This story may sound weird but I haven’t really spoken about it to anyone so I feel the need to get it off my chest. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I am a member of a group of young volunteer film programmers at a venue that organises film screenings in my town. Film is one of my interests so this is a great way for me to connect with like-minded people and make friends, although we usually only meet a couple of times a month. I have also been struggling with my gender identity for a long time and at this point I’m pretty sure that I’m non-binary/genderfluid – however, until the events that I’m about to relate took place, I had not properly come out to my friends in this particular group and I think they would have understandably perceived me as a man.
About a month or two ago a bunch of us went for a drink after one of our film screenings. I started chatting to a new member of the group, and we ended up having a really deep and thoughtful conversation about film and other interests we had in common – it felt really gratifying to be forging a new connection with another person like this and potentially building a close friendship. I was worried that I might be talking about myself a bit too much, so I tried asking her about herself and what she was up to – she suddenly seemed a bit awkward/nervous in her response. I realised at that point that she might think I was being a bit forward or that I was trying to chat her up, which was absolutely not what I was trying to do, and that she might be feeling uncomfortable as a result. I started panicking when I realised this – after a few minutes I made my excuses and left early because I was convinced that I was harming her in some way and needed to get away from her for her own safety.
I couldn’t stop thinking about this incident in the days and weeks afterwards. I wanted to reach out to her and ask her how she felt/apologise for my actions, but I felt like anything I tried to do would make things worse. As many of you will be aware, it can be very difficult for autistic people to understand the full context in social settings, so I was racked with uncertainty about whether I was overthinking the situation and whether I would actually be making things weirder by contacting her about it.
I realised that part of the problem might have been that she interpreted my behaviour differently because she thought I was a cis man, and that I had been in the closet with this friend group for too long anyway. Without making a big explicit statement, I started becoming a bit more open about my gender identity with the group. For instance, one of the projects we were working on was a zine to tie in with an upcoming film event where we basically each chose a film based on a theme and designed a zine page for it – I chose a film made by some trans filmmakers and included a quote from one of them about the importance of trans representation, and shared it in the groupchat. I also started wearing a badge with my pronouns on it to events and meetups.
I met the person again at our most recent meeting, which was a few weeks ago now. I felt really nervous and didn’t say very much during the meeting – I could tell that she was also nervous which made me worry even more. However, in the middle of the meeting I went to the bathroom to decompress, and on my way back we passed each other in the corridor and she gave a big, warm smile – this made me feel so much better. After the meeting we walked together for a bit and had a chat about stuff before parting ways.
However, I still feel really guilty. I’ve realised that she probably felt as worried about upsetting me as I did about upsetting her, and that she was going out of her way to make things better when we met the second time. I’m worried that I haven’t done enough to reciprocate that and make her feel better as well. I want to do something to express gratitude for her support, but I genuinely don’t know how to do that in a way that won’t come across as weird or blunt. Our group’s next meeting is in a week’s time – waiting until that time has been agony but I’m equally unsure how it might come across if I just messaged her out of the blue. If anyone has any ideas for what I should do then I'd be very happy to hear them!
