By Yamila García
A few days ago, I read an article about peer pressure and how this is a concern for many parents of teenagers. The search for acceptance in certain groups drives the choice of certain behaviors, some harmless and others dangerous. I tried to think if I had ever felt this or if my parents had felt concern about me at that stage of my life, but I could not identify that this had happened in my life. Then, considering that this is something quite common, I tried to think about why it did not affect me. Why did I not feel peer pressure? Well, to feel peer pressure, I should have understood in the first place what my peers wanted or were looking for. And if there was something that marked my relationship with my peers, it was precisely the lack of understanding. I could not understand their tastes, why they acted the way they did, or even their way of speaking many times. I could not feel pressure because there was a big part that I was missing.
If I ever felt pressure, it was self-imposed. Because even though I didn’t understand what my peers did, I did realize that we were very different and that I found it difficult to do things that they did easily. That’s why I carried a giant backpack of guilt and responsibility, of having to be able to do what everyone else did. After all, I was a girl like all of them. That’s what I thought because despite recognizing that I was different, I didn’t have my diagnosis until I was an adult. And no, my effort and pressure to “fit in” never came from a need to belong, but from a need to be efficient and simply be able to do the things that were so difficult for me. I had the illusion that the more effort I put in and exposed myself to what was difficult for me, the faster I would get used to it, and it would stop being difficult for me to do it. As you can imagine, even though with practice I improved in some aspects, things never became easy. So, yes my journey was never about fitting in with others, but about trying to understand and accept myself in a world that often felt so foreign.