Do You Even Like Me?

At the last parents-forum I attended at the school of my child, I thought I had made a new friend. The school has a new principal and as we interacted through the course of the forum, I found I liked her. She is no-nonsense, sounds invested in the students and at least, seemed to be open to feedback. I always volunteer for any help the school may need, I back the teachers in their expertise (because all too often, parents are delusional in their demands of teachers) and if I bring a problem to the attention of the school, I also bring an actionable, reasonable solution that requires my labour as much as theirs. She seemed to appreciate that, and in front of the board and trustees, she was very nice to me. A few weeks later, my partner and I had to see her in her office about some administrative work. Earlier in the day, because there was also a parent-teacher meeting, I had crossed her in the hallway, smiled and asked how she was doing, which she completely ignored but I figured it was an accident. I asked again when we saw her in her office, she nodded at me and addressed my husband instead. This time, it was just the three of us in her office, and the approach was completely different. She asked a question about the child and as I began to answer, she snapped at me.

“Why are you interrupting me while I am speaking?” she said, “We have to remain completely calm, you should remain calm when I am speaking.”

She asked her question again, and this time my partner began to answer and she did not view that as an interruption. He gently chided her for how she had just spoken but throughout the meeting, she avoided my gaze, looked only at my partner and pretended I wasn’t even there. After we left, perturbed and confused, I tried to make sense of the situation.

“That was weird, right?” I asked him, “She was exceptionally rude to me?”

“Yeah, I am surprised you didn’t say anything,” he said.

“I was just taken aback and confused,” I told him, “Why was she so rude to me?”

“Well, she doesn’t like you,” he said, “She has never liked you, not since the day you met her at that forum.”

I was shocked. Despite the fact that I have this conversation five-times a month, I am always surprised by it. It follows the same pattern every single time. I meet a person, I like the person, I think the person likes me, I interact with the person, sometimes I develop a relationship with the person that lasts years and finally, some kind of incident occurs that shocks me enough to make me wonder if the person has a problem with me. Sometimes I ask the person but most of the time I ask my family and friends and they look at me like I have three heads as they tell me the person obviously doesn’t like me and never has. Each time, I am shocked by that information and each time, they are surprised it wasn’t obvious to me. I know, I know. Who cares what people think? Haters gonna hate. Tay-Tay for life. Whatever. This is a bit easier to say for non-autistic people, I think, ones who are, usually, equal parts liked and disliked, and are also, able to tell when people genuinely like them or genuinely don’t. I don’t really know what makes a person likeable (and please, it’s not “being themselves” because I am myself all the time) but I do know that people are not honest or upfront about the subject of likeability and whether it matters.

I’ll be honest. I do actually want to be liked by people. Not all people, not all the time and not out of obligation. I’m usually excited when I meet people, I am excited to learn about them, I like that other people say things I couldn’t have thought and I wish that when I interacted with them, I knew whether they actually want me to or not. For instance, my mom has this friend, they’ve been friends for 40-years, and whenever I am in town, her friend will invite me home and I’ll go, I thought it was a gesture of warmth and love. Then one day, there was a strange evening when they were all having a party and I wanted to leave early (which, by the way, they are all 65-75 and I was the only 30-year-old there) and she snapped at me in a very aggressive, personal way. I called my sister to ask what I had done wrong and she told me that I had always been disliked by this woman, she had hundreds of instances of examples to prove it and she explained I was only being invited to dinner because of the social intricacies of the formalities between our families. I thought we were friends. I actually enjoyed talking to this person, we are very different but that doesn’t really matter to me, I thought she was interesting. If I had known she didn’t really want me there, I would not have been there! If I could only know when people don’t want to entertain you or are irked by you, I would be able to navigate it all so much easier.

Again, I know. You should just ask people directly about these things. I do, I always have and two things about that. People lie out of a socially-mandated sense of propriety and also, apparently, asking questions like that is why people don’t like me. A lot of fucking people talk about communication and honestly and whateverthefuck, but they also play the game. The social game of likeability. In a group, people don’t actually like the weird person and since “weird” is its own kind of currency, let me be clear, people do like the quirky, the eccentric or the unusually charming, but that’s not what I mean. People dislike random things that are extremely small. For instance, I have one formal dress that I wear to every formal event. People dislike me for that. Don’t you have any other clothes? She’s so weird, she only has one dress. At parties, people dislike the person who always has to leave at 9 PM to go to bed because that’s how long they can last. Can you not even make an exception for one night? Everyone is having fun, why do you always have to ruin the fun? You sleep every night, one night of being late is not a big deal. Of course, people also just dislike you for being too whatever. Too smart (in their estimation), too ethical (acting like you are better than others), too eager or too sincere. I cannot fucking figure it out.

I just know that I am wary of the world. It makes no difference when I actually encounter a person and like them, I still make the same mistake again and again, but in general, I feel like I exist in a universe where I am fundamentally disagreeable and regardless of how much effort I make to be more palatable in terms of approach and manners, the issue is obviously more fundamental than that. It’s who I am. I don’t know what to do with that, but I do know I would like to be liked. It’s really easy to say it shouldn’t matter but if you haven’t spent a lifetime in a hostile world, it’s not exactly the same thing.