14. My Papers and Pens

What it's like to fall out with friends for the first time

Welcome to CHAPTER FOURTEEN of #TechnicallyAutistic: Lessons from the Periphery, where I talk about what my first time falling out with friends was like.

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My therapist saw the screenshots.

“Report her,” she told me.

“Look it up: ABR... Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights. If you file a complaint, your school is required, by law, to open an investigation. Audrey* can get in big trouble and so can anyone else who was involved. They’ll find that out for you.”

I didn’t.

As a college student, I was mortified to say I was bullied, a term mostly used by fifth graders who believed in the Tooth Fairy and washed-out YouTubers crying on TikTok after they were caught scamming their fans.

I could plead the former, because my disability makes me seem childlike to enough people, but doing so would only feed Audrey*’s savior complex: I didn’t know better, but she did, and she could dangle equality like a carrot on a stick—you should be grateful, because unlike everyone else here, I’m not letting you off easy. I never wanted to see her punished. I only wanted her to understand, if at all possible.

It started with the little things, as many things do.

Audrey, a few friends, and I were involved in something through the school. Long story short, I’d been asking the group chat for some stuff. No one else was doing it, but I didn't see why not because I was fully entitled to it according to an agreement we signed.

Audrey DM’d me, telling me to knock it off. She said I was making her uncomfortable and that I should be requesting at least five times less than we’d originally agreed.

I could see why I came off as critical. Now that I’d mustered the strength to get out of bed and sit on my desk to work on my laptop, I’d been texting more haphazardly, without my usual emojis and exclamations, before I turned my attention to near-miss Canvas discussions, gulped my meal replacement shakes, and prayed there was no one more thing that I had to think about. The first thing I did was clarify my tone, but Audrey told me that wasn't the point, that me asking was inappropriate in general.

WHOA.

I said we should regroup, find a different solution, compromise, I don’t know—we were creative enough to come up with something, right?

That angered her. She wanted me to drop it, like yesterday. Maybe I should have. It wasn’t that much of a big deal.

Or maybe it was.

It reminded me of home, where my family had to learn healthy conflict resolution skills amidst generational attitudes like “Watch your nagging” or “Stop yapping” or “Man up.” I despised the idea that some things were too trivial to talk about and that fairness didn’t matter as long as it was over little things—because I saw that most big things were made of a bunch of little things.

I thought that Audrey already knew this. But the thing about stereotypes is that they cause us to cherry-pick information, focusing only on what fits our preconceived notions. I realized that Audrey didn’t want to hear about what was going on in my personal life or share what was going on in her personal life; her main concern was that A) there were some social cues and B) I wasn’t responding to them the way she wanted me. I knew this because she sort of kept saying the same things over and over: that no one else was doing it, that others found my behavior aggravating, and that I should re-evaluate when it was appropriate to ask.

Audrey said I was being a stickler; I thought she was being the stickler. People don’t take too kindly to being told to not do something, end of the story, unless it’s something objectively shitty, like flashing someone’s significant other or scrolling on TikTok while someone talks about their dying grandpa. Maybe we were half-assed when we signed that part of the agreement about the thing I was asking for, but I thought we were genuinely committed to the part where it said everyone would have an equal say.

After some back-and-forth, Audrey apologized for coming across as too harsh—but not for telling me what to do—and agreed to set up a group meeting later this week. I gave her 24 hours to get started: if she didn’t send an invite in the group chat by tomorrow night, then I was going to do it—with the screenshots attached.

She called this blackmailing; I saw it as restoring fairness. Not having the stuff I asked for made my day more hectic, and between attending twelve hours of therapy a week and helping another friend in crisis, I felt like I was going to topple over. I didn’t want to be painted as the inconsiderate one because I didn’t stop when she first told me to, but I also didn’t want to bring this up in the group chat unprompted. It’s usually not a good sign when someone says, “I just wanted to…” and doing that would only fuel the perception that my requests were indeed grievances.

