13. How to Dig Your Own Grave
Welcome to CHAPTER THIRTEEN of #TechnicallyAutistic: Lessons from the Periphery, where I talk about struggling to relate to other people in college.
Previous chapter / Next chapter
“I know you said that you struggle with loneliness…” my friend Luna* drew in a breath.
Between each word, her voice creaked ever so slightly, like the sound you hear between steps when you thread a floor as gently as possible.
"…and that you don’t like cliques… right?”
I knew where this was going.
The day before, Luna and I had something planned at 5. But I overheard my other friends say they were going to play a game at the student center, and well, I hadn’t yet kicked the habit of inviting myself, so I went my merry way. I came back at 5:30.
“Listen—I’m sorry for being late. I should’ve watched the clock. I really am sorry.”
Luna looked at me. “Asaka, you’re still avoiding the question.”
“I don’t know how to say this nicely, but lately, you’ve been acting… desperate. I’ve seen you follow them around day in and day out.”
Luna said I was selling out. Said it wasn’t cool that I didn’t invite her, even if I came back on time, that it was a dick move in general. I thought it depended on the occasion and what the person was doing.
“Obviously, I had to do a lot of work that day, but you could’ve still asked me. And it’s not like I don’t know them—didn’t we make that group chat last week?”
I wasn’t sure if I should apologize. “Thank you for telling me how you feel,” I said gently.
I told her I’d happily tag her along next time, but that doing it to tick it off a box would take the fun out of it; I’d rather just take it as it comes.
The next day when my other friends hung out without me, I cried. When Luna heard my voice break on the phone, she told me I was being hypocritical. The frustration in her voice struck a chord with me, but I didn’t know what the answer was.
I never had a hardline stance on invitation etiquette, and I still don’t. But that month, I didn’t see why my friends couldn’t have invited me, or reached out to me individually—even to just send me a TikTok video. Either would’ve meant something to me. My anger, I’d later admit to them, was my excuse to hear that I meant something to them. The only thing I had left to do was to await Luna’s admission.
Luna was the person who eliminated any remaining notion that I was here to impress rather than to connect. I never really said the phrase, “That’s what friends are for,” until I heard Luna say it all the time. In high school, a three-minute conversation where the other person said “bye” happily was a success. I celebrate small wins. Wins, as if this was a game. But Luna told me it was okay to want more.
As college became more real, Luna and I supported each other in different ways. I knew that she sometimes felt sad when I only listened to talk about myself or didn’t check in on important days, so I started jotting down memories onto notes so that I could ask better follow-up questions.
Luna showed me support by keeping the conversation going, never taking my lack of words as a lack of interest. Like Kayla, she’d go on these heartfelt rants. She carried symbols of strength handed down from her mother, a Humans of New York's worth of lessons from strangers befriended at bus stops, and a burning determination to make the world a better place.
But she also spoke of the oceans she’d cross for other people and the puddles they stopped at. She told me about moody friends who left her to pick up the pieces and flaky colleagues she had to hunt down and this feeling that she couldn’t shake off, that she was an outsider amongst outsiders.
“That’s ridiculous, I’m so sorry. Why do people do that? I would never do that” I’d say.
At first, I was flattered that she confided in me. These were the sorts of things people usually kept from me. Then, a queasy feeling began to stir within. Somewhere in my stomach, I think, but not exactly sinking, not exactly knotted.
The truth was, I was barely keeping it together myself. Luna and I were close enough to talk about everything, but in a way, that made it hard to see the whole picture. Luna knew about my therapy homework, the side effects of my meds, and my endless internal debates. I always put in extra effort to slow down and pay attention—an effort that easily waned if I were around other people who honestly weren’t as important to me.
How could I be sure I wasn’t exactly the same as the people she complained about?
Eventually, that whisper of doubt turned into outright avoidance. In groups, I was a people-pleaser, running around to help everyone, in hopes that Luna wouldn’t have a disappointing encounter that I’d later hear about. When it was just two of us, I was a contrarian prick. I complained about someone before she did, because I didn’t want to be in a position where she could say “I told you so.” But if she brought it up first, I’d go “Okay, but wait…” eager to play the devil’s advocate.
