Welcome back to “Being A Voice.” First off, I apologize for the delay. Procrastination got the best of me, and when I started writing this, I realized I have quite a lot to talk about. So, let’s get into it!
Today, I will be sharing about the friendships and relationships aspect of my life, as well as how you or your child can build their own friendships and relationships, and how neurotypical people can be good friends to those on the spectrum. We are all hard-wired for community and deep, meaningful connections with others, as the love and support they give are the backbones to our dreams and endeavors. So, if you are on the spectrum and are struggling with this aspect, or if you know someone on the spectrum and are not sure how to be a good friend to them, then hopefully you can take something from today’s post.
This aspect in particular is one of, if not the, biggest challenges for people on the spectrum, me included, and it can take a long time before they find their… people, for lack of a better term. It’s especially hard for those of us who are high-functioning, as we tend to get stuck in the middle. The difficulty in this aspect is also prominent in our school careers, as we all too often fall prey to bullying, and some others are more concerned with following the social hierarchy.
Now, this should go without saying, but friendships and relationships are like couches on moving day. It takes two (maybe more) people to move them further, and if you’re the only one who shows up to do all the work, they won’t go anywhere. There have been many times when I was the only “mover,” so to speak.
Elementary School
If you read “An Autistic Life Changed by Christ,” you’ll remember brief mentions of old friends we called Cameron and Jack. Cameron had taken on the role of best friend during 2nd and 3rd grade. We were pretty much inseparable at school, but sometimes he would distance himself from me. It was probably because I was being too clingy (sorry about that, old friend, if you’re reading this), and I didn’t understand that some distance was necessary for a friendship to work. We had our ups and downs, sure. What friendship doesn’t? Still, for the most part, we remained good friends through 2nd and 3rd grade, having been in the same class both years. I don’t remember exactly what happened afterwards, but I guess we just weren’t friends anymore. Knowing how I was back then; it was probably because I didn’t give him enough space.
Jack came along at the end of 4th grade, having transferred back from another school. It was very unexpected, because in the years prior to 4th grade, we didn’t get along. However, I don’t think we were ever on the same level of animosity as I was with another kid (we’ll call him Dan), so there was some potential for a friendship with him. If only I had known what I was getting myself into…
Like with Cameron, it started off pretty well. We ended up bonding over our mutual love of Mario Kart: Double Dash!! I’m pretty sure it was because we were working on a class assignment and I was recreating some of the tracks from that game using pipe cleaners. One day during the following summer break, I invited him over to my house. We played some Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, went swimming in my pseudo-grandparent’s pool, and… then for whatever reason, I showed him one of the old worship videos from my old church we had lying around.
Yeah… looking back, that definitely wasn’t one of my finest moments.
Oh, and my brother watched it with us, too.
MOVING ON!
5th grade… It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. I was excited when Jack and I ended up in the same class again. Sure, we had our differences. While we both liked Mario, he was more of a Legend of Zelda fan. I liked listening to worship music, he liked listening to Bowling for Soup, Blink-182 and Avril Lavigne. Even so, things with us were going pretty well. But of course, they couldn’t stay that way for long. Someone was becoming a problem in my eyes, and he and I just so happened to share the same name. That’s right, Johnny M. This is where you come in.
Now, to be fair, Jack and Johnny M. were friends before he became friends with me, but it’s important to understand where I was coming from when he did. After I lost my friendship with Cameron, I didn’t know when, or even if anyone else would come along. The fear of rejection was strong. I became so desperate that I ended up making the same mistakes. Johnny M. certainly didn’t help in making better choices. He wanted to make it clear that he was the superior friend and would belittle me every chance he got. It was like he and I were competing for Jack’s friendship. In the end, he won. Once again, I had lost the person I saw as my best friend. Looking back, I wonder if I would’ve enjoyed all the other things about 5th grade just a little bit more if I had never used pipe cleaners to recreate racetracks toward the end of 4th grade. Or if I hadn’t blown it with Cameron.
Middle School
And then came 6th grade… Oh, boy. This was definitely not my favorite year spent in middle school. I knew that Jack, Johnny M. and the rest of my former friends from their circle would be there. Seeing them around and doing their thing without me was hard, but I was determined to worm my way back in. Unfortunately, at the time, they were determined to keep me out.
One day, near the beginning, I was getting everything I needed from my locker, and one of them (most likely either Jack or Johnny M.) dumped itching powder down my back. I ended up having to go to the nurse’s office and call my mom, and she had to come to the school with a new shirt for me to wear.
