Living with autism sucks in a number of ways. People accuse you of being gay when you're just socially awkward and don't give a damn about gender norms. People assume you hate them when you're really just afraid of bothering them and getting scolded for it.
People assume you're angry because you don't walk around with a big dopey grin on your face 24/7, that shit takes energy, energy I need to conserve for my over-thinking brain when you walk past me and don't say hi. "Does that person hate me all of a sudden? They said hi to me yesterday. What did I do? Did someone gossip about me?"
Then when you find out that the person didn't say hi to you because you didn't say hi to them first, its "Why do I always have to be the one to say hi? How much distance is appropriate before saying hi? I was about to say hi but then they turned their head and looked straight forward, so I didn't. Now I'm treated as if I was the rude one? Why can't anyone approach me and simply talk to me? ("Hi, how are you?" "How was your weekend?" "Would you like an orange?") How difficult is that? Why am I the one who always has to approach these immature assholes?
Every fucking day I wake up and its like Bill Murray's Groundhog Day. The conversations and bonds formed yesterday seemingly evaporate in to thin air and I have to start not from square one but from a deficit. Because the good memories and compliments are easily wiped from the memory, whereas any perceived slight or rude comment towards someone else gets etched in community stone. A stone of toxic tribalism that builds and builds like a damned snowball, eventually rolling you over and taking you for a dizzying ride before leaving you at the bottom as a flattened pile of mush with a huge stain running all the way down the side of the hill.
What could be worse than living with autism? Well, a lot of things could be worse. Much much worse. But not knowing you're on the autism spectrum until you're in your mid-to-late thirties after growing up while having your so-called "friends" bully you for most of your life by treating you like a suspected "faggot," stealing your girlfriends' attention because you're not some loudmouth fuckboi who has to be the center of everything at all times, and gossiping about you in a negative way that causes other people to forgo "compassion" and engage 100% in ghosting... rather than helping you out or trying to understand you as a friend really sucks too.
Sometimes it makes you want to trade lives with someone else, anyone else, or just surrender it altogether, regardless of what great things one has accomplished in life. If only I had known I was autistic when I was young, then these amazing respectable people would have known they were bullying a "fucking retard" the entire time.
"Happiness only real when shared." - Chris McCandless
