15. Might Have Been, Never Was

Alexa, play Celebrity Skin by Hole

Welcome to CHAPTER FIFTEEN of #TechnicallyAutistic: Lessons from the Periphery, where I talk about the lasting psychological effects of dealing with issues that most people have never heard of.

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I entered my twenties, feeling lost and out of my depth, but hesitant to admit I was struggling socially let alone that I could barely relate to people, because speaking these words made me a part of stories that sounded exactly like mine—until woosh! A big plot twist came along, revealing what everything had truly been about all along, and before I knew it, I was back where I started, if not somewhere worse, somewhere no one could find me. I felt like an outsider among outsiders, incomprehensible, unfathomable, and trapped in a never-ending game of hide-and-seek from anyone who tries to connect.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m alone and I’ll never figure it out, but I know that I can; I’ve figured things out on my own before. Not that long ago, getting out of bed felt like a Herculean task rendering half of my waking hours useless. I remember going to class with crusty eyes, my mouth smelling like actual shit, emanating a metallic tang when I finally brushed it.

Now, I sit in front of the mirror nearly every morning, relishing in the quiet luxury of getting ready. I show up overdressed and some people look at me funny—as if I’m missing some unspoken rule about TPO (Time, Place, Occasion), but I don’t care. Each detail of my appearance tells a story about how I conquered the hurdles of distraction that once left me bedbound. The tightly curled lashes and overlined lips show that I got out of bed and showered instead of mindlessly scrolling on my phone for hours. The bounces of my deliberately teased hair remind me of the persistence it took to style myself with my motor skills. The cloud of perfume reassures me that I’m home, no matter where I am—safe in my own body, in my own mind.

But what if I told you that sometimes, prettifying myself is all I could do to distract from the deep-seated shame whispering that I’m a monster? That I’m bad, not a bad bitch, but bad, period. Inherently, inescapably bad.

As a teenager, I never understood why other girls would say things like “I’m ugly and stupid and a horrible person,” because what does being ugly have to do with any of these things? After all, physical beauty is subjective and has no moral value. Until I reached a depth of self-loathing, where even my own reflection turned against me. I’d check my Instagram, curious about who from my first-year seminar unfollowed me, to find myself mindlessly scrolling through my old pictures like a political cartoonist looking for unflattering photos of a disgraced millionaire. And before I know it, I’m dissecting every “flaw.”

Yes, I go to therapy, and yes, I sometimes wonder if I’m a horrible person and I’ve successfully fooled everyone, including my therapists, that I’m wonderful.

How do I know that I have a good heart and not just a hollow soul that feeds on honeymoon periods, when I’m always compensating, under-doing here, over-doing there?

How do I know that I’m reaching out and not just burning through people like matches when I keep saying “I can’t do this anymore,” flooded by the grief of discovering and rediscovering what is and isn’t possible for me?

How do I know that I’m working on myself and not just doing PR, when every conflict feels like a long division, a single error turning a simple equation into a never-ending process, making me feel like I’ll never be clean?

My social media algorithms promise me that I can be clean.

Do you ever feel like people instantly dislike you?

Or that everyone you hang out with ghosts you?

And like no matter what, you keep fighting with the people you love?

You’re not “crazy” or “sketchy” or “unlovable,” it tells me: You’re autistic.

People can be both, but that’s beside the point. I’ve been told, time and time again, my diagnosis holds the key to bettering myself, recognizing my autistic traits will allow me to finally get my life together, eliminate drama, and navigate the social world with confidence (yay!).

Navigate the social world. Every time I meet a care worker, they look at me with awe and a hint of apology, astonished by how I even managed to come this far. I don’t know. I can find my way just fine. Maybe not physically, but psychologically, yes. I know where I’m going. I know where the channels of communication overlap. I can usually predict which way the other car is going to turn. I can spot signs from a mile away and I always know whose turf I’m in.

What I find difficult is maneuvering. Every effort to get myself across is punctuated with abrupt swerves, screeching halts, and long-winded detours. At my worst, I've missed my exits, plowed through fences, burnt bridges, you name it.

