"What's wrong with that baby?" was the first microaggression I heard. I was an infant.
I have no memory of this, of course, but my mom does. We were at a parent-child class of some sort, and there was some form of group singing at one point. Being an undiagnosed autistic child, I started crying, likely because it was too loud and too overwhelming for my tiny infant brain. Another parent snidely made the comment, and my mom overheard it and was furious. My dad somehow prevented her from going after the parent, but they both remembered it and only told me about it as an adult, well after I was finally diagnosed at age 20.
I've been thinking about it a lot lately. When you're not able to go out much because of a pandemic, you have more time to think about things. I've become very introspective in recent months because of the shelter-in-place situation New Jersey has been in since March - without the wonders of NYC to distract me and give me endless places and things to explore, my brain has decided to explore itself. Unfortunately, I haven't exactly liked a lot of the things I've found in there. I've identified a very unhealthy habit of mine that actually is why I ended up in an emotionally abusive friendship in undergrad, started challenging my body issues caused by my thyroid, and remembered a lot of things I wish I hadn't from the worst time in my life (which was, as the first part of this sentence implies, my undergraduate career). The common thread that I've found is that people have consistently refused to accept me as I am and have always attempted to change me, including fundamental aspects of who I am as a person.
And it started in infancy, as that parent's comment proves.
I'm not entirely sure I can remember a time when I was allowed to just exist as I was. As soon as I was able to form memories, I was being criticized for...being. I was incredibly lucky that my parents never tried to pathologize me for how I played and interacted with my toys (or for the fact that three-year-old me was reading adult medical encyclopedias and books about dinosaurs). I didn't watch the same shows as my nursery school peers. I was watching documentaries on TLC back when they actually showed documentaries instead of exploiting people for being different. I drew Jupiter and Voyager 1 on the back of a preschool assignment once. I knew already that I was starkly different from my peers, and already they were asking questions. I just told them the truth: I liked these things, and that was okay. In preschool, kids don't really care that much. They just take things at face value. But I could tell adults thought I was weird for not being a normal preschooler.
By the time I was in elementary school, the differences were becoming more and more pronounced. In kindergarten, we were asked to list parts of the body on a chart. The other kids listed external items. I listed internal organs and blood cell types. I was five. My parents remember this fondly, because they were instantly able to pick out which chart I made. I often think back on this as a moment when it was obvious I was autistic and nobody diagnosed me. There are a lot of those moments in my life, but this one stands out to me the most because of my young age.
Kindergarten is when the bullying started, although it was lower-key at first because five-year-olds don't really think much of differences. There were still a few kids who thought it was okay to start being mean at that point, but for the most part they were shrugged off. This number of children increased until by 3rd grade people were beginning to ostracize me and publicly shame me for liking the things I liked. I still had friends, but it was becoming more obvious that I really wasn't fitting into the suburban town I grew up in. I talked funny, walked funny, liked weird things, and didn't act like the other kids. Occasionally, teachers attempted to intervene, but that didn't seem to be much of a deterrent, and it continued in 4th and 5th grade.
Middle school was, of course, the worst of it. Between the ages of 11 and 14, I went through a period where all my elementary school friends left me for greener pastures, i.e. normal friends they'd actually be okay with being seen around. I had few, if any, friends at all during this time. I took my solace in playing video games at home alone - online gaming was still in its infancy at that time - and writing fanfiction online. I fortunately met internet friends through the latter that I'm still friends with now, which is honestly amazing to me. That probably was what kept me going at a time when I was intensely isolated from my peers.
People were very cruel to me in middle school. This was when I became the ostracized 'other' that no one wanted to touch or even be seen in association with. I became the joke spouse in games of MASH. In a digital imaging class I took in 8th grade, some kids got into the photo files of all the students in the class and edited the photos of people they didn't like - I was one of them. I was frequently told I was ugly (often specifically that I "looked like a dog," a really pathetic insult because dogs are cute). I went to a guidance counselor, who told me the kids making fun of me were "jealous" of me. I could find nothing they were jealous of. I knew it was because I chose to exist as myself.
I wasn't wearing what the other kids were at the time. I dressed for comfort in oversized t-shirts and jeans because I needed things to be loose-fitting. I didn't know this was because I was autistic yet, but I did know it felt better. I was also intensely self-conscious and wanted to vanish into my clothes at a time when fashion was very showy and revealing. Between 2002 and 2006 or so, very low-waisted trousers were in fashion, and these were frequently paired with babydoll t-shirts and tops that were intentionally sized very small. I didn't want anyone seeing my midriff at all, so I went with the oversized shirts and normal-waisted jeans instead. I didn't wear makeup, either, which was another sensory issue that I didn't realize until far later. These were all things people tried to change about me, with even my parents attempting to get me to be more fashionable - albeit so I wouldn't be made fun of, which they apologized for later when I was diagnosed and they realized I had been dressing for my sensory needs.
