the thing about being bullied for being weird as a kid is that even if you've always embraced being weird your brain is still always looking for the line where it's too much. you can be as proudly and intentionally weird as you want and you can love being weird but your mind is still convinced there's a point where you get too weird and people start treating you like a weird looking bug again. also it feels like you reach that point 500 times a day even if everyone you've spoken to today found you pleasant and likable and even if you're completely alone in your house with nobody looking at you at all.
another thing about being bullied for being weird is that it tends to make you more weird in ways you understand less and that get you bullied worse because the only thing funnier than making fun of an autistic kid is making fun of a traumatized autistic kid
Hey that voice? That voice that stops you from being your full weird self? I encourage you to have a conversation with that voice, and with the bullied kid that's still inside you. (They might be one and the same.) Clearly that voice is trying to protect you from experiencing The More Pain, but in doing so it's stopping you from being your full self.
You're not the scared kid anymore and even though it's really well-intentioned and is trying to help you so hard, it's gotten to a place where it's the one hurting you. If it understood that, if it trusted you to keep yourself safe, it wouldn't keep doing it, right? Because it's also you.
I wonder if that voice wants to do something else with itself? Maybe it wants to be the one encouraging technique and craft and practice when you learn your next weird skill. Maybe it wants to go full freak and it's just scared. Maybe that voice is a distorted form of empathy, your ability to put yourself in other people's shoes, and it needs a little eye-opening to remember that other people also can like you. For your weirdness, not in spite of it.
