UNBROKEN - Book Two, Essays

Friendship- By Jennifer Lee Rossman

Jennifer Lee Rossman is an autistic and disabled writer and editor who
can best be described as "If Dr. Temperance Brennan from Bones was a
Disney Princess." She co-edited Love & Bubbles, a queer anthology of
underwater romance, and her debut novel, Jack Jetstark's Intergalactic
Freakshow, was published by World Weaver Press in 2018. She blogs at
jenniferleerossman.blogspot.com and tweets @JenLRossman

When I was little, "friendship" was just a shorter way to say "my dad works with someone who has a daughter my age and thinks we need to hang out for some reason."

While I never completely understood their logic -- I was perfectly content to play by myself -- I liked having friends. Kind of.

Most games weren't designed for homeschooled, only-children. No matter how much I tried to pretend I didn't know what cards my Beanie Babies were about to play, there were never any surprises. So, having other kids to play with was definitely more fun. And all the characters on my favorite shows had friends, so it seemed like the thing to do, even if I couldn't wrap my head around why anyone would find talking on the phone and having slumber parties enjoyable.

(Clarissa explained a lot of things to me, but not why I needed friends.)

But I tried. I even had a best friend. For the first ten years of my life, she was also my only friend, but it was the 90s and all preteen girls were required to have a BFF, and required to wear one half of a jewelry set proclaiming the union. I think Congress has since repealed that law.

My friendship with my BFF never officially ended, even if she did manage to keep losing our BFF jewelry and I once caught her wearing half of another girl's yin yang friendship ring. (I'm not mad, because I actually met her secret BFF and she was soooo much cooler than me.) We just drifted apart, like all of my friends.

I don't think any of them missed me, because I don't think any of them liked me. They mostly tolerated me because I had cool toys and a Playstation.

Looking back, I was... difficult, to say the least. Of course, I thought it was their fault for playing wrong.

I don't know how many playdates ended in me crying about something that seemed perfectly reasonable to me but unfathomably petty and weird to everyone else. "She brushed my doll's hair!" I'd say between sobs, or "She shuffled the cards wrong and they got bent in the middle!"

Or even, horror of horrors, "She pushed too hard when she was coloring and now my forest green crayon is flat!"

Not an exaggeration, I somehow managed to make the same box of 64 Crayolas last my entire childhood without ever sharpening them. I hated change that much.

"If you keep acting like this, no one will want to play with you," my parents warned. I was so confused. I couldn't stop feeling the way I felt, so in order to have friends, I would have to be miserable?

That was unacceptable. So, no friends for me.

Fast forward a few years. I was an incredibly awkward adult with zero friends who had not even once considered the idea that most adult friendships do not revolve around coloring and playing with dolls. It never occurred to me that my reluctance to share my crayons would have absolutely no bearing on whether another adult would like me or not.

I was also a writer, just getting serious about publishing. When I got my first acceptance, I joined Twitter.

I had no particular desire to be on social media. It actually sounded pretty terrible, but, like having a BFF in the 90s, it was just the thing to do. You have a story published, you go on the Tweety and promote it.

I expected it to be awful. After all, I suck at being social. Why should that be different just because it's online? But it IS different.

For one thing, there's a buffer. I don't have to reply right away with the first thing that pops into my head. I can stop and think and edit before I hit send. I can even turn it off for the night and reply in the morning.

That little convenience, being able to choose when and how often I communicate, opened the door into the world of being social.

I have friends. Real friends who like me, whose parents don't work with my dad!

And because we're grownups, we talk about serious adult things like taxes and the fiber content of breakfast cereal. Okay, that's a lie, we mostly talk about Doctor Who and share cat pictures. But we care about each other. If someone is having a bad day, we send funny gifs.

In real life, I am a closed book. I'm one of those Password Journals they used to advertise on Nickelodeon that would only open for your voice, because a lifetime of being autistic has made me erroneously believe that no one likes the real me. But with my online friends (and it still feels weird to use that word), I can be myself, because no one is going to judge me for how I sort my Froot Loops and that I still haven't sharpened my crayons.

People say I seem happier now. I never realized that I seemed miserable, but I am happier. Not just because I have friends -- I still don't feel the insatiable urge to connect that most people seem to have -- but because I have a space where I belong, where I can be myself, and friendship is a big part of that.