I'm not sure where else to vent. I don't want to seem like I'm playing the victim as everyone else in this community is having the same executive functioning issues I'm having and I don't mean to distract from those things but having to navigate these issues while being constantly reminded of my race is exhausting.
I can handle the stares from my coworkers when I head to work. I know why they're staring. I know what Black men are stereotyped as and a black dude repairing laptops in a small repair shop located in a small town is a rare sight but im used to the stares.
I can handle it when people spot me walking on the sidewalk and immediately veer straight to the road to avoid having to walk in my direction. It's funny at times that people will prioritize not having to walk next to a Black man over their own safety but this is fine in a sad way. Everyone does this. White, east asian, south asian. It doesn't matter.
What is stressful is having people hypermonitor me. I can't enter grocery stores anymore because loss prevention will always try to follow me everywhere. I've filed complaints but management doesnt care. They're wasting resources having people follow me around looking to see if i might steal but it doesnt matter. I start stimming a lot when people watch me and this makes people even more suspicious of my intentions. It's immediately obvious to most people that I'm autistic after I start doing this, but they simply don't care.
I'm also almost always lost. I have a terrible sense of direction. This constant confusion I have as to where I'm going is misinterpreted as me scheming or casing an area. I ask people around where is x and they either don't respond or nervously laugh and say they don't know.
It seems to me that the only times I'm noticed are when someone is trying to ascertain whether im a threat or not. I'm not human to most people.
I've almost been involved in fights back in high school because I get nonverbal and struggle to maintain eye contact as soon as people confront me. I'm small but I have a bigger frame so most people don't mess with me.
It's bad enough that I have both ADHD and Autism but being Black amplifies the disadvantages these disorders have to my social life to an almost unmanageable degree. I'm tired of having to navigate all of this. Even after paying for an expensive psychoeducational assessment my family still thinks I'm not autistic because I speak "like a white man". Even after I mustered up the courage to go to toastmasters, the head of that specific group asked me so many questions as to why i joined and concluded his barrage of questions with "your one of the good ones". Noone stepped in. They all silently supported what he was doing because I'm Black and "what could his intentions be?" Noone stepped in when I was called a racial slur for failing to troubleshoot a customer's complaint. My boss just made a snide remark and said "these things happen, try not to let it get to you".
The one romantic partner I had disclosed to me that her parents absolutely hated Black people. We liked the same things, I cooked her food from her culture and even learned enough of the language to follow a conversation. None of it mattered. If her parents hated just neurodivergent people I'd be okay with that but there was never any chance that we'd be anything more than gf/bf. My life is pathetic.
I can mask well enough and I've mitigated the effects of ADHD with adderall. But I will always be Black. I get annoyed when people just tell me to toughen up or "it'll get better" or "it's the anxiety talking". None of these things are true. Noone will say it but if you had a choice as to what race you could be and you knew the implications it would have wrt your social life, noone would choose to be Black. Even Africans in Africa have an inferiority complex and my own mother laments the fact that my skin isn't nearly as light as her. What the fuck?
I don't know if I'm forming a coherent post anymore. This is the first time I'm trying weed and instead of calming me down I've just been in a bad state of mind. I've gotten nothing productive done today but I'm tired of playing at such a severe disadvantage. At the very least let me not have autism and adhd so im not called retarded by the people I thought were my friends. I hate being here and I hate being me
It's very sad that you have to contend with this. It's all due to one thing - other people are total assholes. It's isn't you who is broken here. It's the rest of the society around you that condones hate and fosters violence toward anyone who is different or unusual.
Your post is very coherent, and congrats on having the courage to be open about it. I don't claim to have gone through anything like what you have, but as an old whiny white gay male, I can say I have had similar experiences (especially living here in Utah in Mormon country USA).
I've put up with bigoted small-minds since I was a kid. Because I was different then, I was the kid who would rather make art than go play ball outside, the abuse I put up with would boggle your mind. I always knew the problem wasn't me - I was pretty talented. It was the social goops around me who came from idiotic families with very little in the way of social graces and almost no real moral values of any kind.
The world is made up almost completely of assholes and dickwads. You'll always be black and have to deal with ADHD, but just as I always say, I love being who I am, I hope you get to the same point eventually. It's not a question of you having to fix anything about yourself.
They say that no one would purposely "choose to be gay," for example. But I would. Even if I was given an opportunity to do it all again, I'd do it the exact same way (except I'd probably come out and be more open about it earlier). You have to not only develop a thick skin, but the mindset of a warrior. It's us against the world. And in the end, we'll inherit the earth and all the bounties of heaven. Not them.
Best of luck with all of this.