Autistic Alien

It starts off as little things. An awareness that you’d missed small but important cues. Saying something accidentally rude, responding too enthusiastically and struggling to join in group activities. Wanting to cling to the corners of rooms. Picking one ally and taking on the world with just them.

As you get older, you feel yourself falling behind. Others go on dates, host parties and take risks. It’s not that you don’t try and join in, it’s not even that people don’t want you there. It’s the constant feeling of stress that your instincts pull you in another direction to everyone else. Your instincts tell you that you don’t like the environment which everyone else is loving. Your instincts tell you to engage with people in a way that elicits amused, confused and awkward reactions. You learn that your instincts must be wrong. Why else would they lead you in the other direction from everyone else?

So you learn to fight yourself. You push yourself to do things anyway. “It’s not that scary, it’s something everyone does.” You learn to mimic them. Act like them, talk like them, move like them. But you know you’re not the best actor. So you start reducing yourself. To limited, quiet and considered movements and thoughts.

Your real personality, the one that is more colourful and chaotic, retreats inside your head. You absorb TV, books and films, where characters enact the bold, elaborate actions that you dream of doing.

You take on the observer role. You will not be playing the main part, so you will watch the world as a stage. You start to notice details that others don’t. Micro-expressions which indicate minute mood changes. You start to feel people’s emotions loudly vibrating in a room.

You’re good at spotting patterns. So you start watching systems as well. Every time people interact they trace repeated behaviours. You start to understand the component parts which make up complicated things. You become aware that you can achieve desired results by simply compiling clever combinations of good tricks.

You are still on the outside. But, perhaps life isn’t as scary and unknowable as you first felt. Perhaps life can be hacked.

You learn where the eccentrics are welcomed, even celebrated. You find your people. You share your knowledge of systems. Your people know good tricks too, new ones you hadn’t discovered yet.

Life remains terrifying. And yet. Enough good tricks, repeated systematically over a long period bear fruit. The impossible becomes overcomable. Creativity awaits. Life can be shaped, not simply survived.

Pity those who remain permanently excluded. Those with fewer advantages. We should make this planet fit for everyone, no matter how different they may be.