“Just be yourself”
On autism and alone time
“Just be yourself”
I was told this when I was around 11, by a teacher. As always, my mother had dragged me to the parent-teacher conference (it's called “parent-teacher” for a reason, mom). She had this idea that it's about me, so it should involve me. Nice idea I guess, but I already knew the routine.
My teacher would ask my mother if she had anything she wanted to discuss. She would ask how I'm doing at school. My teacher would tell her I'm doing well on written exams, but still haven't started participating more in class. Sometimes they would dwell on that a little, give me super helpful advice like “raise your hand just once per lesson”
...but sooner or later they'd always get to the same discussion. Why are you always alone? The other kids ask you to play with them, why don't you? They won't always do that. Then you're all on your own.
I would usually just sit there, letting it happen, said what I thought they wanted me to say. A few times I might've told them that I wanted to be alone, that being with the other kids was tiring, that I preferred my books. They ignored me, or perhaps didn't believe me. And, since I couldn't put my thoughts into words beyond that, I just waited it out. But I never understood why the other children were allowed to spend their breaks relaxing and having fun the way they enjoyed – and I was not.
That's when my teacher dropped the “Just be yourself”-line. Aside from the wrong assumptions (“just be yourself” is what you tell people when they're shy. I wasn't shy, just exhausted), and the overall uselessness (When has “just be yourself” ever helped actually shy people?), the thing that bothered me the most was the irony.
You spend day after day telling me that the way I enjoy myself is wrong, that I should force myself into situations that wear me out and pretend to have fun. And then you have the audacity to tell me to “just be myself” throughout the process.
But there was another contradiction, one I couldn't quite grasp yet, but that I think I've understood now: “Being myself” and socializing were incompatible to me. I think in words most of the time, because most of the time I'm imagining, internally infodumping, or – nowadays – practising for events like job interviews. But my own thoughts and feelings, the kinds of things people talk about while socializing – those aren't in words.
Do you speak more than one language? If yes, you have most likely made the experience that some things just don't translate. That's what it's always like for me: Every conversation feels like painstakingly translating my thoughts into a language that has no equivalent to 90% of the words I need. So I say the next best thing, the words that seem the most similar to my actual thoughts. But then there's the next problem – I can't always do that quickly.
This results in interaction feeling like improv: the core rule is “yes, and...”. I can't correct people's wrong assumptions. I can't take things back. I can't say no. I don't know why. I just know that this leads me even further down the miscommunication spiral; I can't put my actual thoughts into words, so people misunderstand me, all the time. And I can't correct them. I can only adapt to their assumptions.
See now how I can't “be myself” while interacting with others? See why I was so exhausted by even the idea of spending my free time socializing?
Everyone needs friends. Socializing and relationships are needs most people have. Maybe they could've helped me with that, if they had first acknowledged the dilemma of needing 24 hours of alone time a day, but still having the human need to socialize. Or the dilemma of being unable to communicate my true thoughts, but still having the human need to be understood.
But all I got instead was “just be yourself”