My Experience With Making Friends as Someone on the Autism Spectrum

When I was in school, I was never the type of person to socialize during class. I never really had a solid group of people I hung out with at lunch. It was different depending on the day. I knew people in every grade, so I just hung out with whoever knew me and they seemed to be all right with that. I never felt a connection with the people in my grade because I found them to be judgmental, especially the classmates I didn’t grow up with.

I never had a close connection with the people I met on the first day of school. It seemed like they were in it just to make high school the best years of their lives and they didn’t care who they were friends with to make that happen. There were people I would hang out with outside of school. They would become my BFF for a few months, get bored and move on. Then we just became someone we pass in the hallway, not acknowledging why we stopped hanging out. It would be something we never talked about, a nonverbal agreement to never bring it up.

When it comes to going to places where there’s lots of people, I sit in the corner and observe what’s going on around me. I’ve always been shy and quiet. I never know what to say when it comes to people I don’t know. I’ve always wanted people to come up to me and start a conversation. If people were interested in getting to know me, I felt like they would make the first move and approach me. A lot of the time, I won’t go somewhere if I don’t know anybody or if I know there is someone going that I don’t like being around. I’ll try to avoid them and not make eye contact, which in my case, not making eye contact is pretty easy.

Going up to someone in public and saying “hi,” especially in a public place, is never easy. If I don’t know you then I won’t talk to you. I know going up to people is a way to make friends, but I have a thing when it comes to doing it. I have this feeling that they don’t want to spark up a conversation with me because they sense there’s something “off” about me and they don’t want to be associated with that. I won’t get over it, step out of my comfort zone and make friends, but interacting is hard. I hate not knowing what a person is feeling or thinking. I want to be able to read people’s emotions and expressions, but everything looks the same to me.

We all meet and lose friends. It happens to everyone. If we kept the friends we met in kindergarten, I don’t think we would grow as individuals. We have to find who we are without the influence of others. Some of us may go down the wrong path, get into trouble with the law, find drugs, develop a criminal record. Other people would want to change that about themselves because they grew up in a house with that kind of atmosphere and they don’t want to end up just like the people they know. They want to make the world a better place. We need to meet people who bring us up and not kick us when we’re down. We don’t need that kind of negativity in our life.

I try to be a good friend. I try to be nice to the people around me. Being nice can go a long way and I don’t want to be known as someone who gives off bad vibes. I want to bring positivity and not make someone feel like they’re alone in the world. I want to think good thoughts and hope they get passed on.