A short history of friendship..

.. as a PDAer.

Which is to say, lengthy periods with no friends, or very few friends.

Primary school was a no friend time, except for abusive friends. I nearly made one friend near the end, but trauma caused by the abusive friends caused me to push her away self-protectively. I made a friend who attended my school via dance classes, so she was more a dance friend – she was several years below me, in classic early Autistic childhood friendship.

Outside of that, I was ostracised and bullied by the entire school of 70 kids (I grew up in a very small village). It was awful, and there’s not much more to be said about that.

In secondary school, the kids who lived in the town were much more bearable. I made friendships of varying closeness – though none were truly close. I didn’t really see any of them outside of school, except for one. I had people to spend time with in breaks, sit with in class, and that was the extent of most of my highschool friendships.

College is where friendship started really working for me. A girl approached me at the french taster session for upcoming sixth formers, and then when college started, I talked to her again. I dared to ask if I could come join her group of friends, she agreed and I suddenly had a group of friends! That made college a really fun place to be, with several of us dealing with mental health neurodivergences (and I suspect neurodevelopmental differences as well).

Unfortunately, I lost all of that group of friends over the course of two separate break ups, that ended up being acrimonious. Trauma, poor mental health, poor childhood modelling of relationships played into that.

At uni I was back to having very few, not very close friendships for the entire time. Making friends in a massive but impersonal university was impossible for Autistic me. I might have been able to make proper friends from the LGBT society, but never quite managed to. Networking is not a skill that comes naturally to me.

After uni I had another brief period of no friends. At the end of that period I had housemates for company – but they were not friends. Friends would have called an ambulance for me when I was manic.

Now I have a very small handful of friends, mainly at my supported housing scheme. I’m very selective about how gets to become and remain a friend, even if it means having fewer or no friends. I deserve friendships that truly meet my needs, and aren’t abusive – and some friendships have ended recently because of this.