I don't belong. I've thought a lot about my place in this world, along with my relation to the people in it, and I consistently arrive at this basic truth. This is not a condemnation of myself, as it might seem. Instead, it is a condemnation of the world I am forced to inhabit. In waking up, going to work, tapping away at my keyboard, and every single other thing I do throughout my daily life, I am brought back to this condemnation; this declaration of the failure of modern society to accomodate for me in my lack of belonging. I can't go in most buildings without accepting that I'll be blinded by lights that are far too bright for me, deafened by the conflicting, busy sounds of modern life, and driven to madness by the bombardment of sensations on my hands. Beyond that, every single person I interact with seems to have this implicit understanding of an entire world beyond my grasp: an incomprehensible set of rules and principles of actions and thoughts that govern what is acceptable. And each and every one of them seem aware by some metaphysical force that I'm different. I can't stand it all. I'm just so tired of existing where I don't belong.
For those that didn't read the title, I'm autistic. Although I wasn't diagnosed until adulthood, my experiences with autism began at my earliest awareness. Although I was an early reader, leaning to read at 2, I had not learned to speak until I was 4. For the bulk of my early childhood, I would read my books in silence in the corner, wordlessly surveying the worlds of Tolkein and C.S. Lewis. These fantastic worlds where things weren't so loud, where I could spend my days relaxing in my garden in Hobbiton, or escape the chaos into a wardrobe that contained another world. I spent so many hours in the worlds of my books, hoping that if I read enough, I could find a magical wardrobe of my own. Yet, life would not be that easy. My preschool teacher didn't want me going to kindergarten unless I talked, and was potty trained. So, my parents made a deal: go to school as normal, and talk, or don't talk, and stay back, and be denied even more to read and learn. I wanted to learn and explore, so I started talking, and using the toilet like I was supposed to. This didn't make me normal, however, I still didn't belong. Very quickly, it became obvious that although I learned more quickly than my peers when it came to reading, and math, I was exceptionally behind in every other regard. Although I could write, my words were illegible, and although I could talk, nothing I said was appropriate for the environment I was in. I wanted to talk about speculative biology, Godzilla, The Hobbit, and so many other topics that were anything but what I was supposed to. I in particular loved Godzilla, and spent the bulk of my time obsessed with it. I was trapped in a cycle: if I wanted friends, I had to have normal tastes and hobbies, but if I had normal tastes and hobbies, I wouldn't be me. I knew then, for the first time, that if I was to be myself, I could not belong with the normal kids. I made some friends who were "weird" like me, but we all got bullied by the normal kids. I was called weird, creepy, and so many other hurtful things that I still carry with me. Not because I'm unable to move on from the words of children, but instead because these words were a consistent fixture of my life going forward. Every normal person I met considered me at the very least bizzare, and frequentyl informed me of that fact in none-so-kind words. My teachers loved me for my academic ability, but my peers hated me for my weirdness. As I left elementary school and went into middle school, I found the literature of someone who understood what it was to be weird, and in that, I was exposed to a new passion: horror.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was strange. Like me, he existed in a world that he was not made for. Sure, as I got older it became apparent that the ways that he was weird were due to his bigotry and insistence upon maintaining a pseudo-aristocratic attitude towards the world, but that feeling of fear towards the unknown, the "normal", was something that I felt kinship in. Lovecraft saw the increasingly changing and progressing world as a terrifying image of cosmic horror, whereas I saw the world I actively inhabitted as that very same cosmic horror. My Cthulhu in that sense were the neurotypicals who despised me. Yet in reading Lovecraft I made a realization: I could enjoy the fear; the terror of my world could be translated into powerful fiction. Thus, I started writing, writing more than I ever had. I wrote my first book at 12, my second at 14, and my third at 17. I feverishly wrote, even as the my personal and familial life imploaded around me, as family and friends descended into addiction and illness, I continued to write. I found solace in my writing, and wrote like my life depended on it. I was writing a new short story every day, adding contiually to a set of novels that I would never allow anyone to read. Every moment I spent outside of writing, I was forced to witness the horror that I translated onto the page, and thus my terror brought me right back to the page. I wrote essays, papers, manifestos on my ethical prescriptions; anything and everything that I could write, I did. I began reading philosophy, becoming obsessed with John Stuart Mill, and read everything he wrote. I began identifying as a Utilitarian, before modifying that into a Rule Utilitarian upon being presented with a thought experiment that showed the flaw of Act Utilitarianism. I wrote about Utilitarianism, I lived Utilitarianism, I tried to convince everyone around me that they didn't need their religious deontological ethical beliefs, and instead could become secular Utilitarians like me. I became insufferable (in truth, I'm still insufferable in that same way). I got into frequent debates, made friends with people who felt similiarly to me, and ultimately lost those friends when they learned I was weird. And in all that time, I continued writing about everything. I started keeping a journal where I wrote endlessly about myself, and learned how much I hated that. I didn't want to think about myself, or my place in the world. I didn't want to think about how I didn't belong.
And now I return to the central truth of this essay: I do not belong. The more I wrote, the more I escaped into a magic wardrobe of my own making, the more I avoided that truth. But every time I stopped writing, and looked around, I saw that truth; reminded of the terror that brought me to writing in the first place. I was bullied, harrassed, hated, feared, and rejected because of my lack of belonging. So few people understood me, and even fewer cared to try. I was alone. And into the end of high school, what meager friendships I had formed began to crumble. I was once again, alone. Going into college, I was sure that I would be kept at the fringes again. That everyone around me would hold that implicit knowledge of my weirdness, and make damn sure that I was intimately familiar with their feelings towards that weirdness. But that's not what happened. I found that there were many other weird people like me; people who had too been alone, and now, in a place that aggregated us weird people, had finally found belonging. I met the love of my life in college; another weird person. I met my best friends in college, even more weird people. Autism had for so long created a barrier between myself and the people around me, and for once in my life, autism bound me to others. My autism was no longer a weirdness, but a familiarity. The common experiences and feelings of us autistics allowed me to finally be myself without fearing retaliation. I no longer needed to escape to my books and my writing to find belonging. I finally belonged. Or so I thought. In feeling that belonging with my fellow autistic people, I was all the same reminded of my weirdness by everyone else, and everywhere else. I still couldn't exist in spaces meant for neurotypcals in comfort, neurotypicals still reminded me of how different and unwelcome I am, and no matter where I turned, only my autistic friends and family could understand me. Thus, although I found belonging among the other weird people, we all together did not belong in a normal world. I once again, found that I do not belong.
It was at this point that I started this website, hoping to reach out into the internet to find other weird people, and let them know they aren't alone. That we may not belong in the world around us, but that we can belong together. So to you, autistic and weird people who might be reading this: you belong with us weirdos. You are always welcome, and I will always love you. We do not belong beyond the wardrobe, but together we all can make a wardrobe that suits us plenty.
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