We Can't Always Be "Fine"

 The reaction from my psychiatrist when I told him the results of my ADOS: 

"Everyone's a little bit autistic. It doesn't really affect you. You got a PhD. You're fine."

Ah the joys of living in an Asian society!

Jokes aside, I have noticed that people desperately want to believe that I am "fine" - that I am cured of all ills, that I have somehow beat the odds, that I have somehow trained myself to be perfectly healthy and neurotypical. That would be convenient. Any kind of abnormality makes other people uncomfortable.

The truth...goes back to how we view education. We set definitions of what is an "A", "B", "C"...what "learning outcomes" are, what metrics to evaluate on. As long as students perform or demonstrate excellence, that's all that matters. Effort or distress doesn't matter - this is something mirrored in the rest of society.

What I'm realizing now is that performing at "A" level doesn't really mean much if the effort and distress involved is unsustainable. If anything, you end up disappointing people more when you can't repeat your performance. That's basically how it feels right now. I feel like I overcompensated trying to just get a "C" and now that I accidentally got some "As" and "Bs" that I can't go back to comfortably getting a "C" especially when I see how happy it makes other people.

I guess that's why I like skateboarding so much. I can be an "F" student and still be accepted. That's all I ever wanted in life. To be accepted regardless of my achievements. To make friends with people I could trust and respect even if they are penniless or deadbeat because they are good at heart and in action. Apparently those two things are hard for people to do regardless of their privilege.

Everything I've ever known about the world and how it works has been thrown into question. Things like visas, closed borders, etc. make it more complicated. Living in the USA, I never worried about these things. I never imagined the need to live abroad. Now, it's started to dictate a lot of my long term decisions.

2021 is supposedly here, but I suspect that it is waiting until Chinese New Year to really wake up.