout with friends or a small group of people, or, more challenging, a party.
Carrot Days 