Shut-Off
As a Kid, I used to be one of those who could and would never stop talking about their interests. The things I loved, I loved passionately and wholeheartedly. I wanted to share the joy I felt when interacting with my hobbies and obsessions to everyone I ever came across. Now, as I look back on that behavior I used to exhibit, the signs of neurodivergence are glaringly obvious to me. And because this world was never built for anybody else but neurotypicals, the children are to pay for it with their mental health and future.
I genuinely didn’t know where the line between appropriate and inappropriate behavior was when it came to talking about my interests, These social cues have been notoriously difficult for me to catch, even now as an adult. But the Kid knew absolutely none of it – because nobody taught her any of it. She was left alone and forced to figure out why everyone around her was beating her up because she liked animanga. That’s what we call child neglect.
Back then, the tolerance for anything else than cisheteronormative and neurotypical behavior was so low we couldn’t even acknowledge that people like that existed among us. Not to sound like an old hag, I was an elementary school student less than 15 years ago. But since the entire world flat out denied that autistic people existed – especially the ones who don’t fit the stereotype mold of an autistic boy – a Kid like myself was even more likely to not only be rejected but tormented by the community who were supposed to call you one of theirs. And of course, none of that was ever explained to me, not even as I grew into my early adulthood. I had to teach it to myself as a 20-something-year-old.
Thinking back on the kind of Kid I was, I can’t help but feel confused. Sure, I was a bit weird and eccentric, very expressive and had interests others around my social groups didn’t. But above all, I was genuine, authentic, honest. And innocent. My special interest for magical girl animanga was not a common one in the early 2010’s Finnish schools. But who did it hurt? What made it so repulsive to my Friends that they justified abusing, manipulating, lying, beating and kicking me for it? The fact that this is the way some neurotypicals react to a neurodivergent person being passionate about their interests tells me far more about the inherent problems with the way this neurotypical society has built to function. Because why is authenticity punished, and manipulation rewarded?
After the worst of it was done, I subconsciously started to internalize the things I had been told and shown about the world and how to operate in it. I stopped behaving like a weirdo who liked cringy anime shit and instead put every last bit of my memories of the Kid in countless cardboard boxes and carried them down into the storage unit, hoping to never see them again. Because now I was much cooler, nonchalant, mysterious, and reserved – all executed in the attempt to be more normal. Because that is what this world expects from you, normalcy.
And sure, I wasn’t the loud, obnoxious Kid who wore their heart on their sleeve anymore, but someone who I had been taught to be, who I found much more tolerable too. So I took that small child and threw her into an iron cage within my heart, locking her in, so I could try to live as someone likable. I made myself forget where I had put the key to the cage, and I could hear the Kid’s desperate cries to be acknowledged, to be let out, to be heard. But I didn’t listen, focusing on whatever kept me from exploding into an autistic ramble about a silly band I liked, liked exactly the same way as that Kid did, but in Times New Roman, not in Comic Sans, if you know what I mean.
I had caged the most authentic part of myself, so how was I ever supposed to figure out who I truly was, my real selfhood with no cracks on the surface?
Well, at least I found the key.
Letting go,
ichigonya