IF I HAD MY TIME AGAIN.

27 years ago today, the weather was like it is today, overcast with rain patches. It was also a night where I did something I wouldn’t do again, if I had the support network I do now. You see, I was 18, socially isolated and a girl I liked at university was having a party. The thing that I, as an autistic, say is, you don’t invite someone to your birthday party if you have no intention of following through. And that was what she did. She said she was having a party a week later than she planned, to accommodate another friend of hers who was going to be away during the winter break from university, which was all a lie; she then organised a small party and didn’t invite that friend, and I was really only invited as an after thought.

If we were able to rewind, I would have told her to shove her party and the “friendship”. The reason being, if I had have been able to start university as an 18 year old who, first of all, entered the university of their choice, I would have hopefully had several things. Namely, my tribe. If I’d been able to, for example, meet up with my fellow autistics every Wednesday afternoon, and we just sat around and talked about our special interests. And if there had actually been groups that represented our special interests, it would have been even better. See, my first university had a business focus but had an Arts Faculty. And most of the students who did Japanese were business students. We had a few Education students and a few Arts students who did it, but numbers were so small that the University decided to close the Japanese classes on one campus and merge the classes onto another campus.

See, having been abused by my fellow students for so many years, I felt that I belonged elsewhere, but little did I realise that some people only wanted to mix with their kind. I wanted to be accepted by the Japanese as a European Japanese, but now I realise that that would not happen, no matter how well I spoke the language, no matter how well I wanted to immerse myself in the culture, I would always be an outsider. Being autistic, one of the things that I like about Japanese culture is that you know how to speak to particular people in society according to their status to you. Although Japanese is not a gendered language, like say, German or French, there are expressions that are gendered, with female language being more polite.

Yes, I now know that that girl was the wrong girl and that if you want a full-on relationship with someone and they only want a casual friendship, well, a casual friendship is all you’re going to get, take it or leave it.

Now, however, I have my tribe and I have a place where I belong. My people have a planet not a country.