The Autistic Experience

It is easy for me to place you in a corner of my heart that makes sense of you as either good or bad. But the reality is that you were a person who had good and bad. You treated me with kindness and love, but we were incompatible, and your attachment styles were not compatible with mine. You treated me less than and that may be because you have narcissistic tendencies, or you were not ready to love another.

Your compassion was great, and your kindness was good, but the toll of our friction burned a wedge between us. It is perhaps me gaslighting myself and refusing to believe that someone who I saw in a positive light can be narcissistic. I do recognize you have traits and there are patterns that show egocentricity and inflated sense of self that seeks admiration from people and performs to be praised. However, you have woven yourself in a web of positivity that allows you to be a good person and have healthy habits. You may have tendencies, but you are very prosocial and show multitudes of empathy. It would be easier for me if I could cast you as a villain. Alas, humans are complex, and I know that there is no black or white.

At the end I can accept that perhaps my idealization of you was unfair and fueled your ego. Love is not always enough and does not conquer all. I hope you have a life of love and happiness, and you find someone who can bring out the side of you that I saw deep inside. I say farewell to us and accept that life is a confluence of all emotions and in its complexities, it pours into banks of positivity and negativity. What we mean to each other and how we react draws from those reservoirs and makes us behave a certain way. A beautiful flight and a tragic fall. Sad and grey and not black and white.