Out of My Shell

The other day a friend of mine at the restaurant told me he thinks I’ve been coming out of my shell more and more since I’ve lived here.

It’s been a whole new experience for me, for sure. Life has caused me to build my shell out of bricks and cement. Life has taught me that I am different, and that my differentness makes others uncomfortable, and that I should try to hide it as much as I can. 

I’m not great at hiding my differentness. My differences are giant parts of who I am. If I cannot be me, my only choices are try to emulate some sort of character and do what they’d do, or just be quiet and try to exist as little as possible. 

I did have some friends before, but with many of them it felt like the friendship was mostly about me giving them something (money, rides, free child care) or about them feeling really good about themselves for being nice to an autistic person. 

Living here has taught me something different. It’s given me a world where everyone is different, and where people must accept my differences for what they are. My friends here don’t try to change me. They meet me where I am and try to bring the rest of the world closer to me.

Today was karaoke night at the restaurant. 

When I moved here about a year and a half ago, I would not have set foot in the restaurant if Patrick or someone else wasn’t with me. Patrick or my parents or someone else being with me made me feel like I had the right to go inside, but when I was alone I felt like I should not. I would sit outside the restaurant and observe the people when they came out to have smoke breaks. Even on karaoke nights, I would stay outside if Patrick wasn’t there.

Patrick wasn’t there tonight, and there have been plenty of karaoke nights where he wasn’t there. I’ve gone anyways most of those nights and sat by myself… and in other weekend nights too. Tonight Chuck came with me, but he was gone some of the time, and I was okay. I wasn’t nervous. I felt like I was at home. 

And… I did karaoke! I’ve done it three times now! This is something I’ve always sworn I would never do. 

Nobody there ever tried to force me to do karaoke, the way some friends in Chicago would physically pull me out to the dance floor and move me around, forcing me to dance because normal people dance. They just let me know the option was there, and they made it a safe place. I could do karaoke with another person, and we could wait until the end when there was barely any people. 

The first time I finally tried it was when my mom was here. I wanted to make her happy, and being able to have a “normal” experience like doing karaoke with her daughter would make her happy. So I did it, and it was okay. The next time, Christal asked if I’d sing a Beatles song with her, and one day I agreed to it. And then, today, this happened…