I was just thinking about this today and thought it might be interesting to other people.
depsite being very comfortable in my identity as a women, especially as a younger teen I found it hard to connect with my femininity, or rather to feel worthy to be seen as a woman because I hardly felt like I was even seen as a human. I think many autistic individuals can relate to the experience of being treated like a weird spectacle in school. I wasn’t even diagnosed at this time- it was like everyone around me knew I was ‘odd’ before even I knew. It’s like a cruel inside joke that only I’m not in on. People would be fake nice to me (I didn’t know it was fake at the time) and laugh at me. I was asked out a few times as a ‘joke’- even back then I knew it was a joke though because my self esteem has always been so low that the idea of anyone liking me felt ridiculous.
I found it hard to feel like a normal girl when I felt like a complete alien- I didn’t have normal teen girl experiences at all. I was too busy navigating the world and my own brain, as well as spending pretty much all of my adolescence masking. I couldn’t understand why girls at the time were into things like pop culture and boys and partying as I was so out of the loop. I feel like growing up autistic is feeling more mature than everyone your age but at the same time like a lost child. To me, at least.
This is sort of just a string of my thoughts but I thought I’d share anyway. Like most of my thoughts it kind of inspires some sort of art piece so maybe I’ll have a new project I guess. There’s lots more I could add on to these thoughts but I’m just not very good at wording things.
