Reconciliation

In a previous article called The People I Grew Up With, I detailed the circumstances of my friendless childhood, how my perspective on it changed after my autism diagnosis, and my desire for reconciliation by friending my former classmates on Facebook. Well, now the reconciliation I seek is coming to fruition. With a few notable exceptions, everybody seems game for this plan. Now, I didn't expect much of a formal or direct reconciliation, mind you. Mostly, I wanted them to know I've always been autistic, read the blog, and interact if they wished. Formal and direct reconciliation happened today though and I found it rather enlightening. Whether or not that sort of thing will continue, I don't know. It'll depend greatly on the individual involved. Back then, not having friends, I just considered everybody to be neutral or hostile. Oh, there were a rare few that could be reasonable and pleasant, but I assumed this was out of politeness or convenience. This being the case, reconciliation either means burying the hatchet with individuals or actually becoming friends with them.

As I imagine you've picked up on, I was bullied as a kid. The vast majority of this was nonviolent, although I was punched in the face by a girl the first day of preschool and knocked out with my own backpack once in Junior High. Around seventh grade, a popular form of bullying was to steal my pencils. To combat this, I kept five on my person at all times and a box of 100 of them in my backpack. Rarely was I successfully robbed of all of them. Although I presumed I was the only person to even remember this, a classmate contacted me today to apologize for her involvement in it. She told me she didn't know why she did it. Well, I know quite well why she did it. An undiagnosed autistic is weird and off-putting in a million ways. Some are subtle. Others are not. Tolerating this with kindness and patience is only really possible if both you and the autistic are aware of their condition. Otherwise, it's an entirely natural reaction throughout the animal kingdom to cajole deviants back into normal behavior. Of course, I accepted her apology and appreciate her still thinking of it.

Part of the problem is that most of these people are little more to me than a name I can match with a face. Unless you were one of the more persistent hostiles, I had romantic feelings for you, or you truly went out of your way to interact with me, chances are you're just a face I can't quite place or a name on a roll call that sounds familiar. Everybody had their own story and their own drama going on, I'm sure, but the fact is that I didn't know about hardly any of it. Who was rich, who was poor, who was popular, who was unpopular, who was smart, who was dumb, who were the greatest athletes, who else was badly coordinated besides me, who dated who, who got pregnant, who got an abortion, or any of that kind of stuff. What I hope will happen is actually beyond apologies for bad behavior. Hopefully, some of them will share a memory with me of something I was involved with that I was oblivious to or have simply forgotten. It's that kind of stuff that lets an autistic feel human, if only for a moment. When I went to college, I tried to act like none of it ever happened, but maybe reconciliation can mean I can be glad some of it did.

-Frank