An Autistic Social Butterfly’s Guide to Making Friends

Interpersonal skills for a proudly disabled life.

Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

For most of my life, I was a very withdrawn and “antisocial”-seeming person. In adolescence I perfected a scowling, sarcastic persona to protect me from seeming too childish and sensitive. I withdrew from other people as a reflex, to hide the fact I didn’t know how to initiate social…