There are two sides to a coin, there are two sides to a tunnel, and likewise, every story has two perspectives.
I met this girl in school, and to be honest, I disliked her from our first few encounters. It wasn’t outright disgust or anything extreme, but rather a frustrating kind of dislike. Let me give you a backstory.
Firstly, before I resumed classes, I had missed the first class she and my other coursemates attended. As per usual, during “girl gist,” as the class gossipers liked to call it, the girls mentioned that she was very quiet, and they thought she was quite arrogant and snobbish.
As a newcomer, she was doing the exact opposite of what she should have been doing; that is, making friends, trying to get along with her coursemates, introducing herself to the lecturers properly; spoiler alert: she wasn’t doing any of that. One of my coursemates even mentioned that she had tried relating with her, and the lady kept replying through her nose, which is considered snobbish behavior in our culture. It is a well-known fact that when people greet you, you give them a smile and appreciate their kind gestures.
I found all these quite shocking, but I didn’t want to make a judgment because, obviously, I needed to see her for myself before forming an opinion. Now, how does this even concern me, you ask? It does because, back then in my department, we were not more than ten, we treated one another like family, and as the course rep, it was only right for me to help her feel welcome while keeping our group dynamic safe and free of negative energy.
When I resumed school, I had already thought to myself that I wouldn’t go with a direct approach, she could be one of those people who are always in defense mode. So, I said hi to her with a smile, and she did the same. I immediately thought to myself, “She’s not so bad after all.” But by the end of the week, I was utterly frustrated for two reasons.
Firstly, she never defended herself. Even when she was being accused of something she clearly did not do, she would rather look at you like you're undeserving of an effort from her than stand up for herself, and while that was pretty cool, it wasn't helping the bad judgement people had of her.
Secondly, she made the wrong friends. As much as we treated one another like family in my department, there were definitely goats among the sheep, just like in every social gathering. There were hypocrites, gossipers, and vain people. The same people who came to “gist” about her to me were the ones she began trusting. I genuinely wanted to scream at her, “THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.” It was quite clear to the rest of us that they were being nice to her just to satisfy their curiosity about, “Who’s the new girl?” “What’s her story?” … you know, things like that.
However, despite the fact that my usual disposition is to always mind my business, I did feel bad for her. She was that coursemate who was difficult to love but also difficult to hate. Besides, I don’t go around hating people for their personalities, I have the right to determine if I want them in my life or not, and as long as their personality doesn’t affect me personally, I don’t have a business with them. But for this particular lady, I decided to try getting to know her, actively.
I did something quite comical. I went to her with a book filled with questions, sat her down, and said, “You are going to tell me about yourself today, whether you like it or not.” And surprisingly, she laughed! I was shocked because I was actually expecting her to walk out on me, being the snobbish queen and all. Turns out, she was just an extremely shy person with autism.
That revelation was shocking to me because, aside from the shyness, she didn’t demonstrate any other autistic traits. My experience with her enlightened me more about the Autistic Spectrum. It is quite unfortunate that there are a lot of people out there who are presently as ignorant as I was, not knowing that even the most intelligent person in a room can be autistic.
I got to learn that she had already figured out that those people who were “acting nice” to her were the self-appointed queen bees. In fact, she was quite the logical thinker. Her approach to getting introduced to a new environment was to dissect and determine. She placed everybody in categories according to sociability, roles, and personalities, just so she could have a strategy of approach as well. That was why she always returned my smile in class, she was merely reciprocating my gestures.
At that moment, I was simply blown away. How could someone be so intelligent and logical? She was like this expert-level chess player, the classroom was her chessboard, and we were all pawns. All of her approaches were calculated. She knew when to talk, how to talk, who to talk to and how to talk to each and everyone.
Soon enough, I got to see that she actually could be a total genius because, without having to resort to fights or creating haters for herself, she corrected everyone’s bad opinion of her, without pleading for sympathy either. It was fun to watch when she decided to just listen to music using her earpiece and when she decided to interact and actually laugh. This lady was living in her own world, she was the main character, and we were all just extras, lol.
All images were created using Meta AI
Thank you for reading! :)
