On the 2023 album So much for stardust, Fall Out Boy sings about many different themes. One the song Flu Game they sing about performing and being in the spotlight while going through things. According to people who did more research than me, a lot of the song is paying tribute to a Michael Jordan basketball game where he performed really well despite being sick. What I want to do today though, is take one line from this song completely out of its original context and apply it to my own life experiences.
All this effort, to make it look effortless.
Yesterday – as of writing this – I was playing some Black Desert Online, the MMO that I haven’t been able to fully escape from since 2016. It’s consumed almost a decade of my life now, but I still end up finding some solace in the monotonous repetition of grinding out some levels in different lifeskilling activities (stuff like hunting, gathering, alchemy and bartering on the seas). I’ve done so in two guilds. I had my own guild for many years, after replacing the previous leader that got bored with the game within a handful of months, and then when I returned to the game after taking an extended break, I joined my current guild, one that focuses specifically on that lifeskilling content and is quite good at it. I digress. We have a relatively new member that I got into a discussion with. I am relatively open about being on the autism spectrum and I will sometimes bring it up jokingly. Might not be everyone’s type of humor, but it helps me cope at times, and I think it’s nice when people are aware that I’m putting in effort to be who I am.
All this effort, to make it look effortless.
One of the people in the guild then proclaimed that I can’t be autistic. I’m able to make normal sentences and I don’t seem to be low intelligence or anything like that, so it is kind of unfair that I am claiming to have autism when people are really suffering from it. This intrigued me. It’s a pretty offensive thing to say, but it also implies that it’s coming from good intentions. It’s a very whiteknight-uniformed kind of stance though. We can’t judge what others are going through after all, and it’s not like this person I’ve only spoken with a handful of times in a text chat can really know what I’m like in my day to day life. But it did point at something I’ve had to deal with for much of my life.
I’ve talked about it before, but there are opportunities you lose out on if you try your best, when you deal with problems like mine. I’ve had to approach government institutions for financial support in the past and each and every time I tried my best to politely explain my problems. But I can form a coherent sentence. I’ve spent a very long time in therapy to be able to appear as “normal” as I am. And this results in the people evaluating you very quickly overestimating you. Sure, I can pretend to function for a couple of hours, but then I end up exhausted and in bed. But that’s good enough, right? As long as we’re functioning members of society and we partake in the profit machine that is work, then does it really matter that we slowly work ourselves into depression? It’s the participating in society that’s vital, not the health of the people doing so.
And this same lack of understanding for the situation of many different people – this is not limited to autism or mental health in general – is visible in all corners of society. I often have people “compliment” me in my daily life. How well I’m doing and how they can’t see I have autism at all. Thank you for the nice words, I’m working myself into an early grave in an attempt to please the world around me. I’m exaggerating, I’ve learned to respect my own boundaries, but I am still putting in a lot of hard work to hide the more abrasive parts of my personality for the sake of the people around me. And to then have someone say that I “can’t be autistic because I seem so normal” really gets to me. It’s one of those things that I shouldn’t let bother me, but it does. (I have no idea if that’s a correct sentence but we’re going with it). I put in so much effort, to make it look effortless. There’s a reason why that line – despite having a different context – rings through my head so regularly. Masking is exhausting, and I try to do it less and less as I get older. Sometimes that means the real me shines through and although I think the real me can be quite fun at times, the real me can also be a total asshole. We’ve got to acknowledge our own flaws, after all.
All this effort, to make it look effortless.
To get back on topic, it was really difficult to get it into this guy’s head that I can still be on the autism spectrum even if I appear very normal to him. Some part of him really didn’t want to accept it and was almost hostile towards me for claiming stolen valor. Can you imagine someone in a wheelchair having to defend themselves against someone else going “I can see that your legs are attached so why aren’t you just walking with them, this is really offensive to Lieutenant Dan who ain’t got no legs.” Shout-out to Forrest Gump, one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s beyond insulting to the person in the wheelchair. And something that probably doesn’t really happen in real life, but you never know, there’s some incredibly dumb and insensitive people out there. It does get exhausting to have to basically explain to other people that “no, I don’t function properly, I kind of suck, but I make it look like that’s not the case.” That’s kind of derogatory, but it’s almost a defense mechanism to avoid being overestimated. That’s the core of it all.
All this effort, to make it look effortless.
I think by the end of our conversation, the guy believed I was on the autism spectrum, but was still not fully on board with it. I ended up just letting it go because it takes a lot of energy to have discussions like that, even if the other person seems to be well-meaning. It’s also why I am very quick to tell people that life gets me exhausted. I had a talk with my boss about this subject a couple of weeks ago. He told me I was looking a lot more at home at my work compared to a year or so earlier. And he’s right, of course, I’ve been slowly getting more and more used to life as a teacher and it’s been giving me a nice little confidence boost here and there. But I did make sure to explain that the flipside of that was that I spend many an afternoon in bed because the exhaustion of the day or week catches up to me. That part is always hard for people to understand. It’s not normal for a 33 year old man in – admittedly underwhelming – normal shape to be tired every day, considering I don’t even work four out of seven days. And that fact that these naps are a requirement for me confuses people because they can’t see it in my behavior at all.
All this effort, to make it look effortless.
It’s an interesting thought for you, dear reader, to have some compassion for those around you. You might not know what they’re going through, so avoid being harsh on others. I still need to learn that same lesson myself sometimes, but I try my best. As always, thanks for reading. I got a little bit more vulnerable here than I usually get, but I hope it makes for some interesting reading.
Opal Kaharis 