This one's a bit different to most cases i guess, but I am an autistic man, was diagnosed extremely early at age 5, and I've always been used to having this awareness that people generally perceive me through an infantilizing lens and they generally see me as this harmless pityful oddball, during all my time at school I was often spoken to in a soft voice by the teachers and some of the girls like I had mild downs syndrome or something, and I remember when I first got drunk when I was 16, it was a Saturday night and my mum bought me a couple of ciders because it was a special celebration or something, and I ended up chugging them both and I remember thinking "oh wow this feels so good Im finally doing something everyone else in my class is", I felt like I was "part" of them even though I was sitting in my bedroom alone watching TV, and it made me feel like I was projecting this "darker" side of me which I gravitate towards because I'm so fundamentally, deeply ashamed and embarrassed of this "harmless pityful goofball" image that the majority of people perceive me as being
Since I turned 20 I started buying my own bottles of vodka and chugging them at midnight in my room, and once again when I was doing this I felt like I was indulging in a "dark side", I imagined all of the people who have infantilized me watching me chug the bottle of vodka and thinking "of I didn't know u/grubby\_anticholine had this gritty dark side to him, I always thought he was sweet and harmless and innocent and naive" and fastforward 5 years later when I was 25 and drinking half a bottle of whiskey twice a day and even getting drunk first thing in the morning, I was still thinking the exact same kind of shit, I was still picturing those people watching me chug that bottle and imagining them thinking that, because the idea of people taking one look at me and perceiving me as this autistic naive innocent pityful down syndrome esque character was and still is so completely unbearable and painful, I would genuinely rather be perceived as an unhinged addict loose cannon than that, literally fucking ANYTHING is better in my mind than being perceived as this autistic disabled aloof person who needs the utmost pity, I would take people thinking I'm a deranged unhinged alcoholic ANY day of the week over people essentially perceiving me as disabled
I'm 27 now and after a brief dry spell in February this year I've kinda relapsed and I'm back on it, slowly but surely drinking to the same intensity that lead to drinking immediately in the morning, and yet I'm noticing that I'm still thinking of the exact same shit when I'm actively drinking my alcohol, still imagining those people infantilizing me watching me drink my alcohol, so nothing has really changed after all this time, I'm just so deeply and utterly ashamed and embarrassed of who I am, I fucking hate that I just walk the earth whilst uncontrollably creating this pityful first impression on people
And I've had people straight up infantilize me immediately when they've never seen me before in their lives, so whatever it is about that causes me to appear so obviously "different" and disabled, it is clearly my actual face and superficial appearance which I have zero control over, which makes this so much more agonising
Since I turned 20 I started buying my own bottles of vodka and chugging them at midnight in my room, and once again when I was doing this I felt like I was indulging in a "dark side", I imagined all of the people who have infantilized me watching me chug the bottle of vodka and thinking "of I didn't know u/grubby\_anticholine had this gritty dark side to him, I always thought he was sweet and harmless and innocent and naive" and fastforward 5 years later when I was 25 and drinking half a bottle of whiskey twice a day and even getting drunk first thing in the morning, I was still thinking the exact same kind of shit, I was still picturing those people watching me chug that bottle and imagining them thinking that, because the idea of people taking one look at me and perceiving me as this autistic naive innocent pityful down syndrome esque character was and still is so completely unbearable and painful, I would genuinely rather be perceived as an unhinged addict loose cannon than that, literally fucking ANYTHING is better in my mind than being perceived as this autistic disabled aloof person who needs the utmost pity, I would take people thinking I'm a deranged unhinged alcoholic ANY day of the week over people essentially perceiving me as disabled
I'm 27 now and after a brief dry spell in February this year I've kinda relapsed and I'm back on it, slowly but surely drinking to the same intensity that lead to drinking immediately in the morning, and yet I'm noticing that I'm still thinking of the exact same shit when I'm actively drinking my alcohol, still imagining those people infantilizing me watching me drink my alcohol, so nothing has really changed after all this time, I'm just so deeply and utterly ashamed and embarrassed of who I am, I fucking hate that I just walk the earth whilst uncontrollably creating this pityful first impression on people
And I've had people straight up infantilize me immediately when they've never seen me before in their lives, so whatever it is about that causes me to appear so obviously "different" and disabled, it is clearly my actual face and superficial appearance which I have zero control over, which makes this so much more agonising