At this point in my life, I was apparently mature enough for people to start telling me not to be who I was. I frequently received subtle messages that I was too much. I was too excitable, too passionate about the things I liked (which at this point in my life were anime and video games - it was my weeaboo phase), too different. At this time I likely began to internalize the idea that I wasn't good at being a girl because I wasn't performing femininity like my female peers and was happy to be healthily androgynous. I never questioned my gender identity, but I was one of those people where the phrase "I'm not like other girls" was actually true - I didn't ever say it to feel special or appeal to boys, but I somehow knew I really wasn't like the other suburban girls I went to school with, who wore top fashion brands and knew how to navigate the social landscape.
High school was more of the same - my bullies were all male at this point, which is why to this day, at age 31, I haven't attempted to date. I had it completely hammered into me that I was repulsive, an "other," ugly - not someone anyone would want to be with. My interests were repeatedly shamed as "stupid." I wasn't even allowed by my peers to like things. I got lucky in that my high school had an anime club and I made friends there who are to this day some of my best friends, so I was no longer alone off the internet, but it was still very clear that the school population at large rejected my presence and existence. I wasn't allowed to be myself without fear of derision. I probably started properly masking around this time, although I still permitted myself to be incredibly passionate about things, which led to me making some solid connections with my history teachers, at least one of whom suggested I go into professorial work/academia. (She knows I'm an archivist now. I made sure to let her know.) Ironically, despite all of the bullying for existing and daring to passionately like things, I developed my most enduring loves during this time - history (military history was an early specialty and still is, but by my final year of high school the seeds had been planted for the type of history I currently devote myself to researching) and baseball. I also developed my habit of constantly wearing hats because we were allowed to wear hats in high school, and whilst part of it was likely a sensory thing to help me remove brightness I also really liked looking like a street urchin or, if I was wearing baseball stuff, supporting the teams I loved. I was beginning to develop a sort of visual identity, but it wasn't a very effective one because I didn't know how to coordinate things yet or really style myself. But it wasn't in fashion, and so I was still ostracized except by my friends, and I was still told I was ugly and the things I liked were stupid. I longed to just exist without criticism, but that seemed impossible.
I thought I'd get a fresh start in undergrad. I went to Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania because they offered a minor in American Civil War Era Studies, which I couldn't get anywhere else. I figured I could find people there who cared about history as much as I did and it would be good. Instead, the Red Sox, one of my two main baseball teams, proceeded to make the playoffs and win the World Series within my first two and a half months of being away at school, so my baseball fandom exploded and everyone on my floor my freshman year thought I was really weird. I was just really excited to have something good happen to me whilst I was away from my family for the first time, because I was already having trouble making friends as it was, but it was evident to the entire floor that I was the "strange baseball girl" who didn't go to frat parties and stayed cooped up in her room a lot of the time because she didn't have anyone to do things with. I was even afraid to use the communal showers because I knew people on my floor talked behind my back, and given my experiences thus far in my life I had reason to be prepared for people to be mean to me or take my keys whilst I was in there and essentially lock me out of my room. (This never happened.) Again, I turned to the internet for my social life, and again, I made lifelong friends there, this time because of baseball. I've had the great fortune to meet many of my baseball friends in real life, and I'm so lucky. They helped carry me through what would become the worst period of my life.
I managed to make a real-life friend in one of my history classes because we both went to an anime convention in D.C. called Katsucon. We both liked sports anime, so we hit it off very well, and before long I was added to her friend group. We created a fake university for all our favorite sports anime characters to attend together and made Livejournal accounts for them to interact. By all accounts, things seemed good. During the first semester of my sophomore year, we decided to room together the next year. At the time, I was living alone in a Civil War-themed house (this would become helpful in April 2009), and she was living across the street. We went on a lot of baseball trips and other 'adventures' together, but as winter approached, her mental health began to take a turn for the worse.
