Divergence: An Open Letter to Neurotypicals

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I am different than you.
This doesn't bother me in the slightest, but it seems to cause you no end of discomfort. I do my best to act in a way that is not unsettling, but this is exhausting and nearly impossible when I can't even tell how you're reacting to me unless you tell me directly, which is sadly unlikely. I put an immense amount of time and energy into decoding the movements of your face that tell everyone but me what's going on. It's assumed that I understand as well and am simply choosing to be strange, when in fact I'm using every tool I have to not behave in a way that falls outside of your norms. It's unimaginable to you that I did not come equipped with this secret language encoded, while I can't imagine being able to just "know" these things-- how relaxing that must be. I live by a series of guesses on proper behavior, and since the punishment for deviation is swift and severe I've learned to guess pretty well.
There are some things I will never understand though. When something is important to me, if I don't share it with exactly the right emotional tone, which I can't even read, much less replicate, you will laugh. Even if I'm crying. I've been told this is due to discomfort, which doesn't explain anything to me. I'm uncomfortable all the time, especially when you start crying and I have no idea why. But I feel sad that you are sad, and I want to find a way to help. My discomfort does not lead me to laugh at or disregard your pain.
I will continue to study your ways, will continue to try to pass as one of you, as I need love and community as much as anyone else. But your cruelty baffles and scares me, it's always unexpected to me. I must befriend you as I would a wild animal in the woods, carefully satisfying the ravenous hunger for normalcy that you have, and staying far out of your reach when you become hungry and dangerous.

You make a lot of good points in this letter. I feel sad when other people are sad because of something I said or did, when I didn't mean any harm. Naked belligerence scares me, but it really hurts me when people are sad because of my differences.

That is a good letter you just wrote! I feel that autistics are stuck in a situation we can't really get out of. I wish there was a way to get out of the situation but so far in my journey I haven't found anything.

That's a very good letter that you've written and it brings forward a lot of things that us people on the spectrum experience. I feel that the general population needs to read this letter to see what we go through on a regular basis.