A love letter to the friends I haven't replied to yet

For the connection-craving, yet communicatively-challenged.

I am ashamed of my WhatsApp inbox.

I assume that you may feel the same, if you’re reading this too.

For someone who lives their life by routine - who will crumble into panic upon discovering the supermarket has stopped selling the brand of apples she’s added to the bowl of porridge she’s eaten religiously these last eighteen months - I find it nigh impossible to be in any way consistent when it comes to friendship.

But why?

I keep a pretty small circle to begin with and yet, there are still at least four close friends awaiting long overdue responses from me. I had hoped my recent autism diagnosis would let me bypass the guilt and reemerge anew, but if anything, it’s just offered more slack to take my foot off the pedal and disappear entirely.

These people are some of the dearest in my life and there is not a single part of me that simply ‘doesn’t want to speak to them’. They are thoughtful, kind, and patient enough to tolerate my unintentionally black cat approach to participating in other people’s lives. And they’re just straight up brilliant, intelligent, funny people who I thoroughly enjoy spending time with IRL.

Friendship has always been something of a minefield for me - and for many, many other autistic people. I am absolutely terrified of being rejected when I actively try to engage with others and I think this in itself subconsciously encourages me to keep my distance. No matter how long I’ve been friends with someone, it always feels like with my next misstep they will realise that I’m actually just a not-so-great person and rightfully do a runner. Can see where that BPD misdiagnosis came from now…

Turns out that this is a common neurodivergent trait: Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria. RSD is “an extreme emotional response to either real or perceived criticism or rejection”. Phew, there’s a legitimate psychological reason for my being communicatively evasive!

Illustration by CNA/Samuel Woo

But a friend that just wants you to show up for them, a friend who hasn’t ever given you any reason to fear their rejection; that is a friend who will eventually tire of your inability to just be there - with or without a diagnosis.

There are only four people who get the speed-dial straight into my consciousness: three are family and one is my partner. Perhaps I don’t actively seek friendships because I speak to my sister up to three times a day? Maybe it’s because after masking all day in a neurotypical office environment, the only kind of conversation I can handle is where I’m cooking dinner on speakerphone and, after a mutually silent ten minutes, remember that she’s still there when she complains about how noisy I’m being. A conversation where I don’t feel any need to be entertaining or engaging.

Not that my friends expect me to be entertaining or engaging. But my slowly unmasking self can’t tolerate the idea of me not being. Going from the big-time-fun-gal on the piss every other day to ‘I just got excited over buying rhubarb seeds from the garden centre’ has given me an identity crisis. I’m so accustomed to wearing my booze-fuelled mask that I don’t know how to reach the real version.

The irony isn’t lost on me that in the time I’ve been writing this, I could’ve quite easily tidied up my inbox, but it’s gotten to such a long period of time that it feels impossible. Even with friends that I’ve reached out to in short-lived bursts of reciprocity, I’ve arguably made it worse by enthusiastically revving up yet another “OMG it’s been too long - what’s new with you!?” train and then never replying again.

There’s no real purpose to this post. Maybe to assuage the guilt, or to make someone else feel less alone if they also struggle with this... It’s something I still don’t have the answers to.

If you’re someone I love who hasn’t heard from me - I’m sorry; I think about you all the time and in my head, the second we see each other - no matter how long it has been - it will feel like it’s been no time at all. You are important to me, contrary to how my weird introverted ass acts, and I wish all this phone-admin could be in the bin and that I could see you regularly - living in a different country sucks sometimes.

Yours, a communicatively-challenged Eb x