I Will Never Be Normal

When I was first diagnosed, I was sure that I was going to be able to “fix” all the things about myself that were non-neurotypical. I wanted my therapist to give me a list of all the scripts for all of the social situations that were possible. I was ready to memorize every possible situation and practice with her how to do them “right” with my therapist. To my surprise and consternation, my therapist insisted that this wasn’t what she was there to help me with at all.

But that was what I wanted her to do, I insisted. And so for several sessions, she let me take the lead. I talked to her about a series of problems I had with various family members and friends and asked her to help me create a solution to these problems. One was the problem that I was “too healthy” and that me being vegetarian and also super athletic tended to make a variety of social situations more difficult because what I talked about could be misinterpreted as judgment on other people’s less strict choices than my own.

In the end, she did suggest to me some solutions for these situations. I gave up being vegetarian because, to my surprise, if given a choice between giving up my strict food rules and giving up my strict exercise rules, the food rules were easier to give up. It took me three tries to eat meat again and it happened at a restaurant (a buffet) where I could do it as a social experiment and not as a permanent commitment to giving up my moral compass.

It did help some social situations. A very little bit.

But as she had predicted, it didn’t change much. Because I am autistic and being vegetarian or not being vegetarian won’t change my autism. Some people can listen to me talk about what autism is and how it makes me different. Some are accepting. Some are not accepting and just want me to make all of the changes to deal with the differences. I had been bumping up against that for most of my life, but it had gotten worse in 2017. Sometimes there are irreconcilable differences. There are no scripts for fixing those kinds of problems. Even for neurotypical people.

What is hard for me to accept is that there is no “fixing” autism. The more I try to fix my autism and replace autistic behaviors with neuruotypical ones, the less I am good at anything. I am never going to be a passing neurotypical person. I can expend all my autistic energy toward that goal. It will never make me normal. It will never make other people like me who don’t like me when I am my full autistic self. So instead of that, my new goal has become being as autistic as I actually am and letting people decide if they like it or not. I am great at a whole series of things. Embracing those things and finding places where being very good at them is compensated well and is appreciated—that is the goal.