Does anyone else struggle with their feeling of self?
I don’t know how to explain it. I was diagnosed with autism at age 11, though my parents dismissed it as something unimportant. I was a quiet child, always with a book or a puzzle, and never played with other kids, my only friend at school was a girl 4 years older. But I also had very good grades and enjoyed studying, while other kids hated studying and enjoyed social life. I rarely cried and showed irritation at being cuddled, which was one of the reasons my mother took me to the doctor in the first place. But I was never a tomboy, I liked dolls and was happy being on my own. Overall, I seemed normal, even though from early age I felt sad and tired, because it felt unfair that everything required extra effort in order just to fit in and not be completely alienated.
Fast-forward to now, I’m 29, pretty well established in my career and have a partner. My connections to family are very loose. My parents, as well as most of my college friends, consider me unemotional, lacking warmth and empathy, “a cactus”. For a long time I tried as hard as I could to pretend being a person everybody wants me to be: polite, kind and sincere. It drained me of all energy and still wasn’t enough to blend in. Girls at school somehow felt that I was only copying their reactions and words, not being really interested in their lives and hobbies. And they disliked me for it. I have no female friends even now, no matter how hard I try to connect with them. I understand men’s perspective much better, and tend to be direct in my opinions, which is somehow supposed to be rude… I prefer logic and systematizing over emotions and intuition, and fact over clues. I’ve been told I’m very bad at reading between the lines, and that’s why my social life is so “unsocial”. My professional field is men dominated, so, thankfully, I don’t need to mask myself at work too much. Outside work, I struggle to be myself and also with the way society treats me because of it. My partner is neurodivergent as well, sometimes I think it’s the only reason why he understands me better than others. I’m afraid if we ever break up, I’ll be lonely for the rest of my life. It’s very depressing.