Misspeaking, I’ve found, is a lot like running over freshly painted lanes. You can pretend it never happened but then you’re leaving a trail (and you better forget about it ASAP, because if look at it you might get distracted and crash into a pole). Or you can turn around and try to clean it up, but risk further blurring the lines.

Most people don’t understand the emotional toll of managing the gap between my ability to navigate and maneuver. Everyone second-guess ourselves in social interaction, some more than others, especially in new or unfamiliar situations. But when your brain and your mouth are always out-of-sync, it feels like you’re speaking in codes that only you can understand.

It gets lonely. You’re threading the fine line between controlling yourself and controlling other people, deciding if it’s okay to explain (“I’m only asking because…" or “Wait, did I tell you that…?”), send multiple texts, or tell someone you’re sorry before they confront you. Sometimes it feels like one misstep is all it takes for you to land in a weird, uncomfortable, and downright disastorous social situation where no one would believe your answer to “What on Earth were you thinking???,” with no hashtag movements to back you up or give you advice because most people who think like you don’t get themselves into these situations to begin with.

My Instagram Explore page is full of others with my diagnosis venting their (completely understandable) frustrations at non-autistic culture and society: Allistic people had their way validated, affirmed, and catered to by society their whole lives, while I’ve nearly killed myself trying to fit into their mold.

I wonder how they’d feel if they met me. Would they like me?

In a way, I’m privileged. I can get a passive-aggressive email and quickly save face. I can half-listen to an awkward meeting and pick out a handful of people in the crowd who will say “Ugh, I know right?” after we get out. I can turn on the TV after a long day, and be greeted with social interactions that just make sense, on a platter ready to serve.

In theory, my thoughts, feelings, and desires hold more weight than that of some of my friends’, which is upsetting. That’s not fair, and that’s not how things should be. But it’s hard to have that conversation, when my thoughts, feelings, and desires haven’t been allowed to flourish, and often aren’t believed to be mine in the first place.

From responding to every “Do you like my shirt?” with anything but a “No”, to offering things to people even (and especially) when you know they’ll say “I’m good, thank you” just to show that you’re thinking of them, human interactions are laden with niceties that turn what could be a simple exchange into an elaborate dance. Much of the autistic community rejects these conventions, calling them nonsensical riddles and mind games. 

But what if I told you I can’t get enough of these?

Growing up, I was excluded from participating in those rituals. Social contracts were withheld from me in a way to mark me as the incapable, unqualified “other.” My middle school memory is full of classmates, with no apparent disabilities, flouting decorum in my presence—stating the obvious, asking nosy questions, and not even trying to have a back-and-forth conversation—to see how far they can go (many times, because they genuinely had no idea how to interact with me).

As I’ve grown into adulthood, I’ve found a strange comfort in not just following decorum but also enforcing it upon other people. I don’t think I’m alone in craving friends who will listen to me talk about puzzling interactions with other people and give me the validation I’m seeking. But there's also a part of me that's plain mean. I know how to round my lips and hold my gaze (as much as I can) at an idle, yet dangerous distance, like a cat sizing up its prey.

This tough exterior protects me. It tells the world that I will notice if anyone does or says something a bit “off,” and that snubbing me probably won’t be a good idea. No one from my classes have spoken to me like a child for at least a year. Now, I’m sure people laugh at me for being cocky and obnoxious all the time; the point is that I rarely get called sweet and adorable anymore. But a part of becoming an adult is realizing that armors are rarely just armors. They can hurt other people, too.

I remember one time, having lunch with a friend of a friend that I met from a disability group. He asked me a question about something (maybe my major, if I remember correctly—it was unrelated to disability), and though he was genuine, his way of asking might have seemed nitpicky to some other people. As I preened on my phone, I saw that mean look in my eye. I was ashamed of myself.

I don’t want anyone to feel judged the way I did.

We all just want to be loved and accepted for who we are. That’s the foundation of my empathy for other people in the disability community—and really, for any human being. I’ve given up on parallels or counterparts in that regard because I don’t fit the equations.

