I have been many things in my life, and have had numerous insecurities and hang-ups, enough to fill a particularly lengthy pamphlet in fact, but never in my life have I given a single thought to being cool. Which is just as well, because I’m not sure I could deal with the upkeep involved in it. As a child, I was exacting to the point of hysteria - and to the eternal dismay of my mother – about how I liked the carrots on my plate, how my socks felt underfoot as I walked to school in the morning, and the names of all the dinosaurs. It was then that my mother knew I was strange, although I couldn’t pinpoint exactly when I realised it myself.
I think in some ways I’ve only really begun to realise how strange I truly am. As a teenager, I was as contrary and angst-ridden as somebody with a serious psychotic illness, and even when I was eventually dragged to the psychiatrists’ and diagnosed as being neurodivergent, or high-functioning autistic as they say, I still didn’t think I was particularly odd. I just thought everyone around me was too much of an idiot to see the sense I was speaking. In some ways, it was arrogance; in another way, I was simply trying to understand everybody, and the only way I could do that was by assuming everybody was like me, which of course they weren’t, but it’s that that I’m only just really beginning to figure out.
You see, I was always taught to treat others as I would like to be treated. I’ve been brought up to believe that it was the height of hubris to assume that you were in any way special. With this in mind, I adopted an attitude that whatever I think and feel, is most likely what others think and feel too, so I should be as mindful of them as I am of myself. Of course, this is very admirable, and exactly the lesson we should be teaching our children, but with me, a different tack really ought to have been taken. This may contradict the spirit of the philosophy, but you know what they say, there’s an exception to every rule.
The thing about autism is that it is the exception to the rule. I’ve never been too fussed about that famous aphorism; you know, the one that goes, ‘the exception that proves the rule’. I’ve turned it over in my mind many times, but I’ve never been able to figure it out. How could an exception ever prove the existence of a rule? Unless it was proving its existence with an eye to dismantling it altogether. Although, I suppose it is only ever really through absence that we can detect the presence of something. And I guess it is only ever when something is no longer there that we realise where it once was. Maybe that’s what they mean when they say ‘the exception that proves the rule’.
I suppose rules are seldom universal; unless we’re talking about gravity or something like that, but even that’s been disproven in certain instances, so I guess most rules are formulated assuming that there are things that do not, will not, conform to the rule. And a lot of rules are decided upon fully in the knowledge that there will come a time when the rule no longer fits, no longer serves its purpose. It’s called the half-life of facts, I think. I have an inkling that most political decisions are made, fully in the understanding they will not fit for very long, and that’s if they ever did in the first place.
Like how coolness is based on those who aren’t cool. But also, most people have a slightly different notion of cool. I know that my definition would not necessarily align with those I pass every day on the street and, in turn, they would probably scoff if they were to hear the opinions of those that they pass on the street. We’re all just people, walking around, none of our definitions or opinions of cool quite aligning with anybody else’s. I cannot speak for everybody, but I couldn’t really put my finger on what ‘cool’ entails, but I could sure as hell tell you what isn’t cool.
Like me, for example. I’m not cool. I’m not cool because I don’t have the energy to be anything more than myself. Not anymore, anyway. I am always myself, and that’s not very cool, because I say silly things and admit to doing things that other people wouldn’t dare admit to. But I can’t be bothered with pretence; I don’t want to be liked for something I’m not. Sometimes I get confused about who I am; I am so many things; there are so many iterations of me. But that’s another reason I couldn’t possibly be cool; I have no principal aesthetic, no ribbon woven through each of my constituent parts. Those who I would deem cool always do, or seem to at least; they always make sense.
I am fully aware that this definition is incredibly narrow, that it only considers my perspective. I’m sure those who I consider cool probably believe themselves to be an utter mess inside, with no defining aesthetic or personal philosophy, to speak of, nothing to speak for as ‘cool’. They may even, god forbid, look at me and think I am cool. If that’s what they believe, then who am I to disagree? I am not one of those naysayers. But isn’t that the issue with coolness? It’s inherently subjective. All a matter of perspective. There’s no substance to it. It’s difficult to have a rule about something like that.
As I’ve become better at masking my oddities, I’ve realised how many of them I have. As I’ve forged connections in life, with my friends and my distant family members, my co-workers and my brief flings with guys I meet by chance at parties or through friends-of-friends, I have realised how my thoughts do not align with my actions, and my actions do not make sense at all. I feel so many emotions, all at once sometimes, but I cannot communicate them in a way people understand. It has driven some away, and pulled others closer. It is probably why I have always kept a small circle – I am under no illusions that I am an acquired taste. Whenever I want to enlarge my social life, my personality reminds me that that is not ever likely to really happen. I don’t think people know what to make of it; I hardly know what to make of myself. Not that I’m special or anything – but we all have our own unique form of normal, don’t we?
Comments