Chapter 2, Friendships and Accepting Who You Are. My name is JP. I always knew I was different. I always acted differently than everyone else around me. I never really fit in with cliques or groups of people. I was always just myself.

But by being myself, people thought I was weird, so I did my best to try to fit in and act like them. I tried to get into conversations, and I did what my parents said I should do to fit in. But I really had to wear a mask to fit in. As time passed by, that mask became part of me. I actually kind of forgot who I was.

When I was in my freshman year of high school, I began to wake up and see how other people treated me for the first time. I decided to go full-on home school because my mom suggested that I would be bullied if I went to public school. Before then, I went in and out of home schooling and private schooling. When I went to private school, I was bullied relentlessly. I was usually the tallest person in my class, so they assumed that I would just knock them flat if they tried to hit me.

My freshman year is also when I started taking Kung Fu. I took martial arts when I was younger. I took American karate. But my mom pulled me out of that because she didn't like the teacher and the philosophy. For the next couple of years, I begged my mother to take me to Kung Fu because I always felt so happy and good there.

Finally, when I turned 14, I entered a Kung Fu school. There were a lot of very nice people there, and that's where I started feeling welcome and understood. A lot of people will tell you that they accept you and understand you, but it was at Kung Fu where I found that genuinely.

I never was really a large group guy growing up. I tried to be part of groups or cliques, but I never really fit in. I always felt uncomfortable, and left out, and just ignored. I was the guy who awkwardly walked along with other cliques and tried to find somebody to talk to.

But that's actually where I meet most of my friends-- outside of the other cliques. We really get along well because we're not really accepted. We're just ourselves. Just trying to be accepted by people in a society who don't want to accept you or don't try to understand you is not worth it. If you try that, you just lose yourself bit by bit, piece by piece, until you don't even recognize who you are or don't even remember who you were.

I honestly don't remember who I was when I was little. The memories are there, but I'm not, if that makes sense. I feel like I've destroyed and rebuilt myself over and over again.

It's people who really listen and don't judge you, within reason, that are your true friends. For example, my oldest friend, I've known him since I was eight years old, and he's basically part of my family. He listens to me, really listens, when I'm talking. He just gives me his honest-to-god opinion, and he doesn't use his honesty as an excuse to be rude. He's actually honest, and actually considerate, and actually supportive of who I am, quirks and all.

Strong emotions-- I often find that emotionally it's hard for us as autistic people to operate. Whenever we get really emotional, oftentimes people just think we're having a nuclear meltdown. Sometimes we do, just because we're overwhelmed by life, by what's around us, or by our senses, which are more intense than most people's.

For most of my life, I have had difficulty dealing with my emotions. I used to have large emotional outbursts. I tried to stop that, and I did for a while. But eventually it got to be too much, and now I just accept the fact that I need to release my emotions sometimes.

Finding an equilibrium around other people can be very hard though. Even when I show just a little bit of emotion, they're like, OK, calm down. I'm like, I am calm. This is me being calm.

On the opposing end, whenever I don't show any emotion, people just tell me to relax. I think a lot of people on the autism spectrum have difficulty with this, too. I feel that neurotypical people naturally develop the ability to hold back their emotions and empathy to their fullest extent. They sort automatically have a full range of control over how to control what they are feeling.

I think that autistic people have to learn that from scratch. Our emotions can be really powerful and really intense. And I think that puts us in a lot of turmoil. It's hard for us to find people who can relate to us on that level. And that can be why making friends can be so challenging.

On the same note, many of us have obsessive behaviors. And I'm guilty as charged because I'm obsessed with Star Wars, Yu-Gi-Oh!, martial arts, and other stuff. We love to become really interested in things and learn as much about them as we can, although sometimes we think that being overly interested in things is what people want, but sometimes we take it to a degree that people are unprepared for. So sometimes it's about learning to reel things in a little bit depending on the situation.

What people need to know about being on the spectrum-- autism is not a disease or a disorder. It simply means that our minds think differently than other people's. We don't need to be approved to be accepted. All we need to do is accept ourselves. Autistic people are frankly just people doing what's normal to them.

Stimming, moving your body, flapping your arms around, that's what's natural to many autistic people, and it's our way of interacting with the world. Many people look at those types of behaviors and go, why the heck are they doing that, it's so weird? But to autistic people, it's so nice and relaxing. We're just being ourselves. I think people need to realize that what neurotypical people consider as abnormal, weird, or crazy is their version of being normal and at peace themselves.

We're not like other people. We're wired differently. And while everyone is wired a little bit differently, we are wired considerably differently. And a lot of people don't understand that. Autistic people are actually different, actually individual, and actually authentic.