America’s favorite therapist friend, Brené Brown, once said: “We have to know where we end, and others begin if we really want to show up with empathy.” I know how important and hard that is because I occupy two spaces in the public imagination: it’s like the world sees me as autistic, while I see the world from an allistic, or non-autistic, viewpoint. Of course, I’m going off what I know so far, which comes from what I see out there, which is why I said public imagination. Of course, I could be very, very wrong about all this.

Braving the tightrope between paternalism and exceptionalism has always felt perilous but not quite courageous. I’ve been looking for place to unpack the confusion, loneliness, and alienation has been weighing on me for so long. But if I misplace my baggage, I’m not just hurting myself; I’m hurting other people.

I know that Spring has sprung when my LinkedIn feed fills up with pitching calls for Autism Acceptance Month, alongside the usual PSAs: marketing coaches reminding me to know your audience, and DEI experts cautioning me not to speak for a group that I’m not a part of.

Am I on the outside looking in, or the inside looking out? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

And that scares me.

I’ve spent so many April nights feeling like time is slipping away as I scroll through comment sections, reading one story after another that seems to be the opposite of mine in so many ways.

Did the conversation forget about me, or was that conversation never meant for me in the first place? 

I don’t know if I was born autistic and whether that means that I’ll die autistic or not, but I can tell you right now that I was raised autistic. I was a ward of the special ed system. I got the help, and I also got the stigma.

Despite this, I often find that my way of thinking, reasoning, and making sense of things aligns with the non-autistic majority, the way I understand it. That doesn’t mean I’ll never relate to an autistic person as well as I do to an allistic person; some of my closest friends have told me they are autistic and I love them unconditionally.

Distinguishing between autistic/allistic is only one way of describing people (I’ve written here and here about the differences). For me, the distinction matters the most when I’m struggling in my social life. Autism is the first thing that we think of when we think of a disability that affects social interactions, and if I’m seeking out that information, it’s because I’m already feeling lost. It gets frustrating.

Talking about my struggles in designated disability safe spaces can be hard. I find myself saying things like “I say and do things I don’t mean,” before correcting myself to say “I say and do things that other people interpret as XYZ” to be respectful of diverse communication styles. Sometimes, when I tell stories about a super awkward situation caused by my symptoms, hoping to get comfort, I receive confused, if not disappointed, looks, becausd they don’t see how it’s awkward. It makes me feel empty, and I don’t know if it’s a sort of a sunk cost fallacy—so you’re telling me all the care and energy I invested into socializing “normally” was ultimately for nothing? 

And I already know what some people would say to that: Yeah and why does that matter? 

Asaka, the ableists doesn't like you, either. PS: social norms are an invention of colonial, white cis-hetero patriarchy? Ick.

I don’t know. Social norms are natural and exist across cultures (Take “nunchi” for example, a Korean concept which means “eye-measure” and translates to “gauging.” In the MindBodyGreen article, What Is Nunchi? 8 Rules For This Korean Secret To Emotional Intelligence¹, Euny Hong positions nunchi as an antidote to toxic individualism: “Nunchi emphasizes the room as a whole, single organism, and not just the people within it”). But I can definitely see how social norms can be used to oppress people. I’m sure that reprehensible actions like "treating people differently based on the color of their skin" or "slapping your female secretary’s ass” started off as a widely accepted etiquette, not much different from “Saying ‘Bless you’ when someone sneezes” and “Eating with your napkin on your lap.”

We can all stand to question things, and the autistic community offers valuable wisdom, challenging all of us to meet differences with radical curiosity, not just forgive (“She didn’t know any better”) or forget (“That’s not her, that’s the disorder talking”). It’s an honor to be invited into that space. On a personal level, I feel like many of my autistic friends are great at asking for clarification and pointing out holes in my stories, which is extremely helpful when I’m struggling to articulate my thoughts clearly.

So YES to open communication. YES to making fewer assumptions. YES to not turning every conversation into a godforesaken Cold War. But sometimes I’m just like: Why do I have to be the one that leads the revolution?