At this point, I was all bluster—more “c’mon, don't be a pussy and walk the talk” and less “as a student at this school…”—because I didn’t want to be written off as being too literal, too hung up on the rules to consider the interpersonal context. Legalistic, like she said. I was afraid she’d tell everyone I was unrelatable if I stated that I had the right to a fair learning environment, where her girl’s night outs, for instance, didn’t take precedence over my study sessions (but maybe, I thought, Olivia*, the STEM baddie, might be more sympathetic in that regard). But at no point was I ever comfortable with one person deciding that a due process (for a lack of better words) was not neccesary because I just didn’t know better.

At one point during the hour-long argument, Audrey blamed me for something mildly annoying that Madison* typed in the group chat. When I replied Well, that wasn’t me, that was Madison, Audrey said that I was being unfair because Madison wasn’t there to defend herself. Meanwhile, Audrey never told me who “we” were when she told me, We’re all busy. She also said, I’m sure I’m not the only one. She said that I was making things unneccesarily difficult; I just had to listen when she was pointing out a a problem behavior that made life stressful for all of us.

I felt like I was in the middle school locker room again. The popular girls would walk up to me, say “Good job” like I was five, and when I brushed them off, they’d briefly look at each other until one of them GASPED, frowning dramatically: “Asaka, that’s not very nice! That hurt my feelings!” They had a millisecond to exchange looks; 24 hours was more than enough.

I knew Audrey wasn’t exactly like those girls. In the short time I’d known her, she’d become one of my biggest cheerleaders. There was no sarcasm in her voice when she told me she loved how real I was. She said that she admired me for being true to myself and breaking free from the boxes other people had put me in. She also texted me first, something people rarely did. But this time, she was the one putting me in a box.

“I try to accommodate you, but I can only do so much,” she sighed when she called me that night.

I shouldn’t have brought up my struggles with ADHD. I brought it up the same way a frazzled coworker might bring up their daughter's school play when someone asks for extra work or skipped meals when someone's lateness is causing a delay. It still bothers me when people disregard rules because that is another person determining I’d be just fine without their courtesy. But first, Audrey and I had to agree on what courtesy meant, and I hoped that the phone call would lead to a mutual understanding.

On the phone, Audrey’s voice quivered with the compassion that I recognized. For a split second, my anger waned. Then, I realized that she wasn’t sorry for telling me to shut up; she was sorry for not telling me to shut up more nicely.

“It’s hard to tell tone in texting, and I was also really stressed. I just felt like I had to step up and tell you because everyone’s too nice to do it, you know?” she explained.

A feeling of detachment settled in, with a hot rush giving way to an icy stiffness behind my eyes.

“Like Madison—she’s, like, super chill.”

I wanted to hang up. The message was clear: You don’t belong (But maybe you could if you did as you were told). But I was glad she finally agreed to have a group meeting. At least then, I’d know who was okay with this.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that many people were. I thought about Miss Clements*, who had the world’s best intentions when she made me feel like my words were not words, my wishes not wishes—just meaningless noise:

“I feel anxious,” I’d tell her.

“Uh-uh-uh,“ she’d say. “That’s Inappropriate Behavior. And what did we say about Inappropriate Behavior?”

“You’re hurting my feelings,” I’d protest.

“This has nothing to do with feelings. Let’s try again.”

“But—”

“Uh-uh-uh. That’s another 10 Bonus Bucks off for Whining. Asaka, look at me. What did I say about Inappropriate Behavior?”

“That there will be Consequences?”

“Yep. And they are?”

“10 Bonus Bucks.”

“That’s right. 10 Bonus Bucks.”

The next morning, I texted Audrey, asking if we were still good to meet as a group. I also told her that I was still pretty shaken by some of the things she said the night before and hoped we could handle disagreements with more respect in our friendship moving forward.

WHAT?! she replied.

I don’t understand how it became such a big thing.

I thought about bringing in a mediator, but they’d probably just focus on the contract, and that would make me look like legalistic. That’s the other thing about stereotypes: you can’t run from them. There comes a point where this all stops being about freeing yourself and about how many people you’re willing to hurt in your attempt to shatter something that one person can’t possibly shatter overnight. Being the foolhardy bastard I am, I fell for it.

