#also ive been thinking abt this a lot lately but does every autistic person who is seen to be relatively normal in public mask ?? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

unproduciblesmackdown · 6 years

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6:15am Gripes Post lads!! 🥂

im in one of those things where something innocuous bugs me for days b/c its just a personal irritation...i saw something for like a book or a game on twitter & it was like “this is about being a teenager” and it looked like it was about the kind of teenagerdom where you hang out with your friends after school & have a few romantic partners where it doesn’t all go smoothly because youre both inexperienced and havent figured things out enough to have a really healthy mature relationship but its complicated and there’s good things in there too so its all just a mixed bag and classic teenager

anyways theres nothing wrong with that in and of itself of course but i dont like getting what is a specific narrative conflated with a universal narrative...i.e. while that might be a common experience, being 13-19 isnt defined by that kind of usual teenage experience checklist. i mean, everyone who’s been a teenager has an experience in that time which must also be a teenage experience you know. and of course mine happens to be the kind that was nothing like the being out late with friends and having awkward date moments of bewilderment and figuring out who you are and all

i dont love to be reminded that theres a specific narrative thats meant to describe the General Universal Experience, when thats not my experience. what does that make my experience, and by extension, me

like i already feel invalidated enough by the course my life happened to go, i dont need a reminder that it was supposed to go This Way actually, and if it didnt then are you even a real person. and theres a ton of ways peoples lives could differ in major ways from whatever idea of whats universal that are also different from mine, so i dont know how not to be a bit annoyed from that angle either. i dont know its like....i guess ~Adolescence~ is especially treated as some flat, formuleic, predictable time in life where everyone is simple and shallow when its all really the opposite. its as complex and varied as ever and so are teenagers & people are completely wrong to act like teens are all just self centered immature kids—and not only wrong to do so but actually writing off really serious issues that affect teens as like “angst!!” or whatever...lord

anyways so i was like actively suicidal from like 14? 15? i say “was” when its just more like “have been,” but anyway. theres that part, and i didnt go to high school, which im sure would be for the better for anyone, and i wasn’t interested in dating anyone & also didn’t, and i was kind of having a version of the Universal Teen Story in that i was getting to be away from home for weeks at a time with only a weekend back every now and then (and breaks between semesters) and doing so finally let me like, even start to be a person who could exist outside the hellzone of my house. which made going back home for say, long summer breaks increasingly laden with friction. teens and their spats with parents right!! but actually it was that my situation was abusive & i had to figure that out on my own & in the meantime i did think i must be doing something wrong in trying to feel like i actually had the right to my own identity, because i must be doing something wrong if it makes me get along with my parents less. and really the idea that teens are just angsty & rebellious & argumentative was further damaging b/c i trivialized my own abuse as i always had (b/c all i had to go on was that it must be normal) & blamed myself for not succeeding in this impossible situation. it was really Not the universal experience even with the conflict and identity questions and growing familial pains

also i still had few friends, but i at least had a bit more room to Do Shit than at home. idek how to say how isolated i was for the entire like, well most of my life but a tiny bit less so during college. i had campus & a 1.5 mile radius and occasional trips and stuff, and being able to just do things as i wanted. at my parents house, the location made it so you couldnt really walk anywhere, and our town didnt really have a lot of hangouts anyways, and i didnt have any friends really. i did get a few from school and friendly acquaintances but i would rarely see any of them outside school, and that was mostly only middle school anyways. i was on the fringe even in preschool, which i imagine helped w how i read all the time at school and at home. and home and the abuse and having nowhere else to be also had to contribute to how i live in my head, i have to guess. i dont mind that, my head is great. but other people think im weird and in terms of being someone who grew up exposed to long term trauma & bad attention & memory & an awful lot of pretty specific things seem to align w autism but if i mention that ppl (irl) like to talk abt how well really everyones autistic in SOME ways (which well they arent unless you want to have a huge talk abt the entire field of what it means when usually nt ppl define Disorders) anyways the point is that i also dont trust people much because theres a slight history of taking a chance on ppl who seem interested in being friendly w/ me only to turn around & realize i was being laughed at to a degree for things that were just part of how i personally socialize, thanks. but not all of it. ive met some really solid people. but im not that eager to meet people as im wary of a lot of them & my instincts are usually justified when i take a dislike to somebody. and ive just never been in a position to make or have a lot of friends. and that sucks, coz the few times ive been able to be around multiple people i like is always a lot of fun, usually the result of some roadtrip or special occasion or something and very short lived. i WISH i’d had a period of constant access to a friend group, that i couldve left my parents house and had somewhere to go anytime i felt like it, that i had people i could do things with and all. i dont need adventure, i like parking lots and just doing nothing but hanging out and all, but that didnt happen. i was stuck in my parents house & i didnt even think i had maybe been cheated out of anything & maybe i wasnt just a inferior quality person until i started to figure out for myself around 18 that i might actually be abused, and it took me another couple of years to really believe that i didnt deserve it

and i mean still i didnt just take an “alternate route” to the same endpoint everyone else did. i cant do buzzfeed quizzes about You And Your BFF / Friend / Friend Group coz i cant even fake my way through them. i know i have an identity and am as much a person as anyone but i know that the chances to explore life that are supposed to be Common and Universal werent available to me, and that who i am as a person, aka a normal one, not a terrible one, was info i didnt know for most of my life and had to figure out on my own. and im still figuring out on my own, because shits never exactly been okay yknow

anyways my experience may be “worse” but its not lesser or less real or valid or makes me less of a person because i didnt get to do it your way. idk

tldr it annoys me like thanks for reminding me ive never got to have friends even though that’s still one of the few things i’ll feel bad about b/c i know just how much that hurts me & how much ive missed my fleeting chances to have a micro taste of what that couldve been like. and for a reminder that whats considered Real Full Person’s Experience is so default it doesnt even need modifiers, & so what does that make me if it doesnt apply at all?

funny how much an throwaway almost joke of a sentence bugs me but thats how it goes huh

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