By Yamila García
People often tell me that I know how to do many things. I am not sure if this is something I became on purpose or not. On one hand, I always thought that other people treat you well when you are somehow useful to them and that was for me almost the only way to connect with others. On the other hand, I was never good at communicating, so it was better not to ask for help but to work on anything I needed for myself. I tried to become efficient and resourceful. That was conscious. However, I also had to learn how to do many things independently just because asking for help meant interacting with people, which could be more exhausting than learning by myself.
I know that these kinds of relationships based on my utility to others are not ideal nor fair to me. However, far from seeking the ideal, sometimes it was just about making it work and not looking so “out of place” in society. I always accepted my differences but I understood that as unfair as it sounds, if I wanted the respect and recognition of my peers, I had to be useful. Well, useful or entertaining, but considering my abilities, being useful was the only option for me. Observing the world as I did, I saw that relationships were often based on the usefulness of one party and a need of the other, or the admiration of one party and the desire for the attention of the other. I know these are not the only ways but they looked like the less complex at a point in my life. So I went with “useful” and I tried to be that for the world around me. I thought, “If every time someone says something I know about that particular topic, they will think I’m interesting or smart, or at least not so weird.” I feel bad for my younger self now. I know I don’t have to do this anymore but now again, it is a kind of mask that we, neurodivergent use to hide what doesn’t fit into this society. How do we differentiate who we really are from this mask we’ve used for so many years? That’s not easy, at least for me. I’m still working on figuring out who I am and what I had to be just to adapt to this world.