My fingers flew over the keyboard. Forget it. If this is how you feel, then I can’t be friends with you anymore. Besides, everyone else here is more like an acquaintance than a friend anyway. This isn’t worth my time. Bye!

I felt like a loser, and I figured I’d feel less like a loser if I started rejecting everyone before they could reject me first. 

For months, cynicism had been churning my head. Two days before the fight, I saw a post on Instagram explaining the difference between a friendship and an acquaintanceship. It said that autistic people often struggled to distinguish between the two, though when I recognized myself in its description of an acquaintance orbiting a friend group, there was no heartbreak or vindication—just a stillness in my head, as the “justs” drained away: I just need to get it together. It’s just a coincidence. Just one more try.

I told the group chat I was leaving for personal reasons.

Taylor* was the first person to message me. Asaka, I hope everything is OK. If there’s anything I could do to help, please let me know.

Thank you so much, I said.

I couldn’t yet say that Audrey’s comments were ableist, even though it felt that way; it felt cruel, like I was throwing her to the wrath of cancel culture. But maybe if I chose my words carefully, she’d actually see where I was coming from—and not just say she did because she was afraid of losing her job.

In the meantime, my frustration simmered, threatening to boil over. Knowing that Taylor had also dealt with microaggressions from other people, I turned to her, hoping for an unspoken understanding.

Just so you know, this is what happened, I said, as I attached the screenshots.

The comment about friendship was not directed at you, BTW. I quickly added. I’m just frustrated with how things are going with other people.

I meant it.

Taylor and I met when she reached out to me on Instagram, telling me she liked my writing. There was always something so thoughtful about her. Even though she’d become undeniably busier since then, she never did the whole nodding-off thing that many busy people do. If I was asking for too much, she’d tell me instead of just avoiding me, and if I was talking and she didn’t know what the hell I was on about, she’d ask me what I meant.

Taylor usually responded to my texts quickly, so I kept checking my messages. I gave it an hour—no reply yet. I waited twelve hours—she still didn’t answer. A full day, and still, nothing.

Honestly, I thought that anyone with a college education would recognize the power imbalance implied in the text messages with Audrey. I found it hard to believe that anyone would file this under your typical squabble between two friends, if not for Audrey harping on my social skills. That meant that her upper hand, wagging her fingers at me, was a necessary evil. Alturistic, even.

I was counting on Taylor to see through the bullshit. Where was she when I needed her? I started giving her dirty looks.

Madison also texted me: Asaka, I hope everything goes well. I just wanted to DM you because I wasn’t sure if you were comfortable with me texting in the group chat.

It was bittersweet—the first time that semester she texted first, about something unrelated to school obligations. I was thankful. But it was the kind of thankful you feel at farewells rather than housewarmings.

I hearted Madison’s message and turned my phone off. I knew that if I cared too much, the whisper of discontent would turn into a roar: Or maybe YOU don’t feel comfortable saying nice things to me in front of Audrey?

Someone was hiding behind someone.

Hours before, I saw on Snapchat that Madison, Audrey, and a few other friends had gone out. Audrey wasn’t there when they returned on campus, and when I walked by their table, they momentarily froze before picking up their conversation again. She knew.

Just to be clear: I believe in boycotting institutions, not people. The middle schooler in me wanted to issue an ultimatum—stop being friends with Audrey, or you’re a spineless coward—but I knew better. Nobody’s perfect, and everybody deserves to have friends. If this triangle deal was starting to affect my well-being, I had free will to leave. But I already knew where this was heading. There was no need to wait.

I did wait, for a couple of days. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t my impulsivity talking. It wasn’t. So I said the quiet part out loud: I don’t think our friendship is strong enough to withstand something like this.

I don’t expect you to get involved, and you didn’t do anything wrong, I told her. But this isn’t going to work out.

It’s not my battle, she said, in regards to Audrey’s actions. But I appreciate you telling me so that I get to hear both sides of the story which is what I strive to do in a situation like that.