What a great way to start off the year, right?
Sometime after that, I took part in the school production of Annie Jr. I made quite a few new friends through that, so it was very disappointing when it was over, and I didn’t see them as much as when we were in rehearsals. So, my focus shifted back to Jack and getting back into his good graces, as well as my former circle of friends. Well, except for Johnny M. He was never really a friend, but if getting back into that circle meant dealing with him, I had no choice. Well, actually, I did. I could’ve chosen to abandon this foolish hope, but yet again, I let my desperation get the better of me.
By the time December rolled around, there was a school social scheduled. It was basically a social event in which there was dancing in the cafeteria and sports in the gym. There was another one that happened closer to the beginning, but I don’t remember a lot about it. This one, however, was more memorable, but not for a good reason.
It was on a Friday, the day of the social. I wrote a note to Jack, apologizing for acting so desperate and promising things would be different should he and the others welcome me back. I don’t remember how, but I was able to ensure that he got it.
I walked into the social that night, expectant of great things. This was it. This was the night I was going to take my life back. A least that’s what I thought at the time. A heartfelt letter was sure to do the trick, right?
Wrong.
During the social, Johnny M. called my name. I turned to him, and he told me something I was sure he took great pleasure in telling me. He told me that Jack had said no. I was crushed. I didn’t understand. Why did he say no? This wasn’t supposed to happen, I thought to myself. I sat at one of the tables in the cafeteria and broke down, feeling as though I had truly lost. My band teacher found me and lent me “a sympathetic ear” as the yearbook had put it.
In the following spring, the school held another social. Once again, I went, not sure what I was hoping to gain from it. I spent most of my time following Jack and my former friends around, watching them from afar and imagining myself with them; being friends with them again. A little creepy, I know, but I honestly didn’t know what else to do. Having had enough, Johnny M. came up to me and said “Didn’t you get the message? We hate you. Go away.” After that night, and a stern talking-to from my mom, I realized that somewhere down the line my friendship with Jack became very one-sided, and that it wasn’t worth the effort if he was never going to try to make it work in return. I finally decided to let go, appreciate my friendship with Jack for what it was in its early and middle stages, and move on.
7th grade was… mostly better than 6th grade. I didn’t really know what to expect as far as making friends went. I was just anxious to find out what the next theatre production was going to be. It was at this time that I met my next friend. We’ll call him Jordan. He and I bonded over our love of video games, with Mario being a big one among them, more specifically Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, as we had both been playing a lot of that game at the time. We had known each other since elementary school, but we never had a real conversation until this point. Later, I took part in the school production of Honk! Jr. I actually got the lead role (being the ugly duckling), which basically made me the center of attention… for the most part, and that was a big help in the social aspect of my life.
In the spring of that year, my mom thought it would be a good idea for me to get involved in the local community theater. That’s quite a mouthful, so we’re just gonna call it the LCT. They had openings for their production of High School Musical: On Stage! It was around this time that I realized I had major difficulty in making new friends. Perhaps it was because all the new people I met were from different parts of the metroplex, and that a lot of them had already known each other from having been involved in the LCT for a long time. Although, there was one person who stood out to me. We’ll call him Tristian.
Not only was Tristian really attractive, but he was probably one of the nicest, most down-to-earth guys I had ever met in my life, and that just made him more attractive than he already was. If it weren’t for him, I don’t think I would’ve had as much confidence in making new friends at the LCT, and I wouldn’t have come back for more. So, Tristian, if you’re reading this, thank you for being you! You made my first experience with the LCT a lot less difficult than it could’ve been.
The show was in its rehearsal phase for about two months. We opened sometime in April and had (I think) six shows, with three taking place on each weekend. Jordan and all his family came to see it one night, which was really awesome. It made me feel like I was I was a part of their family. In fact, with my family, Jordan’s family, my theatre friends at school and all my friends that I had just been on stage with, you could say I had more family than I knew what to do with.
The following summer was pretty chalk-full of stuff, now that I think about it. My mom had signed me and my brother up for just about every sports camp under the sun. In addition, I was also heavily involved with the LCT.
First was a production of Grease, in which I earned the role of Eugene. This was one of our day camp productions in which we had two weeks to get the show ready and would spend several hours a day in rehearsal. Although Tristian wasn’t involved with this one, he did come to see it one night. It was nice to see him, considering I had been missing him a lot during that time.
