I had hardly any friends when I was growing up.
When I say friend, I do not mean people who were friendly to me or who I chatted with once in a while. I mean the dictionary definition of the word: one attached to another by affection or esteem.
There was Michael, who was my neighbour and I went to school with him for Kindergarten through Grade 2. No one I remember in Grade 3. Shane in Grade 4, but then he moved to another city. No one really in Grade 5. Andrew in Grade 6. Another Shane in Grades 7 and 8. Art and Les in Grades 9 and 10. Mark in Grade 11.
I remember once time Art told some other people we knew that he and I were best friends. That may have been the case for him, but for me, I had no best friends. I did not have enough friends to qualify for a best friend.
Although in my final year of high school, Mark introduced me to Spencer, Whitney, and Sean, so for a while, I had 4 friends.
But these were not ongoing friendships.
You see, I moved around quite a bit when I was growing up. After I entered Kindergarten, my family and I moved around several, and I ended up attending 6 schools in Regina, and my final two years of high school in my 7th school, which was in Abbotsford.
And every time I moved, I lost my friends. While it might look like I had quite a few friends in that list above, I was not friends with them all at the same time.
For example, when I left the Uplands neighbourhood of Regina after Grade 2, I never hung out with Michael again. When my parents moved us two months into the school year of Grade 7, I rarely chatted with Andrew again.
I had a few friends at church, but our moving around every other year had the same effect on those friendships. There was Scott, Robert, Bob, and Mike. Everyone else was a peer, but not anyone I would call a friend. Except maybe Don; he might have been a friend, but he stopped going to church as a teenager and since we never went to the same school, we kind of stopped hanging out.
Until quite recently, I always assumed it was because our family moved around so much, leaving me often being the new kid in my class.
However, when I started exploring having autism, I realized that I still do not have any friends.
We have lived in our current house for nearly 20 years, so it certainly is not because I am still moving too frequently.
Outside of my spouse, who I consider a friend in every sense of the word, there is no one I hang out with, no one I chat with, no one I tell secrets to, no one who offers me support, and no one I do those things for.
You see, something common among people with autism is a different approach to socializing.
Some of us do not crave social interaction, desiring to hang out with people—particularly the same people—all the time. And I am one of them.
There is no impulse inside of me, driving me to socialize outside of my family. We rarely get invited to socialize with other people, and we usually accept the invitation when it does happen, but I am also fine when it does not happen.
If there is a church social, I attend it, but I typically just sit at our table and will just interact with people who come to our table and initiate conversations.
I am the president of a queer charity here in Lethbridge, and we host some social programmes, but I often do the same thing, interacting only as needed. Although, it is a bit different, since I feel an obligation, as the president, to welcome people out and initiate the start of the events.
I am self-employed. I have no desire to get a job that would require me coming into an office and interacting with coworkers.
Honestly, I would be content just staying at home most of the time. I had no social issues during the first year or two of the pandemic, when the public health protections were in place, and the usual social situations were off limits.
I did not go stir crazy. I did not long for social connection. I actually kind of miss Zoom meetings even.
Usually when I tell people that I have no friends, they respond one of two ways, feeling sorry for me or telling me, “Well, I am your friend”.
On the first point, I am not telling you, the reader, all of this because I am complaining or wishing for something. I am just explaining the situation.
Regarding people telling me they are my friend, nearly every time, they are people I have never met in real life and certainly are people who do not regularly chat with me to see how I am doing or invite me to hang out.
But that is all fine. I am not one for hanging out more than once in a while anyhow.