In January 2008, my college roommate lost her mother to cancer. They had been very close, so it was an especially devastating blow for her. I found out later just how close they had been, but for now, I figured it was best to be a good friend and support her as much as I could. She began to lean more and more on me for support, texting me constantly, and by Thanksgiving 2008 I felt like if I didn't respond quickly enough and stay up late as she texted me that she would die and I would have blood on my hands. I was intensely depressed over the holiday break. I didn't know what to do. She continued to force her emotional needs on me more and more, and I continued to take them on because I was desperate to have a real-life friend at school. By February 2009, I was evidently at my breaking point, because that was when obsessive-compulsive disorder finally found an opening.
I'd struggled with undiagnosed OCD for most of my life, too. I was pretty sure it was OCD by the time I was in high school because I frequently would convince myself I had managed to poison myself in chemistry class and would spend a significant amount of time after school looking up fatal doses of chemicals I'd worked with. I instinctively knew this was OCD but never really brought it up with anyone. I didn't know how to. Somehow, I more or less managed to keep it at bay until a night in February 2009. My brain suggested that because I was trying to be a good friend and taking on all this emotional labor that I must be a lesbian because I wouldn't have done that if I didn't have romantic feelings for my college roommate. I was punched in the brain by what is known as Sexual Orientation OCD, wherein sufferers obsess over what their orientation actually is. This affects people regardless of their actual orientation and is different from an actual crisis of sexuality in that the obsession is over whether or not one is or isn't a particular orientation instead of what would happen if they did turn out to be one or the other. I logically knew I wasn't a lesbian because I'd felt attraction to men throughout my life (although nothing ever came of it because the vast majority were fictional characters and no men at my high school would have wanted to be seen with me anyway, not that I ever liked them) and I'd never doubted this or felt compelled to perform heterosexuality when I didn't feel it, and I certainly didn't have romantic feelings for my friend (who wasn't even my roommate yet). But my brain continued to insist, and before long all I could think about from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed was whether or not I had been gay all along and not realized it, despite my very obvious crush on a baseball player that was happening simultaneously.
I had a temporary reprieve from this in April 2009, when I found a six-week-old kitten and smuggled him into my dorm room for a week, hence why having no roommate at the time was helpful. He gave me something else to focus on for a while and enabled me to survive the semester. My parents came to visit me for my birthday and picked the kitten up, and then I went home after finals and, after a bit of work, got the diagnoses that I needed - I was autistic, I had social anxiety, and I had OCD. I went on Zoloft for the OCD, which incidentally helped with the anxiety as well, and I began the long road to recovery. But even here, old patterns reemerged - the psychiatrist who was prescribing my Zoloft repeatedly insisted I try dressing more femininely and wearing makeup to boost my confidence, both things my mom, who typically accompanied me to the appointments, and I explained were frequently sensory issues for me. Once again, here was someone telling me who I had to be instead of who I was because I wasn't "doing it right." I just wanted to be me, not who someone else wanted me to be.
This would, unfortunately, come to define my time between fall 2009 and spring 2011.
My clingy friend officially became my college roommate during that time. In retrospect, I shouldn't have continued with this, because I already knew things were bad and had the potential to get worse. But I didn't feel like I could get out, and I thought if I left she would kill herself, so I stayed in the friendship, which proceeded to get more and more obsessive to an unhealthy degree. My college roommate would get jealous if I was talking to my internet friends when she was there with me, wanted my undivided attention if I wasn't doing schoolwork, and would break down over the slightest things that I couldn't predict. She got physically clingy, often hugging me and holding my hand in public despite the OCD and autism that she was told repeatedly about, refusing to respect any boundaries I had. Her actions caused me frequent sensory issues and OCD spikes. She insisted on sharing a bed, which made me incredibly uncomfortable because of both of these issues, as well. I eventually found out throughout this time that she and her mother's relationship was, to say the least, close in a very unhealthy way:
- They shared a bed frequently, even when my college roommate was a teenager and adult
- Her mother would visit her at Gettysburg every weekend, driving out five hours from Long Island, even when dealing with cancer treatment
- She referred to her mother as 'Aniki,' which actually means 'older brother' in Japanese; this was a reference to a Prince of Tennis character but was still really unusual
- Her mother once got confused and disappointed because she wanted to be alone with her then-boyfriend on a date in high school
- They frequently wore matching clothing, again, even when my roommate was an adult
- Most importantly, there were no boundaries between parent and child that should have been there, and they acted more like co-dependent best friends than a parent and offspring
It turns out there's actually a name for this, and it's called covert or emotional incest. I didn't know the term at the time, but I knew it wasn't normal. I was lucky to grow up in a home with two emotionally and mentally healthy parents who established normal boundaries with their children, so I had a good idea of what was supposed to happen and what wasn't. This wasn't supposed to happen at all. This wasn't right.