Next was Anne of Green Gables. This was more like a typical production in which we had more time to prepare. I earned the role of Matthew, which was my biggest role in an LCT production at the time, and I shared the role with somebody else. After our last show, one of my castmates, who had been involved with the LCT for a long time, pulled me aside. He told me that he had seen some people come along and just do okay, or so/so. But he also told me that I was different, and that I really gave it my all, or something along those lines. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I remember it being uplifting and encouraging.
Jordan and I continued to be friends through 8th grade, which was a miracle when looking back on my times with Cameron and Jack. Speaking of Jack, I had noticed that he and the rest of his group had gone into a full-on scenester phase, which didn’t look too appealing given how they dressed, so I was even happier to have cut my ties with them.
There was another school musical, which of course, I took part in. In the spring, I decided to take the STARS (advanced theatre) class, which opened the way to more experiences and friendship-building opportunities in the form of theatre tournaments. In February, after a long hiatus, I returned to the LCT to audition for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. I was very happy to be back after so many months. Tristian also auditioned, and he invited some of his friends from his school. It was definitely the best LCT production I had ever been a part of.
Unfortunately, it was also the last. I was going to do another one called Once on This Island at the end of the following summer, but due to a non-issue with my dad and brother, I dropped out before rehearsals even started, and I ended up never going back. I’ll talk more about that whole fiasco in a post later in the future.
High School
As some of you may know, freshman year of high school was a very difficult year for me. I experienced some of the worst bullying, and as a result, I lost confidence and began feeling disconnected from a lot of my friends. This time, I was the mover who didn’t show up to do his part, especially when it came to my friendship with Jordan. I took part in a couple school productions in that year, but I could still feel myself slipping away from all the good things that I had going for me. I vowed that the next year, I would buck up and fix everything, but I would never be able to uphold that vow since I had to move to a new town over the summer. It wasn’t fair. I was already struggling with my friendships, and now I was moving to a new place and a new school where I didn’t know anyone.
As I said once before, I wasn’t expecting much when going into sophomore year, and trying to make new friends was the last thing on my mind. As far as everyone was concerned, I was just in it for the diploma. But I ended up forming an unlikely friendship… of sorts with two of my world history classmates, and in an unconventional way. We’ll call them Collin and Andrew. See, I used to do Mario Kart Wii impressions back in those days. I swore off doing them after freshman year, as it was one of the things that attracted the bullying, but one day, I was so bored, and had trouble sitting still, I just couldn’t help myself. So, I put myself… back in the race, so to speak. Although Collin and Andrew reacted similarly to how the bullies did, it felt different. I honestly have no explanation for it, other than it was a God thing (if you read my second blog, you’ll know that I believe this was all God’s plan to bring me to Him through Jesus).
For one thing, and there’s a slight chance I might be making this up, they actually asked what I was doing. Either that, or I just told them. It’s unclear which way it went. I thought I needed to add more to my repertoire, so I tapped into my inner child and started using my fingers to play pretend gun shooting (the cringe is very strong as I’m writing this). It evolved to pretending to use other battling skills, like using melee weapons and the elements. Good thing I was in high school back then and got it out of my system, because I highly doubt any of that would’ve flown if I was in high school today, and with good reason.
So, it started with Collin and Andrew, and then I met the rest of their friends in the same way. But given my track record, things couldn’t be that easy forever. Andrew turned out to be a jerk near the end of the year and would often say I was getting annoying with my antics. We later got into a couple comment wars on Facebook, and it got so bad that I felt I had to unfriend him. The animosity between us continued halfway through junior year, and it affected my security in my friendship with Collin, if that’s what it even was. Looking back, it was most likely one-sided on my part, and I very well may have put myself into another Jack and Johnny M. situation.
Like those two before, Collin and Andrew were friends before I came along. In addition, I had both of them as friends on Facebook, and still do to this day. So, I thought maybe Collin had seen the animosity between me and Andrew on there, and thus, I wasn’t sure if we were still friends throughout the entirety of our junior year. Aside from that confusion, however, I continued to take the social food chain by storm with all my quirks, and I later found out that a lot of my friends, including Collin, were a part of this thing called Young Life, so I decided to go and check it out. I was hooked right from the get-go and signed up to go to camp over the summer. In addition, something happened that caused Andrew to stop being a jerk, so we ended up being on good terms. Towards the end of the year, I went on a Young Life campaigners retreat (fun fact: this was the same weekend of the royal wedding and the death of Osama Bin Laden) where I got just a little taste of what camp might be like. The weekend was so much fun, I was even more excited to experience camp.
