For the first 23-odd years of my life, my biggest wish was to be normal. I’ve always had several inaccurate ideas of what being normal entails — usually inspired by the various ways I’d consider myself deficient, whether truly abnormal or not — that I would despise myself for not embodying. I would correctly diagnose that I had various difficulties which were really just symptoms of autism/ADHD, and then extrapolate out that actually I am simply just a uniquely terrible human being, who is inherently and fundamentally broken.
Throughout my childhood, the idea that I was flawed would be supported by those around me, if inadvertently. I’d quite often have various degrees of breakdowns which would have quite extreme negative consequences, teaching me that my issues were something to be hidden from others so as to not be either yelled at or disciplined. Crying would be met with ‘Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about’, expressing sensory issues would be met with ‘too bad’ or ‘you’ll get used to it’, being told that ‘boredom is healthy’ was commonplace in the face of a lack of stimulation, and the response to my now 20 years of issues sleeping was ‘just lay down and close your eyes’.
By the time I was old enough to know better, I was so thoroughly stuck in the idea that I am just uniquely flawed that realising I am some amount of autistic/ADHD just became a flaw of mine. ‘Sure, my social difficulties stem from being autistic, but that still means I’m inherently flawed’, the thinking would go.
So, for the first 23 years of my life I considered myself inherently flawed, and I wished for nothing more than to be normal. Then, I met someone who changed how I perceived myself. Someone who possessed a bunch of the traits I have always despised in myself, but who was an absolute delight to be around. The first evening we spent together, she rambled about Nier: Automata for the better part of 30 minutes to a group of us, and it was so amazing seeing her eyes light up with pure passion. We’d become friends over the summer, and talk more and more. I finally had someone in my life that was like me, and so my outlook fundamentally shifted. For once, the statement ‘I don’t have a problem communicating, I just communicate differently’ actually felt true, as I had finally found someone I felt I could communicate with the same way allistics communicate — if not even better.
We become really close friends, and we’d share so many amazing things. We’d watch Dune, Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion. We played through all of Baldur’s Gate 3 together, and build cute little lego mechs for a mech TTRPG. We’d get high together and watch a third of top gun — going back 2 minutes every 5 minutes because she forgot to pay attention. When I had to go to the hospital for two weeks to recover from surgery, she’d come with me and we watch spiderverse and the lord of the rings movies together and she’d help me tend to my wounds.
She was really the first person that I genuinely felt fully accepted me, who would not judge me for being weird or autistic. Our friendship and our fling genuinely made me rethink a lot of the ways I think about myself and my autism. If I could genuinely adore and appreciate this person who has so many similarities with me, why do I hate myself and consider myself fundamentally flawed?
At the same time, it did fuel a kind of envy that could genuinely have destroyed me. I am still deeply emotional, except now I no longer even have my little excuse of being autistic anymore. So I would have a breakdown, I would think I am fundamentally flawed, and now I have to contend with the fact that that it could have been different. That had my parents loved me like hers loved her, had they supported me like hers did her, I could’ve not been the completely broken girl I am now.
It fills me with such an unbelievable amount of envy, for someone I care so deeply for. In traditional Amy fashion, I find myself getting upset at myself for the feelings I have (stay tuned for a ramble on how my emotions are borderline catholic-guilt). I recognise that envy is natural, and that it’s not having the feelings but what you do with them, but I still can’t help but then feel guilty about my envy.
At the same time, it has also kinda redefined my understanding of what it truly means to love someone. That it is not about the infatuation and the crushing and the ‘being in love’, but about truly understanding and supporting and choosing, but that’s also a ramble for another time.