When I saw Taylor at the staircase, wincing as she grabbed the handrail, I felt a pang of guilt. I knew that she’d been dealing with more, but talking about it less. It felt like we were both trying to hold it together, aware that one wrong question could push us a step too far from ourselves, leaving us feeling small and broken. If I didn’t spend so long trying to advocate for everyone else before advocating for myself, maybe I wouldn’t have grown so cynical. It wasn’t fair for me to expect her to be everyone else's Ableism Police all the time.

I texted her. Taylor, I’m so sorry. I know it’s not your fault.

Madison was laughing and chatting with her friends as if nothing had happened. When I came into view, Audrey pulled away, and Madison followed suit, never once looking at me. I didn’t see contempt or guilt in her demeanor, just a resigned understanding—as if Audrey was her sister and I was the family dog that bit her hand. But I was hurting, too.

I wondered if Madison would’ve been willing to help me if I didn’t write her off. Even though Madison and Audrey were closer to each other, Madison had known me for longer. Even if Audrey didn’t see how much her words could hurt someone, maybe Madison would have, and even if Madison couldn’t change Audrey’s mind, she could assure me I wasn’t crazy.

But I was worried I’d have to beg. A month before, when I stopped begging her to include me in her brunches, I felt a little less crazy. I wasn’t going to beg her to believe me that her best friend had hushed me in a way that felt painfully familiar—one that made my home uninhabitable at the time, prompting her at one point to send me $100 to escape, one that institutions paid people to do to me just because I was disabled. Maybe I wouldn’t have to beg, if I annotated the receipts, highlighting the most charged words and footnoting how the conversations could’ve played out differently, and then sent them to her.

When I finally sent Madison the receipts, they were unmarked and we were officially unfriended. I’m experiencing your lack of involvement as betrayal, I’d written. She responded to my pain with the glib indifference of a customer service representative, so I figured I’d seal the end of our friendship with the chilling formality of a plaintiff.

Between sobs, I wondered if Audrey was also hiding things from Madison. I didn’t think Audrey was that shady (or stupid), and I didn’t want to think I ended a two-year friendship over a hasty assumption. But if that was the case, I had to face my mistakes.

With the screenshots in hand, Madison remained unmoved: It’s not my place to comment because it’s not my battle.

It’s not my battle. I knew that turn of phrase just meant it was none of her business. But it also underscored our different realities: hers, where her words were believed by default, and mine, as a visibly disabled person, where every account I gave was met with Are you sure that’s not a misunderstanding?

I wiped my tears.

The truth was that I couldn’t make up my own damn mind if Madison was a generous acquaintance I burdened for far too long, or a flaky friend who let me down one too many times. We used to be good friends, but we’d been drifting apart slowly.

I wondered if she’d remember me as the disturbed stalker girl who was convinced we were soulmates, showered her with compliments, and went on bizarre, cryptic rants, or a stuck-up friend who abandoned her over a seemingly minor inconvinience; probably a little bit of both, as she’d say whenever I asked her a question about how her mind worked: Would you rather text or call? Did you not see that I was upset the other day, or did you just not see why? Do you find comfort in certainty or ambiguity?

A couple of months before I cut Madison off, I began updating her on my therapy sessions and analyzing our differences. I thought that maybe it would help us better understand each other, but it didn’t. When I decided to leave the group, I chalked up those instances as yet another effort I invested into friendships that weren’t returned in kind. But after two whole weeks without hearing her cheerful, steadfast voice, I began to wonder if it all felt entirely backward to her, like those old Tumblr groups that played amateur crisis counselors for each other and competed over who was the sickest.

Abandoment. Trauma. Grief. Madison had faced all of these things on a much larger scale, yet I never saw her take her emotions out on anyone else, EVER—which probably made my theatrics, an emotional display over a friendship I chose to end, all the more pathetic to her.