I’m not Your Neurodivergent Bestie™ and I’m not here to save the world. My disability isn’t some statement of ultimate truth; it just is. And for me, what this means is that the signal from my brain to my mouth gets mixed up and I’m trying to live my life and I don’t want the world to decide what I’m good for. 

I carry the stigma of autism, all while feeling invisible in my so-called safe havens, and am trying my damndest not to send the wrong message—that I'm uniquely undeserving of the struggles others face, or that other people should be more like me—in a world filled with hate. I’m not sure how I found the courage to write about this stuff. Perhaps, despite everything, the universe hasn’t played a cruel joke on me after all.

When Franchesca and I meet at Eickhoff Hall, we’re catching up. We talk, she replies to her emails, I update my Notion, we talk some more, and occasionally, we recreate the middle school sleepovers we missed by hogging the Arts building at ungodly hours. One night during final exams, we decided to study together from 10PM to 4AM. When we went out for a drink and a bathroom break, we got locked out. I got someone to let us in, and when I turned around, Franchesca was blowing bubbles in the hallway. I could barely contain my laughter—good thing I already peed.

People say that she and I both have accents, referring to the way we pronounce words, but what I notice more is how we accentuate our words. We talk wide-eyed, with our hands, sometimes tapping on our own chests, and sometimes scrunching our noses to say, “Oh, you know” or “It’s OK.” 

But I’m more tense. Jerky, almost. A lot of it is my motor control. I can barely aim a spoon to my mouth; every time we put our plates away, mine is overflowing with crinkled napkins while hers is not. A part of it, though, is that I’m used to forcing everything and I forget that I don’t have to. Sometimes it feels like I’m not trying hard enough if I wasn’t feeling resistance. 

Not long ago, my synapses were misfiring every waking moment; there was no blank stare, a dull reply, or an awkward comment, that I didn’t accidentally produce, that I could save for when I had to make a Statement capital S. If I wanted to make a point, I knew that I had to go over-the-top.

I’m used to screaming above the noise, in any way I can. During the worst of my speech impediment, I was very pushy. In my younger years, I’d butt into conversations and repeat myself in case they didn’t quite catch what I was saying, hoping for a different outcome. When I got older, I pictured approaching them again when my body would cooperate more and I could be a 1000% sure they heard me speak.

The act of putting myself out there was never not a gamble, and entering adulthood, my risk tolerance was off the charts. Well into college, I was resorting to shocking, extreme antics, making faces and staging dramatic outbursts when I felt ignored. And though it may have been immature, it was anything but stagnant, a far cry from the zombie days where being alone didn’t make me sad, just bored, where being excluded made me feel frustrated, not hurt. But there had to be a better way.

“I can’t relate to people in a functional way,” I confessed to Franchesca.

She put her hands on my back.

“The more I think about it,” she murmured, “the more I think that people are the way they are because of how they grew up.”

We like to label people as one thing or another, she said. But who ever asks them about their life story?

The truth is that I have hurt people and I have let other people hurt me. I have hurt, in ways that are specific to my disability and in ways that are not, and everything in between. I dance with the devil in the space that lies between my ordinary reflexes and my extraordinary circumstances. And when I look back at the moments I felt the most disconnected from other people, I don’t see a divide along the lines of “Asaka, the literal, straightforward autistic one” versus “the non-literal, indirect non-autistic one.” 

I exhibit mannerisms, speech patterns, and habits that we commonly associate with autism, though I don’t rely on the autism community to explain their significance. Aside from that, I also have deeper struggles with connecting with people, and when I describe in in a few words, it most definitely sounds—not just look—like autism. But if I keep going, you’ll hear nuances that often gets overlooked in conversations about autism:

I know for sure that most people in the autistic community will be able to relate to my description of feeling like communication is a never-ending long division problem. Many autistic people experience miscommunications because they interpret things more literally than the non-autistic majority. For example, an autistic person may be seen as “defensive” for trying to answer a rhetorical question; “manipulative” for sharing factual details intended to be informative but are interpreted as accusatory or “shade” by the listener; “disingenious” for saying “I’m confused” or “What do you mean?” 

