You can’t always get what you want

Christmas, 1985

I was eight years old and the Cabbage Patch Kids craze had taken over the holiday season. There was nothing I wanted more than to adopt one of those cloth dolls with the large plastic head and Xavier Roberts’s name autographed on its rear end.

We awoke extra early – even by Christmas morning standards – to help my brother finish his paper route. It was still dark when we returned home to the gifts waiting under our tree. When I finally unwrapped that doll that I had wanted so badly, I thought my life was complete.

My young self hadn’t yet figured out that no material possession would ever completely satisfy any desire I might have, or that the euphoria of obtaining something so treasured would quickly fade once I got what I wanted. Even now, as an adult, I still have to remind myself of this.

“I’ve been driving this car for so many years – I really need a new one. … That pair of shoes would be perfect for every-day wear, I should buy them. … Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a cabin in the country surrounded by nature, away from people and noise?”

It’s human nature to yearn for things, even when we know all too well that fulfilling our temporary longings won’t bring us permanent satisfaction. Wisdom advises us to value the people in our lives, not the material objects.

I have had various friends and acquaintances throughout my life, mostly during childhood and adolescence, but none has lasted more than a few years or so. Even when I spend time with people I like and enjoy being with now, I always leave with the sense that something’s missing, as though we tried but just couldn’t make a connection.

As much as I would like to have one true, close friend, I’ve come to the point in my life where I have accepted the reality that I will likely never be able to attain a friendship on a level such as the one I want. For people like me, friendships are elusive, rare, and fleeting.

Granted, any relationship between two people is naturally challenging and prone to conflict, but a relationship is all but unsustainable when one of the people involved in it has a difficult time relating to people in general. The odds of any relationship developing and surviving, in my experience, immediately plummet.

Most of my difficulty with making and obtaining friends lies with me. I know and accept this. For one thing, I don’t know how to approach people and develop a relationship in the first place, which I have previously discussed in my blogs titled This one time at band camp and Call me crazy. My struggle with initiating and maintaining friendships is well-covered territory, and I won’t rehash it all again here.

Researchers in Sweden studied 100 autistic men and boys over a period of 20 years in order to get a better idea of their friendships and quality of life. Approximately one quarter of the men said they had few or no friends, in which the term “friend” was loosely defined to include even people they simply saw from time to time. Interestingly, though, many of these men seemed happy with their lives.

Most people might assume that someone who has few or no friends is unhappy, lonely, depressed, etc. However, it’s worth pointing out that Dr. Leo Kanner, considered the father of autism, coined the term “autism” based on the Greek word autos, meaning “self.” He chose this term because the patients he studied and diagnosed in the 1930s and 1940s displayed a powerful desire to be alone, and ever since this has been a required characteristic for the diagnosis of autism.

Herein lies an eternal paradox that people on the spectrum deal with – living in a world with expectations that we are naturally incapable of meeting. We inherently have a strong desire to be alone, yet we have been conditioned by society to want and achieve all the things that normal people do because we live in a world designed for and by people who are not like us.

I have spent most of my life wishing that I could form friendships like other people, and feeling that my life was an incomplete, miserable failure because I didn’t have those relationships like everyone else.

It has taken me a lifetime to acknowledge and accept the reality of what is and is not possible for me. But now that I have, my life has become much easier and more enjoyable. I no longer hold myself to others’ expectations and don’t force myself to be someone that I cannot. I also no longer berate myself for being alone, and I thoroughly enjoy my own company.

I know that many relationships – or in my case, almost all relationships – only last for a season, and that you can’t always get what you want, or even what you think you’re supposed to want. But, if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. And often that is enough.