Madison was better at compartmentalizing emotions, but I was better at extracting emotions. I could finish people's sentences using their tone, expressions, and context clues, and when I needed help but felt overwhelmed and unsure where to start, I found a way to get them to finish mine. These skills always came naturally to me, but of course, since other people doubted me, I had to keep proving myself. When I started college, I became even better at it because managing my disability required a great deal of initiative on my end.

Madison wasn’t really into that stuff. Part of it, I knew, was that she had to grow a thick skin and stop worrying about what other people thought to maintain her equanimity. Being strong was what held us together, but drove us apart in the end.

On the Notes app, my final messages to Madison—a word salad of accusations, apologies, and well-wishes—read like a respectful acknowledgment of our mutual differences. Once wrapped in a blue text bubble, it resembled nothing more than a grand finale of the guilt trips that had strained the friendship. I sounded melodramatic as fuck, too, like we were singers filing for divorce, our scandalicious affair now up for grabs at your nearest tabloid counter: I let you go because I also sensed you were burnt out. I hope you know I care about your happiness, too.

In a way, though, there was something scandalicious beneath all this. The icy stiffness returned behind my eyes as I re-read Audrey’s text messages, supposedly on behalf of us, wrapped up in discriminatory rhetoric. Never, in a million years, did I think it would happen in this place, with these people. Or that she’d walk away unscathed, while our mutual friends, who wasn’t even in that group, started looking at me like a monster.

These mutual friends told me they'd rather stay out of it but I knew damn well what they meant: Of course, I'm treating you differently based on all the horror stories I’ve heard about you. Thanks for reaching out so that I can report back to them that you LOVE drama.

If not for everything else that happened, Audrey and I might’ve one day become friends again. After three long weeks, she’d given me an actual apology—not the I’m sorry if that offends you variety. I told a joke, and she laughed. When I got the flu, she offered to send me her notes. It was like I woke up from a nightmare.

Taylor asked me if I was still leaving.

I took a deep breathe. Yeah, I told her. I admitted to her that I was hurt by the way no one said anything or seemed to care. Taylor apologized. She also admitted she was hurt by my offhand remark in my texts to Audrey about how no one was my friend. We forgave each other, and agreed to mend our friendship.

But the rumor mill showed no signs of stopping. I never found out what exactly they were saying, just that the dirt on my name had surpassed Audrey’s microaggressions (or even that one other kid who got ousted the year before for something more serious). I got the message, loud and clear: my decision to end an unsatisfying friendship with Madison was the ultimate expression of my wrongness that made me undeserving in the first place.

I felt duped. Earlier that year, when I confessed to Madison that I felt abandoned, she promised me that she was going to reach out more. Yet, I saw no real change. “You can be more upfront with me, too,” she reminded me. “I don’t pick up on hints. I’m a straightforward person.”

For months, I’d been unraveling:

Why didn’t you invite me? No that’s not fair of me there’s nothing wrong with anyone hanging out without me I just feel like you don’t care about me. Why do you not care about me? No I know you care about me sometimes it just feels like you’re not there. What’s stopping you? No I don’t think anything is stopping you you just do things differently than I do. How—You know what maybe I’m making this more complicated than it actually is I just miss hanging out with you like we used to.

The answer was always the same: Yeah, one of these days. She was busy—busy hanging out with everyone else.

It just seemed like Madison was one of those people who only paid attention to me when I was crying, and that couldn’t possibly be healthy for either of us. I wanted to Get Well—wasn’t that what we all wanted? But at the end of the day, she is a person; not a bad habit I can Opposite Action my way out of.

When people stop talking to each other, we fill the void they leave behind with a tapestry of "No wonder," stitching together everything that’s ever gone wrong into a single, neat explanation.

Mine said that Madison, Audrey, and God knows how many other people had been pacifying me with half-hearted apologies and false promises, while making no real effort to spend time with me because no one wants to be the Bad Guy, and it’s much easier for them to tell the world about all the things I did that hurt them than for me to tell the world about all the things they didn’t do that hurt me (No wonder why I was running in circles, promising them I’d change but couldn’t). They couldn’t be bothered to ask me for clarification or offer alternatives and expected me—someone who struggles with recalling and organizing information—to do all the communicating (No wonder why I looked like I was never happy with anything), and seemed to care more about congratulating themselves for being Patient and Understanding than building my confidence (No wonder why they were so offended when I left even though they didn’t seem to miss me when I was still there). Was I just a trainwreck unfolding in slow motion, for them to watch and post on their Discord servers?

