For the first portion of my childhood years, I didn’t really know what loneliness was. Sure, I became vaguely aware of the concept, but I did not know its visceral sting.
There was no reason for me to feel lonely in those halcyon days. I was relatively popular. I was good at sports. My life was filled with fun, friends, and family.
However, life became increasingly less simple or straightforward as I entered my teenage years.
My relative sporting prowess was dwarfed by the puberty-induced growth spurts experienced by my peers. With their size, muscularity and stubble they were developing into looked like men while I still very much had the appearance of being a mere boy in their midst.
Social interaction began to be governed by rules that I did not grasp. My peers were communicating on a frequency that I struggled to tune into.
The group I came to high school with began to shun me in my second year. There was little in terms of outright hostility. I wasn’t bullied in that sense but it became clear enough that I was surplus to requirements.
It was a brutal fall from grace. I was no longer anywhere near as popular as I was and because of this I no longer felt cool. Girls stopped saying that I was cute. My confidence drained away.
I had been confident to the point of being cocky. This was replaced by an awkward shyness and painful uncertainty. I was no longer happy. I was confused and miserable in equal measure.
Instead of trying to force my way back into the group where I wasn’t wanted – I took the hint and moved on, unsure of why this had happened, but painfully aware that it had.
I joined another friendship group of mostly working-class lads who inhabited lower sets in terms of
maths, languages, and science. They did not strive for educational attainment. Sixth form and then university were not in their future.
Sometimes they misbehaved terribly in classes in ways that the middle-class boys that comprised my previous friendship group did not. This became more pronounced as the years went on, they smoked weed on school grounds, insulted teachers and received a number of suspensions. I didn’t partake in such misdeeds, but it felt subversive to simply be in and around it all.
I was invited on camping trips with cheap cider and cheap beer, and sometimes girls even joined us on these exciting excursions. At the time, I thought I was living the stuff of teenage dreams.
But then it happened again. I started getting shunned once more. The invites to gatherings, parties, and nights out ceased. There was no real hostility this time either. I was merely ignored and again, Itook the hint.
Only this time, I did not have another friendship group to migrate to. This time, I was all alone. It was brutal. I was on the outside, looking and listening in, and I had no real clue as to why or how Ifound myself there.
I went into exile and tried to make a virtue of my loneliness. I did this so well at times that it merely felt like solitude – loneliness’s benevolent cousin.
At school break times, I would find a corner in which to plonk myself, and there I would read. The world was not kind to me during this period, so between the pages of these books, I found others toinhabit. I could forget my troubles for a time, but only for a time.
Reminders of my social exclusion were frequent. I would be sitting in class, and the lads with whom I had been friends would be discussing their latest escapades while planning the next. Listening in while not being included was acutely painful. But it wasn’t resentment I felt. I feltdefective. I felt like I was at fault.
Experiences such as these had the effect of slowly conditioning me to expect rejection. I began to expect people not to like me. It would be a surprise when contrary to my expectations, they weren’t repelled by or indifferent to my presence.
It has taken me years to find out that the reason for much of the difficulty that I have faced is because I am on the autistic spectrum.
My brain was developing in a way that was markedly distinct from my peers – they were on a different frequency, a different wavelength. That is why I didn’t have an intuitive grasp of the social rules that had been bestowed upon my peers.
These experiences created an almighty chip on my shoulder. As I entered my 20s a whole new world opened up to me. I realised I could learn how to socialise by reading articles, buying books and watching videos on the internet.
In my quest to regain my lost social status, I started trying hard to learn how to socialise effectively in a neuro-normative context. I studied body language, unspoken social rules and the psychology ofthe neurotypical mind.
I started having to be more cognisant of other people’s body language and try to consciously mirror it to try and gain acceptance, or at least a semblance of it.
At university, I became more adept at masking autistic traits adeptly and made a number of friends at university.
Nevertheless, this success did not bring with it the confidence that I thought it would. I still expected to be rejected eventually. I expected it to be only a matter of time before people saw me for who I am.
Even though when I was welcome and included, I would still feel lonely because a lot of my friends had not really embraced me, even if they believed they did. They had embraced a character I learned to portray, rather than the “real me” and so the connection felt manufactured andinauthentic.
However, as I’ve grown older, I have been fortunate to find people in my life who like and love me for what I’ve learned to project but for who I really am. I don’t have to conceal my autistic traits as if they were something to be ashamed of in their presence. They may not be great in number, but they are all the more special for that reason. They are the most potent antidote I have for my feelings of loneliness.
What I have come to learn is that loneliness is an absence that permeates everything. It can fill a room with emptiness. It can fill a life with it too. It is felt so keenly it is almost as if it takesphysical form.
But it isn’t an absence of having other human beings physically around you – it is an absence of being understood and seen for who you really are.
It is only relatively recently I started writing about autism. I began exploring my experiences, my challenges, my struggles and the loneliness I have felt for much of my life.
What has become apparent is that there are many more of us out there than I ever realised. I know this because of the response to my writing. People reach out. They connect. They tell me about the similar experiences they’ve had. They express warmth and share words of encouragement.
What I now realise is that the kind of loneliness I’ve felt is not at all uncommon. Out there in the big wide world there is a community of the like-minded that I had no idea existed.
By writing about my loneliness, I feel less alone. As I’ve revealed more of myself, as I’ve allowed myself to be seen for who I truly am, that absence has started to fade.
