UNMASKED: Snippets & notes from a lifetime collection of journals (pre-diagnosis).
Advocating for autistic acceptance.
September 23, 1993
I become perplexed and bewildered whenever I wrong anyone in our group, for I never mean to cause harm. I love my personality and lifestyle.
Kalpita Pathak
Age 18
COMMENTARY:
I just wanted to listen to Nirvana’s “In Utero” over and over again on my Discman!
I didn’t have a “group”. I had an assigned roommate and the people we had just met our freshman year. Turns out they were her friends not mine.
Chances are really *really* good they were reading tone and subtext in my very literal (not unkind) words.
Chances are also really *really* good they were telling me how annoying, manipulative, and mean I was, hence my comment on loving my own personality and lifestyle!
* Annoying could be love of sameness (music, food, clothes).
* Manipulative could be my comfort in safe spaces (“I’ll only go if we go to that one place otherwise you can go without me” – no subtext, no demanding, no hard feelings, but people heard all that in my words).
* Mean could be meeting my own needs (“I need to be alone”).
Just me being me and carving a space for myself in this world. It wasn’t until my diagnosis I learned I didn’t have to apologize for either.