I Am Not Broken. I Am Different and That’s Okay.
I had to learn to accept myself, before I could learn to love myself
“You’re so kind Tasha, I’m really lucky to have you.”
How many times did a shy smile appear on my lips at those words? More than I can count.
“You always make me feel better.”
“Thanks for listening. I really needed to get that off my chest.”
“You really understand me, you know?”
I did know. Because I understood.
Rejection. Abandonment. Bullying. Self-hatred. Self-harm. Suicide. Depression. Loneliness.
I knew those things intimately. When people told me about them, I never flinched or looked away. I opened my arms wide and welcomed them like an old friend. I listened. I soothed the hurt. I comforted their wounded souls.
For a brief shining moment, I’d done something right. I felt appreciated. I felt like I was worth something.
I had plenty of classmates whose mother and father were divorced. I didn’t know a single one, though, who had a father who had just one day left and never came back. If there was one, they never spoke about it. I certainly didn’t.
For a child who’s been left behind, there are no words that can truly erase that hurt, no explanation that can justify why they were abandoned. But they’ll try to find one anyway.
“I understand that you divorced, but why did Dad leave?”
“Didn’t he want me? Is that why?”
“…Was it my fault? Is there something wrong with me?”
And then as it turned out, there was something wrong with me.
I was six years old when I was diagnosed with autism, and that discovery would in time destroy my already fragile self-esteem.
I always thought of my autism as something akin to my zodiac sign. I knew I was, but it wasn’t really important. Until it was.
Except for the knowledge always lurking in the back of my mind that someone who was supposed to be there wasn’t, I grew up fairly happy in a close-knit group, innocent and ignorant of the implications of the label that had been put on me. Then I enrolled in a new school at age twelve and was introduced to these strange, alien beings that were supposed to be my peers. Such strange creatures, who talked about things I didn’t understand the meaning or importance of, were so unbearably noisy and constantly invaded my personal space.
I sought sanctuary in the school library to calm my frazzled nerves and there I met three girls from a different class. The smaller group made it easier to talk, rather than the almost two dozen in my class, and something that felt like a promise of friendship started to grow. Then a few weeks in, they showed me their class photo on the wall where years and years of class photos were displayed and asked where mine was.
Oh, I didn’t have one, I’d just enrolled. I used to go to a different school, for kids with special needs. Yeah, you see, I have autism.
The girls exchanged a look. Said they had to go to class. They didn’t come to the library again. When I greeted them in the hallways, they’d look away and quickly leave. They never spoke to me again.
It was from then that my identity, my sense of self-worth, my entire life really began to spiral.
I understood that my autism was somehow the root of my problems. Why I didn’t know how to communicate with my peers. Why I was consistently singled out by bullies, who labeled me “weird”, “freak” and “psycho” along with other charming nicknames. Why those girls suddenly decided I wasn’t worth their time.
I picked up the books, trying to understand just what exactly this thing was and maybe seek some advice on how to manage it. I found no advice, but I found a long list of all the things that were wrong with me.
When I put the books down, I understood that I was born broken and couldn’t be fixed, only managed with medication. Society didn’t expect me to be able to get a full education or a job. I couldn’t even be trusted to understand my own emotions. “So,” I asked myself. “If I can’t feel like a normal person, does that mean I can’t love properly either?”
And somewhere deep down, the four-year-old in me wondered. “Is this why my Dad didn’t want me?”
When you never fit in anywhere, you become desperate to feel you belong. When you don’t love yourself, you’ll do just about anything to feel loved.
There were times in my school years I wondered if I’d lose my voice from using it so little. No one seemed inclined to speak up about my bullies. So my days were grueling and lonely. And my self-worth steadily crumbled from dust…to nothing.
Outside of school, I started seeking out company in some seriously unhealthy places. First kids my age from gangs or similar circles. Then through them, I met older people — people who’d been in prison, who took and sold drugs, who’d been kicked out from home, been raped, tried to commit suicide. Messed up people from messed up backgrounds. They were depressed, they were violent and they were toxic.
I was their kind girl, their shoulder who listened, their rock when they were struggling. At those times, they appreciated me, they hugged me, they loved me, told me how great I was.
And I craved it like a drug.
So much, that I kept coming back. Even when I was hurt. When I was insulted and degraded. When I was handed a knife because “we were going to a dangerous place”. When I was repeatedly coerced into sex. When attempted rape became, “Oh chill, it was just a joke”.
I got hurt and betrayed and manipulated again and again. I felt used, small, worthless. And still I came back. Just to feel appreciated one more time. Just to have a place where I could pretend I fit in.
It didn’t matter how many times I was told I was okay. It had to come from me, before I could believe it.
A few years and many, many bad decisions later, I sat in front of a therapist for the first time.
“Why are you here?” she asked me a few minutes into our session.
“I tried to kill myself. The therapist at the hospital said I had severe depression.”
She went quiet for a moment at that. I wonder now if I caught her off-guard, or if she was just considering how to approach me. I didn’t think much of it then. I didn’t think much of anything anymore.
The past few years I had spent in utter loneliness, hiding behind a mask that I knew was a poor imitation of “normal”. I’d lost or cut off contact with everyone I knew. I’d given and given of myself, to the point that I had nothing left to give. So I just stopped. Stopped reaching out. Stopped trying. Stopped risking letting anyone in, because I just couldn’t do it again.
Then she asked me where I wanted to go in our therapy. I hesitated and then settled on; “I want to feel better.”
Thank God most therapists have the training and sense to not directly ask how I got to that point. I wouldn’t have been able to give her an honest answer then. Almost a decade later, when my grandmother asked me, I actually knew why.
“Probably because I met my Dad.”
Two years earlier, I had reestablished contact with my Dad and finally got some answers. He hadn’t left because I was unwanted, but out of the belief, coming from a misguided and very damaged young man, that I would be better off without him. It was a long and complicated story, involving his own messed up childhood and trauma beyond anything I’d experienced. Still, no matter the explanation I was innocent and had been wronged deeply. I had every right to spit in his face and leave. Except…
Except it’s hard to hate someone who truly, deeply loves you. Except he was just like me and completely understood my autistic traits. Except that he wholeheartedly accepted me.
The feeling was intoxicating and satisfying on a far deeper level than all my toxic relationships had ever managed.
In some ways it was positive, in others it wasn’t. He lived in another country so I only saw him two or three times a year for a week or two. For a week, I could lower my guard, put away my mask, I was accepted, I could breathe. And then I had to go back home to the same old life and it was suffocating, because now I knew what it was to breathe freely.
I was still depending on others to feel loved and accepted, and that’s neither healthy nor sustainable. Something had to give and in the end it did.
Eight years after that first therapy session, I can finally say what I really wanted and what I needed to make that happen.
I wanted to be able to make a real smile.
I wanted to feel at ease in my own skin.
I wanted to feel happy just to be alive.
I wanted to stop hating myself.
And to reach that point, I had to stop relying on others to feel worthy and loved. I had to learn to believe in my own worth, I had to learn to love myself and it started with accepting who and what I was.
I am not normal. I will never be. I’ll never be able to communicate in the same way as most others will. I will never be at ease in crowded places and touching will always be a challenge. I will always be a bit odd.
And that’s okay.
Because I am also quirky and straightforward and loyal and honest. Those are not bad traits and there are plenty of people in the world who can appreciate that. But even if I don’t meet people like that, even if people scoff and turn away because they can’t deal with “different”, that’s still okay.
Because today, I like myself. I am not broken. I am not worth less than anyone else because I think differently. I am me and I am okay just the way I am.
