There are many things in life that are supposed to come naturally to most people, and socializing is definitely one of them. Some aspects of socializing, such as maintaining eye contact with the person you’re talking to, listening to what the person you’re talking to is saying, and even doing something as simple as making friends, are supposed to be intuitive skills that the vast majority of humans are born knowing how to do. However, I am not most people—socializing and the skill set that came along with doing so never came so naturally to me. Throughout my life, following social norms that were seemingly easy to pick up on for most people were a challenge for myself. When I was two years old, I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, which accounts for why I had such a difficult time picking up on supposedly easy, intuitive social cues. At the time of my diagnosis, it was unclear which end of the spectrum I fell upon, so doctors told my family the worst possible outcome: I might never be able to go to normal schools or be able to live on my own. Luckily, because my family is amazing and got me all of the services I needed, my daily functioning and intelligence weren’t inhibited or stunted developmentally. However, socially, it was a completely different story.

Initially, ASD greatly inhibited me socially. Part of having ASD includes a lack of interest in creating relationships with one’s peers, and that definitely manifested within me. As a young girl, I seemed to care more about playing with stuffed animals than going on playdates with actual human beings in my age group. Also, because I lacked this initial interest in making friends, I had no idea how to go about forming a friendship with my peers in the first place.

I didn’t have the practice that most kids my age were having with socializing. Other kids my age were going on playdates, going to each other’s birthday parties, and beginning to form the foundation for close relationships with their peers. I wasn’t doing any of those things because I simply didn’t want to just yet. However, there came a point where I did eventually show interest in making friends, but I had no practice creating a friendship, so my initial attempts at creating friendships often ended up with me embarrassed myself. For instance, I would go up to people I wanted to create friendships with by yelling out random words instead of just starting out the conversation with a simple “Hello.” My lack of understanding and demonstration of social cues drove my peers away from me, causing me to have trouble obtaining more than one or two friends for years.

By the time I hit middle school, I began to develop a strong interest in creating friendships with my peers. However, my social skills were not nearly as strong as my desire to make friends. This mismatch of what I wanted and what I was actually capable of doing made it really difficult for me to create friendships, despite my desire to have them. Because I was clueless, I would often stare at the kids in my lunch period I wanted to be friends with. The “cool cats,” sixth grade me would call them. Yes, my sixth grade self really believed that staring down my peers at their lunch table on a daily basis would get them to notice me in a positive light. Yes, I believed that this was the master plan on how to become a part of the middle school “in-crowd.” And, spoiler alert, this master plan I had to be one of the cool cats was actually a disaster, but I didn’t know any better.

These kids that I desperately wanted to be friends with saw me stare at them and proceeded to come up to my lunch table, party of one. Instead of cursing at me, insulting me, or just blatantly asking me why I was staring at them, they did something even worse: they pretended to be my friend as a joke. They knew how desperately I wanted to be a part of their friend group by my piercing stares. They also knew I wasn’t all the way there and I wouldn’t recognize that they were making fun of me, so they decided they would interact with me out of pure humor. They would all message me on AIM and put me into group chats with them, where they’d make fun of all of the weird things I’d say online. They would ask me who I had a crush on and would repeat it to the entire grade, and the entire grade would proceed to laugh about it and at me. They would comment on the statuses I would make on my FaceBook and the photos I’d upload onto social media with smiley faces and hearts. They would say hi to me in the hallways loudly and laugh afterwards. They would even go as far as to invite me to sit with them at lunch occasionally to laugh at me.

And the worst of it all? I had no idea they were making fun of me for the longest time. I thought these people were actually being nice to me. I really didn’t know any better. It took me a while to catch on to what they were doing, and when I did, I was devastated. For years afterwards, I believed that everyone that approached me in a friendly manner was doing it as a joke. These people took advantage of me, a socially disabled girl who clearly didn’t know any better, so that they had something to laugh at, along with the majority of my grade. And it did irreparable damage to my confidence in my social skills and in myself.

While the “cool cats” pretended to be my friend for their own sick humor, the rest of the grade would outwardly bully me. I was called worthless, I had milk poured in my hair at lunch, I was slapped, I was even told to kill myself. These are things I had to deal with every single day of middle school for years. While the outward bullying was more hurtful momentarily, the sick humor of the “cool cats” is what really impacted me psychologically. It became a challenge for me to distinguish whether someone genuinely wanted to be my friend or that said person was just interacting with me as a joke. As a result, I avoided people as a whole for a while and accepted my seemingly destined fate as a weirdo with no friends. However, once I reached eighth grade, I began to desire friendships once again and people began to notice. As a result, one of the “cool cats” decided to turn my friendship conquest into a joke by writing on my Facebook wall, “Heyyyy Miriam!!! How was your summer?! Mine was pretty swell!!!!!” I knew that it was a joke, but I still responded nicely anyways. However, for the first time, someone from my grade stood up for me. This undisclosed source saw the post and found it disgusting, so he commented on the wall post and told the bully to leave me alone. He then proceeded to chat me on Facebook that the person who wrote on my wall was not actually wondering how my summer was going, he was purely making fun of me and it was disgusting. While I knew this, I was glad that this brave soul had finally stood up for me and found what the cool cats were doing to be disgusting instead of being part of the sea of people that found their antics to be funny. This brave soul came to be my first real friend.

My first real friend was amazing. He taught me how to socialize with other people our age. He helped me learn social norms that I wouldn’t pick up on otherwise. He would remind me to make eye contact because he knew I had trouble with it. By the end of eighth grade, he even went as far as to force his whole friend group to interact with me. While it was awkward at first, for I knew they didn’t want me there and they all avoided talking to me until he forced them to, I couldn’t be more thankful. He gave me a social skill set that I’ll never forget and still use to this very day, a temporary group of friends that I always wanted and could practice my social skills with, and most importantly, he taught me how to love myself and be confident in who I am as a person.

Now here I am, many years after all of the bullying has taken place, it is important to note that growing up with a social disability in a time period when both cyberbullying and outward bullying were prevalent was horrible. What was even worse was that I dealt with being bullied at the worst time possible: I dealt with most of it in middle school, the place and time in which all human beings peaked in their nastiness. My own knowledge of my social disability combined with the intense bullying I’ve endured for years had devastating impacts on me: I had virtually no self-esteem for years, I lacked self confidence in every way possible, and the worst feeling of it all? I didn’t even feel human. I felt like I was less of a person because of the way I was treated and because of my disability. However, over time, I began not to feel this way anymore. I began to see my disability and my horrible social experiences as lessons I learned from and challenges that I overcame. My disability and the experiences attached to it have made me the person I am today.

"How am I doing now?", is probably the question many of you are probably wondering. I am proud to announce that I am doing fine. I no longer need services, I have an amazing support system consisting of my best friends and my family, I go to a great four year school, I don’t have nearly as much trouble making friendships as I did in my past, and most importantly, I am capable of doing everything that doctors, neurologists, and everyone who bullied me doubted I could ever do. Living with a social disability isn’t easy by any means: I still have to remind myself to follow social norms rather than have them come intuitively to me, and it’s very easy for me to come off as ditzy or spacy to people I am meeting for the first time. However, living with a social disability has also taught me many great things. I learned that I have come a long way from where I began and to remind myself of that every day when I feel insecure. I learned to love myself. I learned to believe in myself. I learned how to be my own best friend. Most importantly, I learned that I should stand up for the socially disabled who want to make friends but get bullied instead, for that person used to be and is always a part of who I am.