I Am a Terrible Friend
And I still haven’t decided exactly how I should feel about that.
You know they say you should put on your own oxygen mask first before assisting somebody else? It’s a metaphor that’s not limited to airplanes, and easily a part of our everyday vernacular.
Take care of yourself. Nobody else is going to do it for you. Fill your cup first, that’s what they mean.
But what if you’re constantly struggling with your own oxygen mask? Or fumbling to simply fill your own damn cup? What if you’re already doing everything you can just to stay afloat?
Maybe you finally do get your mask on, and then you secure your kid’s. Or, you know, whomever you’re directly responsible for. And maybe that takes up all of your time. Or perhaps that’s precisely when all hell breaks loose.
I wonder a lot about all of this, and I wonder if all people on the spectrum struggle with securing their oxygen masks as much as I do.
For most of my life, I have struggled with friendship. Making friends at school or work wasn’t typically the challenge, but maintaining those friendships was another story.
I was raised in a dysfunctional single parent home where we didn’t bring friends home from school because we lived in apartments on the “wrong” side…
