1. Work: Another 20-year-old Workaholic
A story about trying to be the best in a world where everyone is trying to be the best, when you’re starting on the back foot
It’s such a common story these days that it’s almost not worth telling. And that’s exactly why it should be told.
I was five when I first realised I was odd. Morning break, sat by my usual location by the honeysuckle plants. For some reason, I noticed for the first time that I was on my own, while my classmates played house together. I didn’t really care — I was happy with my own company and would remain so for years.
I was 13 when that oddness was given a name: Atypical Autism. The start of secondary school is a common diagnosis point: it’s a big life transition and the social landscape changes dramatically. I couldn’t keep up with the social expectations being demanded of me unarmed.
The day I got my diagnosis was the day I realised I wasn’t alone in this world. There were others like me.
It was also the day I realised how hard my life was going to be. And therefore how hard I’d have to work.
When I got my diagnosis, I learned the prognosis statistics for Autistic people like me. That was long before reaching the time of any of those life milestones.
Only 16% of Autistic adults are in full-time paid employment, a figure which has remained static since 2007 and is the lowest employment rate of any minority group in the UK. Educational outcomes are poor: we’re around half as likely to graduate with five GCSE passes, and somewhere between two and four times less likely to progress to higher education. We have an average life span of 36.
When I got my diagnosis, part of me wanted to give up on myself. I would die young in obscurity.
That feeling only grew the older I got, such as when I realised that I was bi at 14 and when I got sick with chronic pain at 16. As a result, my secondary school attendance was consistently below 80%, twice the number of absences needed to be classed as a persistent absentee by the UK government.
All these other parts of me negatively affect employment, educational outcomes and lifespan too. The mountain already in front of me turned out to be the start of a full mountain range.
Despite all of this, another part of me wanted to take on that challenge — I’m a sucker for punishment. I would live long and become Somebody™. Greater than every white, straight, typically developing person out there. I would show everyone that someone like me could do it all too.
The results of that work have been borne out in numbers and achievements. I got 12 top grades at GCSE. When I was 17, I was named the Young Volunteer of the Year for my borough, which is the most densely populated area in the UK. I got 4 A*s at A-Level. I got into Oxford University for Chemistry. I’ve spoken at national conferences and had my work featured in national publications.
From an outsider’s point of view, I look like a traditional success story, someone who’s set for life. Just like the stereotype of the overachieving Asian student.
It sounds healthy to frame my success as accepting a challenge, and my achievements are definitely positive! However, working that hard was also my way of paying penance for my inability to live a normal life.
If I work hard enough and become successful enough, that will absolve my sins. That’s the only way someone like me can ever earn the right to exist in this world.
I can’t attend family gatherings like a normal person, or eat in restaurants without wearing noise-cancelling headphones, or wear shirts with the tag in. I can’t promise I’ll enter an opposite-sex partnership and have children.
I can’t do anything other than hurt and disappoint the people I care about. If this is all I am, the world would be better off without someone like me.
So I have to work. Always.
Though I despise the word ‘never’, I would never say that to anyone else. I don’t think anyone else’s worth depends on their contribution to society, not least one this warped. And yet, that’s what I told myself, day in, day out.
That’s how I managed to continue working myself relentlessly. On the many days that followed sleepless nights. On the days where I couldn’t string together a coherent sentence. Even on the days where I’d be so stressed that simply brushing my teeth before breakfast would make me throw up nothing. Especially on those days.
For better and for worse, that compulsive train of thought is the only reason I’ve gotten to where I am today. Yet it came at a steep personal cost: what remained of my already shoddy physical and mental health.
“You have a problem.”
“I know. And yet I can’t stop.”
I’ve had this exact interaction countless times. My second line used to be “I’ll change it.” I don’t say it any longer — it would be a bald-faced lie. At the very least, I refuse to become a liar.
Even if I hadn’t been born Autistic and LGBTQ+, I would always have been born Chinese by blood. Even growing up in ethnically diverse London in the 2000s and 2010s, I felt the strain of being in the minority many times. The concepts of the B-sian and High Expectations Asian Father exist for a reason.
Beyond my exact characteristics, the workaholic is such a common story, I think particularly for my generation. How else do you stand out from the crowd, especially when over half of your peers are university students? A Bachelor’s degree is now the norm, so there’s barely anything for those without. Even for those with a degree, you need a dossier of unpaid internships (AKA: dressed-up volunteering) in order to stand a chance of success.
I hate it, and yet I play into that system. Because if I don’t, I will fall behind. And when people fall behind, sometimes they don’t ever catch back up.
That’s my greatest fear: to fall down and never get back up again. So even if I work myself into an early grave, I’m not sure that someone like me gets the luxury of getting to slow down. I’m not sure anyone my age except for the privileged few does.
