The Hardest Part Of Autism (for me)

The Hardest Part of Autism (for me)

Autism, at its core, impacts a person in two main ways: socially, and through repetitive behaviors or restricted interests (aka special interests, sensory issues, the need to stim, the need for sameness, etc.).

Not a day goes by that I don’t deeply analyze how autism affects me or which autistic trait feels most apparent in the moment. For a while now, I’ve realized that the most distressing autistic trait I experience is social in nature. Yes, it sucks to get overstimulated or to have ARFID. Those things do bother me. But what causes the most distress, day in and day out, is how difficult it is for me to navigate almost any social relationship.

As a social animal and someone with a keen interest in sociology, anthropology, psychology, human development, and related fields, I am painfully aware of how important human relationships are—and of what I’m missing because of the relationships I don’t know how to start or maintain. I’ve spent countless hours trying to crack the code, trying to interact in ways that would nurture or preserve relationships, but it feels like there’s a blind spot I can’t fill no matter how hard I try.

I’ve been told I was smart my whole life. I’m not saying that to brag; I say it to make this point: most of whatever intelligence I have has been spent trying to figure out how to interact socially. When I’m speaking to someone, I’m using so much of my brain power that I have very little left for anything else. When I look back on my life, I can see the damage. There were so many opportunities I had to pass up because I didn’t have the cognitive space to plan for the future—I was too consumed with trying to learn how to act like a human.

One of the things many people grieve with a late diagnosis is all the years spent trying to be something we never could be. All those days, years, even decades of trying to fake being allistic—trying to sustain relationships that required immense effort just to maintain—meant missing out in other areas of life. We lost years, and we can’t get them back. We can’t go back in time and say, “Hey, you’ll never achieve what you’re trying to achieve. Let it go. Dive into your special interests. Learn about autism.”

That’s not to say that learning you’re autistic solves everything—it doesn’t. I still spend an enormous amount of time trying to solve the enigma of how to interact with people and maintain connections, knowing full well it will never get easy. It’s something that will likely always occupy my brain space, a puzzle I keep having to work on. But leaving it all behind isn’t the answer either. The answer is that it’s hard—but we do it anyway.