I’ve definitely struggled with miscommunications more than someone who doesn’t have a disability—not necessarily more often, but when it does happen, it seems to spiral out of control quickly—and I’m sure that many people think I’m defensive, manipulative, or disingenuous, which, I am sometimes, but that’s not all I am. Even so, my struggle with communication doesn’t mesh with the patterns that are being described.

In Unmasking Autism, psychologist Devon Price notes that autistic people take little for granted, but sometimes it feels like my brain takes too much for granted. Before I got on medication for ADHD, my thinking was extremely vague, and even now, communicating is a conscious practice of telling myself WHOA—Slow down. One thing at a time. Elaborate!!!

I can recall countless moments in my life where I sensed that something wasn’t right in a situation, and my instincts turned out to be right. Yet, capturing the essence of my concern felt like tugging at fringes, unable to fully grasp the threads. Despite always being the first person in the room to speak up, my efforts materialized in roundabout ways, through loosely related examples and counterpoints buried under at least 3 layers of “but’s.” These things sometimes created unnecessary drama, and I’d panic and agree to things I later resented or resort to genuinely lousy excuses to get people on my side.

That morning I told Luna* I “needed a break”, one of the first things I told her was, “I don’t want to be someone that I’m not.”

I still remember the way her voice shook. “I change myself all the time to fit other people,” she said. “I’m always putting other people first.”

No one wants to hear from their best friend that they need “a break,” but my comment hurt her particularly because it made her feel like she wasn’t good enough. I knew that she felt that way; that was the reason I was having the conversation, and what I meant was that I didn’t want to change myself, either. It was just so obvious to me (and to her, as well) that I just… forgot to acknowledge it.

Now, I’m much better at articulating my thoughts and feelings, but I have to be very intentional about giving myself time to process things, even if I don’t think I need it, because these disjointed responses can still come out when I’m under extreme stress.

When it comes to social chitchat, I do better one-on-one than in group settings—yet another common autistic experience. But when this phenomenon is discussed in the context of autism, we tend to look at how groups work in general. Most autistic people will say that struggle to decode the facial expressions and body language of multiple people at once, and that it takes then longer to familiarize themselves with the dynamic, like who’s closer to whom, or determine where to get more information and how much to disclose to each person to minimize gossip if a sensitive topic arises. How many times do I have to say that none of these things are difficult for me?

In group settings, I take all the “moving parts” in stride (and I’m not one to pass up the oppourtunity to be the center of attention) but often find that my responses fall short because the dynamic is inherently skewed against me, and no, I’m not neccesarily talking about people being judgmental jerks. Just as physical strength or lingustic barriers can create power imbalances, having different abilities can do the same, allowing other people to influence situations in ways I can’t. Even when no one is abusing it, my brain can start protesting in unhealthy ways—I almost want to say language of the voiceless, but we’re cutting that shit! I don’t have to be voiceless! I’m learning to leverage my strength in a positive way. It’s been a grueling, but rewarding, journey.

For example, I’ve always struggled to keep up with friends who were into TV, movies, and books, because my difficulty concentrating made it nearly impossible to engage with these things. Though I connected to many people through my passion for fashion and posting on social media, academic problems made it nearly impossible to maintain that monentum. It always felt like when things were starting to get better, they would unlock yet another milestone that I couldn’t reach.

When many of my friends started getting cars, and hangouts shifted from common areas at school to faraway locations I could only go to if someone from the Core Group ™ extended an invitation, which rarely happened. This made me feel like I had one of two options:

A) Rack my brain trying to come up with plans that were more exciting than the ones offered on the table

B) Explicitly invite myself, and make them feel uncomfortable

I’d get frustrated by their lack of effort in planning logistics, but couldn’t articulate that or even recognize it as the real issue. Instead, I kept apologizing for being awkward and sporadically lashing out, hoping that something would change.

Therapists have shown me circles. I’ve seen rings—the innermost core of trusted people, surrounded by progressively widening strata of work friends, acquaintances, and strangers, each of its own set of appropriate conversational topics and expected favors associated with each stage of friendship. I’ve seen Venn diagrams—showing the overlap between “you” and “me,” and the importance of not pressuring people into doing things they don’t want to do. Yet, it felt like no matter how hard I tried, I could never aim correctly.