On their end, I’m sure, it went something like this: Asaka went on a rampage because she didn’t like how something was worded, like we’re supposed to memorize all her triggers (No wonder why everyone was too scared to have an actual conversation with her). Asaka says she “values boundaries”—The. Biggest. Lie. Ever. All she ever did was cross lines, step back, and say “I’m sorry for my part. As for…” Like we owe her even more now because she finally stopped stomping her foot and used her big girl words, like congratu-fucking-lations (No wonder why she went nuclear when someone told her “No” for once). Asaka left because she needed new people to lie to (No wonder why she’s being oh-so-charming with her new “friends”). Did she ever care about “getting better,” or was it all an act?

Recognizing my past mistakes brought the typical mixture of guilt, forgiveness, and relief—I was never with “bad people”, and this was my chance to learn and grow. Yet, it also deepened my anger: Why didn’t anyone tell me? I’d been treating so many people like they were worthy of talking to, and not about, when they didn’t feel the same way about me, and I’d been doing this so guilelessly, for so long, that they saw no limit to the humiliation I’d accept to get a seat at the table. No wonder—

Open communication is always easier said (that is, in abstraction) than done. I thought about a time when I knocked at Luna*’s door at 8 AM, telling her we needed to “take a break,” because I was so overwhelmed by her rants. A few months before, I’d started saying more of what she wanted to hear, hoping she wouldn’t press me on the matter once she got it out of her system (and got past her stressful Thursday labs). But she did, and my anxiety about letting her down grew into something all-consuming and noxious.

Luna and I ended up resolving it on the spot, and two hours later, we were laughing our asses off at Panera. After that, she and I spent a year working through our issues, and we both agree, with amusement, that if we weren’t as close as we were, we would’ve given up by now. Our bond was remarkable. So, maybe I was a jealous hater, after all, and the only crime I accused Madison of was not being close enough to me. Of course, no one owes me closeness.

But if someone that I worked closely with—whether I considered them a friend or not—was being discriminated against, I’d say something! I’d try to help, even if not directly. And if it was my own friend enforcing it in my name, I’d stand up against it, right? How difficult could it be to say, “Well, I don’t agree with that”?

All the what-ifs, what could’ve been, and what might’ve been spun in my head, mirroring the motion of the rumor mill. Turning. And turning. And turning. Imagination frayed at the threads of “no wonder,” turning the strands razor-thin and pin-tight, threatening to deconstruct the next person ensnared—me or someone else.

For months, people continued to give me the same side-eye: I know what you did. Your chances are up. It accused me of being clueless, or thinking they were clueless. 

Emotions, of course, are inevitable after a fallout. What’s a little bit of a dirty look? 

Well, according to my pride, everything. How could anyone think I was going to come back crawling, begging to be accepted into the group again?

I couldn’t rest until that idea was thoroughly dispelled. So I posted snarky comments on social media and, whenever I saw the old group in the hallway, I made a point to pass by them with the fakest, snobbiest smile and wave I could muster.

Taylor frowned. 

I thought that we were good. But clearly, she was appalled by the person I’d become since then. 

“Taylor, please. You know that I don’t have a problem with you,” I said.

I wasn’t thinking of her when I stuck up my nose at everyone. At those people. At that place.

Oh, the antecedents.

That is to say nothing of Olivia, her best friend, who I didn’t know nearly as well, but made my time at the place a bit more bearable with her gentle presence. I didn’t realize how ungrateful I’d been acting.

I was just stressed and busy—busy rebuilding my confidence and proving the haters wrong.

As if that was an excuse and not an indictment. As if I wasn’t the one shouting from the rooftops: friends don’t treat friends like an afterthought.

I was a hypocrite.

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