I knew Luna hated it when people said one thing and did another, but these people promised things to her that they couldn’t keep. I was trying so hard not to be a letdown by running from commitments, but ultimately, I ended up doing the same thing: saying one thing and doing another.
“You know, this whole ‘being an outsider amongst outsiders’ thing… It’s harder than I thought,” I told her a few months ago.
Since Luna graduated, I’ve realized how much more alike we are. I used to internally roll my eyes when she would say those things, like picking up the pieces and hunting them down. But now, those phrases come out of my mouth all the time.
I remember suggesting that she go to therapy, hoping it would help her get past what I thought was her black-and-white thinking. But later that year, when I had my own “it’s me against the world” crisis, I came to see that my negativity came from a place of weariness, not ignorance.
When you don’t see yourself represented in spaces they say are meant for you, every attempt to reach out can feel like a Hail Mary, like you’re grasping at the amulet of oughts, shoulds, and musts. And some days, when you’ve given all you have to forge your path, get what you need, and remind the world you exist, a seemingly small letdown can feel like the last straw.
At twenty-three, I’ve only just begun to figure all this out. Therapy helped, but so did experience. Sometimes, you have to live through it to learn from it.
“Come to think of it, we’re tag-teaming,” I said.
And I wasn’t sure if I should say this part, but I had to: “I guess… In a way… I have a better idea of what not to do in these situations, because you know, back then there some things you said or did that bothered me—”
For a split second, I winced, hoping that I wasn’t rehashing old arguments. But last couple of times we hung out, we were both laughing about it.
“—and now I end up fucking up in other ways. But you live and you learn, right? That’s why we go out and explore and report back to each other. Luna, I just want you to know that I’m thankful for our friendship.”
“Likewise.”
“Love you.”
“Love you more.”
While the world told Luna she wasn’t doing enough when she was doing more than most people did, it told me that I was doing enough, even though I knew I wasn’t.
Every day, when I passed Matt* at the student center, I felt like I was in debt like I was drowning in the loan I first took on the day we met when I monologued to him about my disability (because if I don’t tell my story then someone else will).
So when Matt confided in me one day that he was going to break up with his then-girlfriend, I held his gaze, feeling grateful that he trusted me to share the news. As he talked, my eyes turned to horror: She hit him, spiked his drink, and sent her father to threaten him more than once.
Then, Matt started going off about how he works 10 hours a week, and made the dean’s list, while she’d never worked a day in her life, was failing her classes, and stayed in bed all day.
Like me.
Focus, I told myself. None of this was personal—after all, something tells me that Gayle, the ABCDEFU singer, wouldn’t turn away fans for owning Craigslist couches and ripped-off paintings.
I took a breath. “You got this. I’m proud of you.”
Lying in bed that night, I couldn’t help but wonder: when he said he only wanted to associate with people who are in for the bigger game, did that include me?
Once, I had dreams of being in the Honors Society and graduating early. Now, I spent every final season submitting a CARE Report on myself and begging my professors for an “I” on my transcript: incomplete. My blog—my only source of self-expression—gathered dust. At school, I felt like I was drowning, and at home, I felt like an oozing wound. I didn’t know what to do.
“Lately, I keep thinking about what will be left of me when I burn through my bridges and my sympathy passes and my daddy's money,” I wrote in my diary.
“I can’t shake off the feeling that at twenty-two I’ve already lived most of my life and I just want time to freeze.”
On ADHD medication, sounds, sight, and information stopped slipping by. But the hours, days, and weeks flew by. Gone were the days I forgot one sentence while reading the next one. Enter the days I forgot that my homework was due in an hour because I was so caught up doing other work for my other class. That was the kind of forgetting I’d heard about from friends with ADHD. Many of them had managed to get it under control after years of dealing with it. But I was new to this.
Even after reducing my courseload to two classes in hopes that I’d have more energy to take care of myself, getting out of bed remained a challenge. I was losing weight again, too. The second I woke up, all my responsibilities blurred into the background, alongside the low rumbling of my air vents, the lone sock lying on the floor, and the scent of sweat mixed with Bare by Victoria’s Secret, leaving me to come up with excuses to delay getting out of bed. I coaxed myself with impulse purchases, some nice-smelling soaps and cute organizers, but I’d get distracted by something else, fall behind, and the cycle would continue.