It wasn’t that I didn’t see these fine distinctions; I didn’t have solid footing. I’m all too familiar with the feeling of walking into a room, where their ledges are made of concrete, built brick-by-brick with shared experiences—things they’d heard, seen, touched, and tasted together—and mine are made of glass.

I’ve asked multiple therapists if I had BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), which is characterized by intense, unstable relationships, frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, and "splitting," where a person idealizes or devalues someone based on one thing they did. Although anyone may engage in these behaviors occasionally, individuals with BPD are more likely to frequently "test" others and reject others to avoid being rejected themselves.

My therapists said it was hard to tell because my brain was still developing; I also recognize that my circumstances are unusual. My fear of rejection, for example, didn’t stem from the need to be liked by others so that I can like myself; I simply craved my daily dose of human contact (for an extrovert, please!) that most people were already getting.

My functional limitations—difficulty engaging in hobbies, going out, and doing busy work—kept my world small, while the people who serendipiously entered it became huge, omnipotent. I consistently ranked most of my friends much higher on my priority list than I did on theirs, and eventually, I started to feel resentful.

My feeling of resentment was compounded by the extra work of communicating. I felt the need to explain my disability to every new person I met (If I don’t tell my story, someone else will). The people who didn’t notice my disability at all often didn’t notice other social nuances that were important to me. It felt like maintaining friendships always involved more work, one way or another, and I couldn’t quite shake off the uncomfortable atmosphere where a casual hangout could turn into a marriage counselling session at any moment.

In the thick of my brain fog, I felt like an idea—both an elusive, untouchable ideal and a sustained simulation like a dancing dog, held by the arms to make it wave—instead of a person you can hang out with. I still grieve the time I can’t get back.

Though I’ve become much better at dealing with social situations where things don’t 100% go the way I’d hoped, I still have days where I feel drained by navigating my practical constraints. For example, it’s not safe for me to drive because of my disability, and I have to factor that when I initiate plans. Casual offers like “Let me know if you need a ride” can present an exciting opportunity for a first hangout that turns into a lasting friendship, but from there I have to get a better sense of the offer (an excuse to hang out, or just for urgent situations?) and how I can even begin to pay them back. It can quickly get overwhelming if I’m struggling with other obligations.

Sometimes, people have trouble deciphering what I’m saying because I might not speak as clearly, and that definitely shapes group dynamics, sometimes making me feel invisible in groups that don’t strike me as particularly “cliquey.” Recently, I’ve noticed that the way people behave around me versus around other people bears an eerie resemblance to how I behave medicated versus unmedicated, which was an upsetting but illuminating realization. It all made sense: people straining to listen, reminding themselves to be “on,” and not knowing how to respond, especially in bustling or distracting environments.

There are times where people find it easier to focus on each other than to me, and due to the nature of my speech impediment, I’m sure, someone (whether they have a disability of not) might not pick up on the connotations of what I’m saying, even if it’s obvious to me.

After all these years, writing is my go-to when I feel disconnected for people and when I want something more, though my relationship with it has changed profoundly. When I was a kid, I was anxious to become writer so that I could explain myself to the world, but these days, I see tremendous value in explaining myself to myself before letting the world bear witness.

My friendship with Franchesca began because of a writing project, but flourished entirely without it; she hadn't read a single article from me when we started calling each other best friends.

“You know, I was diagnosed with autism when I was ten,” I muttered. That, she knew. I’d mentioned it at the roommate meeting. 

Franchesca told me she knew a couple of kids from her class who said they were autistic.

“I don’t understand why people judge them because they all seem really nice. And smart, too! But Asaka, what is autism? Is it just… being a little bit different?” 

I sighed.

“That was my MUSE project.”

And I was nowhere near done.

“Asaka, eat,” she said, pointing out my unfinished bowl. 

But what is autism?

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1. https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/what-is-nunchi