I'm not sure exactly when I realized I was being used as a replacement goldfish to fill the void left behind when her mother died, but it was fairly early in the Bad Times of the friendship. I felt like if I left it would be my fault if she died, and she had made herself so emotionally reliant on me that I couldn't separate myself easily. As we lived together for the final two years of my undergraduate career, I became more and more depressed because if I did things differently than her mother would have, I was sharply criticized. I was frequently removed from the kitchen for cooking differently. I was blunt and direct - autistic traits that usually benefit me in relationships because I'm honest - instead of softening the blow. One time I explained that clinging to people pushes them away and she broke down sobbing. She legitimately didn't know it wasn't normal. More and more, despite her insistence that she loved me for me and cared about me and my friendship, I felt like I couldn't actually be myself in the friendship at all, and I felt suffocated and like a shell of myself. I wasn't allowed to be myself here. I was only allowed to be a projection that my college roommate saw of her mother. I still have some letters she wrote me, and in one of them she informs me that "I remind everyone of Mom." I didn't want to remind anyone of her mother, especially not her. I wanted to be me.
In 2011, I graduated from Gettysburg College with my history degree and Civil War Era Studies minor and returned home to New Jersey, where I began the process of weaning my college roommate off of my constant presence. By Thanksgiving of that year, we weren't speaking anymore. I was free of her, at least physically. From time to time, she would still attempt to contact me - and still does if I comment on a mutual college friend's Facebook posts, because I don't have her blocked. I intentionally never blocked her because I always want her to see how happy I am without her in my life if she comes looking for me. I don't know if this has any effect, because she always acts like we were just "fighting a lot" at the end. The reality of it is that she emotionally abused me for almost three years and can't bring herself to realize or admit how much she damaged me. A lot of the psychological issues I've been facing in shelter-in-place have to do with her and what she did to me. She, like all the others, made me feel like I couldn't be accepted as I was and that I had to change to be lovable. She made me feel like I was impossible to live with. I still apologize frequently to my current roommate that she has to live with me, to which she invariably responds that I'm perfectly fine to live with and that my college roommate was a terrible person for me to be around. Abuse does that to your brain.
I've spent the past nine years more or less coming to terms with the fact that I'm not a bad person. Most of my life and my interactions outside of my family have made me feel like I have to be, because very few people even tolerated my presence, let alone liked me. Nearly everyone I had come into contact with up until that point had criticized me, told me I was wrong in some way for existing as I was or doing the things I did, or flat-out treated me badly for being myself and liking things. I still struggle with a lot of it and mask intensely until I really trust people - the lone exception is on the internet, where I can just be myself and make friends as me. As mentioned above, I haven't dated because I'm so afraid of instant rejection because of how my male peers treated me, but it's also because there could be an initial acceptance followed by an attempt to shape me into someone else or treat me badly because I wasn't who they projected onto me, like my college roommate did. She made me feel unlovable as me. I even felt criticisms - even valid ones - from friends as rejections of myself, because up until that point in my life they always had been. I was bad to so many people, and I hadn't even done anything except exist.
I've been spending a lot of my time lately coming to terms with just how much of my life has been spent being criticized by other people for harmless things, like how I do certain activities, what I enjoy in my spare time, or even just how I look or exist. It explains why I took until my late 20s to start dressing more fashionably, because I was finally ready to stop hiding myself. It explains why I'm so afraid of men my own age, who rarely noticed me anyway because I was hiding in the first place. It explains why I'm afraid that every mistake is a catastrophic failure that will lead to rejection or being fired or being verbally berated - in the past, it often was. I simply wasn't allowed by other people to be myself without judgment, and it was all I wanted from others - really, a simple thing to ask of the people around you, but something I never received outside of my family, who I often assumed were obligated to love and accept me just because I was related to them. (It turns out they genuinely care about me, but when everyone else outside of your family treats you like that, you start to wonder.)
It took me a long time to write this post once I had the revelation about it. I knew it would bring up a lot of old traumas and reopen some old wounds, and I've spent a good three hours just sitting here with it right now penning it because I have to keep stopping to process everything and let the emotions flow through me. It's very difficult to be sitting here at age 31 and know logically that you're not a bad, unlovable, ugly person but still fear desperately that you must be somehow and that everyone who cares about you will eventually realize this and leave you like all the others did. It's exhausting to live with it every day. I sincerely hope that by writing it down and leaving it out here in the open instead of maintaining it within myself that I'll be able to begin to heal from it.
I just want to be me without being told not to be. Surely that isn't too much to ask.
