Anti Hero

It’s been a while, I know, since the last time I wrote in English. Trying to do this in three languages can be very demanding but it is fun. So here I am.

You know, if you have been keeping reading, that I have some struggles with social relations and being with other people, as I have said previously, making friends is something I find very hard and tricky, and even more keeping them. Not because I am antisocial but because I am weird. This is something I came to terms with some time ago. Some say special, I say weird and I own it. It doesn’t make me sad or ashamed, it is just who I am. Catch up with F. R. I. E. N. D. S. and I Am What I Am. and many more from those ones.

I will start with Taylor’s single called Anti-hero, which for some reason vibrates inside me, not because I feel like the bad guy, but because I realised that I’m the problem, it’s me.

When I was working at the airport with the wheelchair service we had to help people with lots of disabilities or issues that made their journey through the terminal complicated. Aside from the obvious reduced mobility persons, there were also the ones that needed special treatment like all the different kind of neurodivergent passengers. One day I went to help a teenager that looked normal to me, so, as usual, I asked his parents what were his special needs. They told me he doesn’t like crowds or strangers touching him, so I needed to make sure they kept the social distance all the time. I found he was right, I felt the same but never thought about it.

Time passed by and I still kept having the same social issues as always. For some reason I didn’t connect to people like others did. (Las Amistades Peligrosas) . So I remembered that specific passenger and I wondered if it was somehow related with my own experience. I never thought I would be autistic since the ones I met had nothing to do with my issues, but I learned that there is another thing called Asperger which could fit. So I asked my godmother and my aunt since both of them are/were psychologists and have worked with them. My aunt said if I was wondering about it and being somehow autistic I wasn’t since they cannot recognise themselves as having neurodivergence. That was a quick cast away. My godmother on the other hand said it didn’t apply to me. For her I am just extremely sensitive and intelligent person, she said repeatedly I am very special. 😉

I still kept digging for information and found some tests online that went from useless to useful. In most of them the results were very clear as in I had some kind of autism qualities. If I did the ones for adults the results would be less obvious as the ones for kids. Which were fun to do as I would be able to place myself as how I felt and was back then. The stories I heard from my parents, relatives and friends, as for my own memories helped me figure out how I reacted to those questions.

It was interesting to do, and by the beginning of 2020 I was thinking about meeting professionals to get properly tested. My godmother and aunt were wondering what good could come from doing so. I told them it would help me understand why I felt the way I did, and also why I was always the weird one. It would be something that would set me free. Life had other plans because we got hit by the pandemic and suddenly we all got locked down. I survived it, but suddenly it was not important. I spoke with lots of people that felt the same so suddenly I didn’t feel like the weird one.

After that we had to move on, find jobs, and get back to our lifes. So trying to find out why I am weird was posponed and forgotten somewhere in my head. Until recently. As you can read on my previous posts, the ones about work, (2 Broke Girls (complete series)) you will see how I struggled there and probably find out before I did, why I have so many issues when working in front of people.

Some time ago a friend of mine came to see my models collection and was amazed of how I had them categorised, he said there were TV shows that made documentaries about these kind of hobbies and I would be a good guest there. Besides he found funny how detailed my knowledge about it was and how I could make lists with so many information about just a model. We laughed when I told him I didn’t like errors on registration numbers or that even my custom or fantasy ones had a real line number. He said it was nice to see how accurate I wanted them to be, almost like obsessive, but in the good way. That left a ringing in the back of my head.

A couple of weeks ago, a guy I follow on mastodon posted something that woke me up again. He acknowledged how difficult it was for him to keep eye contact with strangers, how I didn’t like being touched and how he missed the social distance amongst other things I could relate with. We spoke about that and he ended up giving me a link to some psychological tests that helped him discover his neurodivergence. I did many of them. It was fun to go back to that again, and of course, the results were as I expected.

We talked about them, and what it means to me now. I feel free. The thing is, during the pandemic, I was most of the time on twitter and talked to many people defining themselves as introverts, which I could relate to, but it is not my case since I can talk with strangers easily, and have been working as a waiter for months. It didn’t make sense. When I moved from the social media to the other one I kept reading the same kind of comments from people I could understand but not relate to. Then I made this discovery which opened my eyes.

When we grow up we learn how to behave in public. We learn the social behaviour we must to have. We learn how to pretend. I thought about it a lot. I read back my posts about my childhood, my teens and early twenties and how I had to fake things in order to be accepted by society. It doesn’t mean I like it or I feel comfortable with it, I had to. I remembered how much I hate that part of the mass when you have to shake hands with everyone. How much I dislike social meetings and gatherings, like weddings, birthdays and Christmas parties with work colleagues. I remembered how happy I was in some previous jobs where I had to be on my own and do my tasks alone. I realised how good it felt when safety made us greet people from afar and keep distant from them, and also how annoying it is that now you have to go back to hug or kiss strangers again. I remember that I have always preferred hand shaking as a salutation instead of two or three kisses. We don’t complain, we pretend because we have to like all those things in order to be a social accepted person.

Suddenly all those things, memories and feelings came back to me, as enlightened magically by this new discovery. Everything made sense. My discomfort at work, and why it felt good in the beginning but soon a living hell. Why my previous relationships were hell or just didn’t work out. Why I cannot make friends like my bestie does. BTW he did the test and had so low results that the evaluation said he was normal. Most of all, I understand now how some days I feel and have felt so tired from being with people: because I had to pretend being someone I’m not. I had to play a role and fake it so much I even came to believe I am normal.

Thinking about the past, my aunt, my therapist and people that worked in psychology related jobs, it makes me wonder why none of them saw it. Why didn’t they tell me anything? Or how did I manage to make them believe I was normal? How is that my ex never saw it coming? Of course the media tend to exaggeration, neurodivergent people are not all like Sheldon, Bones or Reid. It is way more subtle than that, and also way less theatrical.

I don’t like the use of terms like weird or normal for what most of the people will get from them. Nevertheless I learned with this introspection that weird is good. In my case it is liberating. Weird sets me free and that makes happy. I can understand now, why I have felt an outcast all my life. In retrospection I can see why I had so many issues in the past, and I know from talking with people like me, it doesn’t mean a bad thing at all. We can have jobs, get married and have a social life like everyone else, but in our own terms. That means we can be ourselves in a safe place.

And just like that I learned how to embrace being weird and be happy with it. I learned how to be myself.

January 2023