It was also around this time that I came up with the concept of Mindland; the world that existed inside my mind. It was another way of saying that my mind had been waging war against negativity. If y’all want, I would be more than happy to write a whole post about Mindland, and how the events out here in the real world translated into that world. What I can tell you now is that the more I hung out with people and advance my friendships, the closer Mindland would get to restoring peace.
Anyway, I continued to build on my friendships when I went to Young Life camp at Crooked Creek over the summer. It was a blessing to have everyone so close, and not so far spread out throughout town for a change. This was a very big deal for me, considering I didn’t have a driver’s license. I still don’t have that, by the way. This made getting to be a part of social gatherings quite challenging. Collin went, as well, and he and I ended up forming some sort of reconnection. Although, senior year went the same way in spite of us having a class together.
Senior year was without a doubt the most exciting year since 5th grade, and it was even more so since I had so many friends I could count on. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. Don’t get me wrong, they were great, they just tended to unintentionally let me down, as would more of them in the future.
It wasn’t all too disappointing, however. I got to go to Homecoming with a big group of people, something I never thought I would’ve been able to do, and I went to pretty much every home football game, and a couple away games. I got to attend my senior prom in the spring, although it was with a different group. The only two big disappointments I can remember from that year was my 18th birthday, and this one weekend I went to an NHL game with some family. For my 18th birthday, I planned a party and invited a lot of people, but only six to eight of them showed up. I was appreciative that they came, but at the end of the night, it didn’t feel like enough. Remember, this was me before Christ, and I was still trying to find fulfilment through quality times with a large quantity in friends.
About a month or so later, on the weekend of the NHL game, I saw on Facebook that a lot of my friends had gone to one of their family’s lake house, and I felt left out. Most of them were the friends I had gone to homecoming with, so that was a big letdown, as I thought I had grown close enough with them to warrant an invite for that kind of stuff. Things got better towards the end of the year after prom, as four of the girls from that group invited me to their joint graduation party, which was a lot of fun. After graduation, I had my own, which had much better results than my 18th birthday, and I went to many more, as well.
As the summer went on, I didn’t see my friends as much as I hoped I would. So much for making the most of the time we have left before college, right? I had hoped to see a lot of them during Young Life camp at Frontier Ranch, but it turned out that not very many of them signed up to go for a second (or third) time. But, as some of you may know, this was when everything changed.
After a life-changing experience at camp, I started to let friendships happen and evolve more naturally over the next seven years, and as a result, I made an abundance of friends during my time in College Station, and quite a few of them ended up being very meaningful, long-lasting connections bonded together by God. Over time, making new friends and maintaining those friendships has become a lot easier. There are still times when I feel left out of conversations and that I don’t have anything meaningful to add, especially since I’m not as cultured in a lot of things they talk about, but overall, I feel like I’ve come such a long way.
Closing Thoughts
I know that was a lot of information to take in, but I’ll remind you that I’m here to share my experiences, what I learned from them, and hope it helps in some way. Now, let’s move on to whatever advice I have to give.
If there’s anything you, or your child can take from me, it’s to let friendships and relationships happen and grow naturally and give it time and space when needed. Be yourself and be true to yourself and your dreams. There is no better feeling than having friends who fully know, love and support you unconditionally, warts and all. This is certainly risky, but if you find those people through your authenticity, you will have more confidence in your ability to form and maintain those connections.
Parents, if your child is more high functioning and/or aspires to affiliate themselves among more neurotypical people as I did (and still do to a certain extent), pay close attention to those people. There’s a good chance you’ll notice more red flags or good things than they do. My fellow peers, listen to your parents when it comes to this. You will be far better off because of their guidance.
For neurotypical people who know anyone, or is close to anyone on the spectrum, be intentional. When communicating, have patience with them, listen to them, be the kind of friend they need and want you to be.
One last thing, and I know this will be a hard pill to swallow. Not all friendships are meant to last or be such a prominent part of our lives forever. Some people are only in our lives at one point, or duration, or… era for a reason, or lesson, and not for a lifetime. Heck, even our parents won’t be around for that long. I’ve found that life is like a never-ending train ride. Some people have to get off eventually. Some willingly, and some you have to kick off for trying to convince you to change course because they disagree with where you’re going and what’s best for you. And some may even find their way back on board at one point. That said, it isn’t about who you know the longest, it’s about who’s there when it really counts.
Thank you all for reading this extra-long and delayed post. If you found this helpful, or think it will help others, please share this on Facebook. I’ll see y’all (hopefully) on Saturday!
Puzzling Life 