I knew that if I continued down this path, I’d end up graduating just to graduate, and spend the rest of my life wishing I could go back, as the realities of the Real World knock me off my foot, baby steps be damned.
I asked my friends for a grace period. I tried to keep them engaged, throwing in some therapy updates (see, I’m working on myself) and vague complaints about how busy and stressful and hard my classes were. I was excusing my lack of participation, and in a way, excusing their lack of common interest—not that it was anyone’s fault. But I wanted to believe that if everyone did their part, we’d all be besties, happily ever after. We just had to figure out how to keep score.
In the meantime, I aimed to entertain. From my bed, I sent out puns about a text that was sent 5 bubbles ago and overshared TMI stuff because I’m so random and such a hot mess and WTF is it even in my life? (—Me when I look in the mirror, HA!). But you can only repeat jokes so many times. Eventually, I gave up being the Sad Clown and settled into the tried-and-true role: the Needy One.
In other words, I was The Crisis Friend™. And every time I talk about this, I think of this song, Get Well by Icon for Hire:
We throw tantrums like parties We're not happy 'till everyone knows we're sick And that's just how we like it We've hurt bad enough, right, we've earned it Don't tell the others, but it's all getting old I mean, how many more times must our stories be told? And being lonely's only fun in a group It sort of loses its charm when it's true I meant it when I said I wanna get well, I wanna get well Are the rest of you so content? Stay where you are but it hurts like hell And I'm sure it was fun at first Test your pulse and check your vitals If it's only a game, you lost me I quit it with the suicidal recital
I also meant it when I said I wanted to Get Well. But I didn’t know what to do. It seemed like every time I reached out to mental health professional, I had to downplay my emotions because if I didn’t, my concerns might be dismissed as an emotional issue, amenable to positive mantras and maybe some antidepressants. And when has that ever worked?
Each day I spent being mad at myself represented each month I spent being mad for myself. I knew that I deserved better than cliche advice and empty reassurance from people in coats with no skin in the game. I kept a running list of things that have gone wrong in my life and could still go wrong, because I was holding out for the hope that the right person would come along and recognize that this is real and this is serious and I needed a rescuing hand, not a high-five. Every once in a while, I went back to that list, re-reading it, wondering if I’d missed something, if there was a solution hidden in plain sight, like just try harder. My most “negative” thoughts came from the burning conviction that I could be helped, and that I deserved to. But I was at the end of my rope.
I wrote in my diary:
“Free will tells me that everything is my fault and that I need to try harder or quit being a sore loser. Fate tells me that nothing is my fault and that there’s no point in trying. I guess I’m struggling to be positive without being an entitled prick who thinks I’m better than everyone else.”
On a sunny October day, I found help: I’d admitted myself to intensive outpatient care. Everything moved fast from there.
Within the next day, I joined groups where we learned about things like co-dysregulation, where two people encourage each other to freak out more and more even without being aware of it, and Opposite Action, a strategy in which you deliberately go against knee-jerk impulses to show your monkey brain who the boss is.
Then, I made the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my whole life: I started a tough conversion my family, which I’d been avoiding at all costs for years.
I also went back on a baby dose of Zealon*, just enough to help me get out of bed.
In a true Gen Z fashion, I posted an update on my private story. The people who reached out were far away, but most people that I saw every day at school said nothing. Not a single word.
I was going to Get Well, and I was going to brave the limbo space between being so dysfunctional that everyone got scared and rushed to help, and being functional enough to be fun and relatable and with-it. And I couldn’t afford to be around people who couldn’t look out for me.
Kayla called me when I was leaving the mailroom. I sat on the dewy bench, and made sure the speaker phone was off.
But I could hardly catch my breathe. “Everyone says, ‘communicate,’” I sobbed.
“But at what point— at this point I’m just piling one guilt trip onto another.”
Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. Fasten obligation and emotional weight, each one tightening its grip until it all falls apart.
That’s the thing about about isolation: it multiplies. Each rejection reinforces the belief that we’re hard to love and that those who manage to yet still love us are saints, and each “saint” ends up bearing the cross of past letdowns.
It was getting cold. “I wish you were here,” I told Kayla.
“Me too. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Next chapter:
Previous chapter:
