It took me decades to get here. Decades of explaining myself, adjusting, softening edges. Trying to make myself legible to people who, if I’m honest, were never really trying to read me. I failed miserably at this. More times than I can count.
The thing nobody tells you about trying too hard for too long is what it leaves behind: resentment. The quiet, accumulating kind that builds when you keep reaching for something that just isn’t natural, isn’t reciprocal, isn’t real.
Here’s the distinction I’ve landed on. In your professional life, effort is the job. You show up, you adapt, sometimes you work a room even when it costs you something. That’s fair. In your personal life though, in who you actually are at the level of your soul, it really shouldn’t require that much labor. When it does, when every interaction feels like translating yourself into a language the other person still refuses to learn, that’s worth paying attention to.
If people truly want to know you, they make an effort. Simple as that. Some won’t. Some are just committed to misunderstanding you, not because of anything you did, but because something about you unsettles something unresolved in them. That’s theirs to deal with, yours to release.
When you get things wrong, own it. Apologize. Do it because you mean it, not because it’s the done thing. People can tell the difference. Genuinely intuitive people, and many neurodivergent people have this in spades, are essentially human lie detectors. They may struggle with things the world treats as basic. They will absolutely clock a performance from a mile away.
The people you end up aligning with don’t have to look like you, think like you, or like the same things. It’s about being in someone’s presence and feeling met, without having to translate yourself into something more palatable. Just seen. As you are.
Understood by a few who actually want to.
That’s enough. It really is.
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