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I spent altogether too much time in the shower today, detangling my hair with wrinkly, pruned fingers, and thinking about an old friend’s birthday, which came and went without so much as a call or text or Discord message from me.

This was a friend who I once baked cookies for on their birthday, and then drove over to their apartment and surreptitiously left them on their doorstep. I still remember the smell of those gingerbread cookies in my kitchen – the aroma of freshly ground allspice lingering in the air. Another year, I made gingerbread cookie bars for them and slathered it in a homemade cream cheese frosting, sprinkling their beloved allspice on top with a gentle hand. I remember being peeved that the exact brand of snowflake sprinkles – delicate and sparkling with green and red shimmer – that I wanted to use wouldn’t arrive in time. It’s ruined, I thought, pouting at the finished product.

We ate it together, after feasting on Chinese food that they bought for me and my girlfriend for supper, sitting cozy in their apartment, decorated with Christmas lights. Suddenly, those sprinkles didn’t seem to matter at all - their enjoyment of it was written on their face, and I beamed at a job well done, trying my very best to stay humble through their compliments. An ambient YouTube video played in the background – some holiday video game music compilation, with pixel art peppering the screen – as we supped and chatted about all the time we had lost.

I haven’t spoken to them since July of this year.

When I think back on those times spent in their apartment, and them in mine, I wonder at how it all became so complicated for me, and how I lost it all. Because in the end, it was I who lost it all, who chose to slowly dissolve our friendship.

I’m not proud of it, I never am – truly, there’s something terrible about the way that I get so overstimulated when things become difficult in friendship. But in fairness to myself, when things become difficult for me – when other humans are involved, especially – it is not something that irritates me for a day or two, and then I go about my merry way, unaffected by it all. It affects me, cuts me at my core, wounds me in ways that make it difficult to proceed with daily life. Suddenly all of my thoughts are consumed by the slight – hobbies that were once tied to them are now “tainted” to me, my thoughts race and I ruminate, trying desperately to wrap my head around an exhausting, all-consuming thought: “Why would they do this to me?”

I had tried to talk things out with them before. But somehow we’d always get back to the same crossroads – of me trying desperately to be heard, and them just … not listening, or not understanding, or not comprehending me in a serious way that ultimately kept cutting, cutting, cutting at me. Bringing up their name would bring me to tears. I could not just have a casual relationship with them – and perhaps this is due to my ‘tism, my all-or-nothing attitude – but there came a point where I had to stop. They could not see me in a way that was vital to my being. And spirits know I tried so very hard.

They were the first friend I ever had in-real-life. I met them at work, and they were unfailingly kind – correcting mistakes I’d made before our boss found out, laughing at uptight coworkers and making our own inside jokes, juggling the stress of our shared responsibilities with humor and yap sessions about our favorite video games and anime. When the time came for me to leave that job – I was being underpaid, a classic American story – they told me that things wouldn’t change, that we’d still be friends. But I should’ve known that I – a classic housemouse, who had never had a Real IRL Friend in her entire life – would be overstimulated by the whole ordeal, would utterly, thoroughly, make a mess of things.

I told them that once, in a Christmas card – some sentimental, heart-opening words that made me tear up as I wrote it. Something like, ‘I never had friends growing up. And you’re the first person that I’ve ever gotten to do things in real life with: haunted houses, escape rooms, just hanging out… Thank you.’ I don’t remember the exact words. They thanked me for the card, but at the time, I don’t think they understood how much it meant for me to admit that. Often times, I wish I had never admitted that or had been so vulnerable.

I think a non-autistic person would’ve found a way to easily navigate the challenges their friendship posed to me. If I had just been more honest about my needs, if I didn’t get so easily irritated by the things they’d do, perhaps we could’ve stayed friends. There are some days I wish it, where I’m tempted to just send a goddamn message and say: ‘Hey, I’m sorry, you really stressed me out and I had to peace-out for six months, but I want to rekindle things.’ I see things around my home that remind me of them: a figure of my favorite JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure character, a coin from their favorite movie, a lanyard they picked up from PAX that hangs off a poster. They cared, in their way, they cared. So why can’t I extend my hand toward them? Do they still think of me? Are things better off dead?

But I’m terrified of it going wrong, of me getting it wrong again. When I get overstimmed, I hurt myself in little ways – letting the stress build up in my gut to a point where my acid reflux flares up again (something I’m only just now healing from), sitting and knitting for hours and hours straight even though I know it will hurt my wrists, which already suffer from repetitive stress injury. Little things that I’m not even sure count as self-harm, but do, in the grand scheme.

And so, I am the self-imposed Wizard of Loneliness. In some ways, it is more comfortable for me. But I often wonder if that is just a myth I tell myself, something that has been true since childhood that is too difficult for me to shake. So I stay cozy by my hearth – never knowing what it was like to craft connections with others, unable to miss what I’ve never experienced.

I should like a friend again, one to Go Out and Do Things with. But I don’t know if I can handle it – the complications, the social minefield of it all. I couldn’t handle it with my old friend, who showed me a kindness that no other friend – besides my soulmate, but she is my Everything, unable to be compared to with anyone – had ever showed me before, so what makes me think I can handle it again?

Riddles in the dark. Mysteries brought on by a full moon.

All I know is that, I am sorry, old friend. I really do hope you’re doing well. And it’s belated, and I know you’ll never read this, but I hope you had a happy birthday. I miss baking for you. It’s the only time I ever bake gingerbread.