Work Text
‘Hang on, just going to set up the mic and . . . yes, right, here we go. OK then.
‘This is my private video message to Colonel John Sheppard, on the occasion of my resignation. Colonel you will by now have received a copy of my resignation letter to the SGC and IOA, and I will have departed Alantis. But I wanted to say, well, all the things I never said, and some of the things I recently figured out and well, the truth. Why I cannot be in the same galaxy as you any more, Colonel.
‘You see, John, you are, well, you're my best friend, you're the love of my life, and you're also, and this is hard to say . . . my greatest bully. Or, um, at least the bully who has the biggest impact what with you also being, well, friend, occasional lover and . . . what I just said . . . and really, there was no point in me ever saying that to your face so just don't. call. me. a coward.
‘Where was I? Oh. Yes. My point is. . . I need to be somewhere you aren't, Colonel. Perhaps I deserve to be bullied. I mean, I know I am a difficult person . . .‘Crap, no, that's not what I wanted to say. Look, I take responsibility for all the rudeness and perhaps . . . no, not perhaps, for sure, I have been guilty of bullying others in my turn over the years but since seeing Dr Kirkland, well, I have some insights. Oh, and a diagnosis. A life changing diagnosis. A shock but really, really it shouldn't have been a shock, not at all, all things considered.‘But it's my diagnosis that has made me re-evaluate, well everything. ‘I mean. how the hell did nobody ever tell me I was autistic? Er, hello? How obvious did it need to be? If I was even remotely interested in soft sciences, if I had done one term of undergrad psych it would have been self-evident if I met anyone like me. Why didn't anyone say? Pained as I am to be reading up on something as nebulous and akin to alchemy as psychology, I have to say the data fits beyond any realm of doubt.
‘I could have got help, had some support with social interaction. It doesn't excuse my failings, but I've come to see myself with a little more. . . Dr Kirkland calls it compassion. Not a word I'm used to using, not something I'm used to receiving, either. Quite outside my experience and my lexicon but right now I am uniquely open to this new learning. I mean, it'll probably wear off and I'll be back to my old asshole self in no time but right now, well, change seems pretty well imperative. ‘People think I'm arrogant and petty. Well I am, I suppose, or at least I understand why people say that and it's not unfair. But it looks different from the inside. When you're autistic, you are constantly being told everything you do is wrong. Tiny things that seem unimportant to you matter to everyone else, and I don't just mean things that probably do matter like remembering an employee's name or not telling them they're an idiot, I mean really trivial things like making the right kind of eye contact or not hating scratchy clothes. So suddenly you find yourself . . .
‘Ah no, what did Kirkland say? I have to own it. Suddenly I found myself trying to justify every little thing I did and pick up on every wrong thing others did because I felt, well I felt small, and inadequate and like everything I did was wrong even when I was being brilliant, because literally nobody ever told me I was brilliant, they just sort of expected me to be as far back as I recall.
‘This will sound ridiculous in the extreme no doubt, but I thought people really did not see it and that I had to tell them, and I now understand that me telling everyone how smart I am stopped anyone from ever saying anything appreciative to me.‘But, for the record, they weren't saying anything appreciative to me anyway and I was a miserable, insecure depressive long before I was an arrogant, abrasive asshole. Neurotypicals - people who aren't autistic and what not, they say things like “be confident and let your light shine” and other such psychobabble. I was trying to do that. I thought if nobody was going to champion me I should champion myself.‘Of course, I was doing it all wrong and you're supposed to both not hide your light under a bushel whilst never ever bragging and I can honestly say I have no idea how that works but I rather feel the concept contains Heisenberg levels of unpredictability.
‘Anyhow, I'm still an arrogant, petty asshole. That hasn't changed. But there may be more to me than that, and being the butt of everyone's . . . your jokes, Colonel. I am sick of my differences being played for your laughs, and I think of all people you probably knew how thin my skin is in reality. You knew you were hurting me. ‘Kirkland told me an interesting fact. Did you know that autistic people are much more likely to be gay or trans or left handed or double jointed or a bunch of other seemingly random things? Divergent people are divergent in multiple ways, is what he says. A population cluster that is not causally linked, it's more like some sort of weird butterfly effect or maybe like the X-men mutations, only real. There isn't really a sufficiently scientific explanation for my liking, but the empirical evidence is there. People like me, we're statistically more likely to be different in many and diverse ways.
‘Suddenly my medical quirks and heightened sensitivities turn out to be part and parcel of being a divergent person and not, after all, me being difficult or fussy.
‘But how many times, Colonel, have you put me down for reacting to things differently from others?‘I spent a lifetime being told I was oversensitive til I grew my curmudgeonly armour to protect myself. Well, Colonel, it turns out you don't get to choose how sensitive you are, it's kind of hardwired. And I really am hypoglycemic and deathly allergic to citrus for all you've taken the piss out of me all these years for things I literally have no control over. ‘Oh, and I'm a bisexual, as well you know, what with our occasional fucking and all that's happened between us over the years. I can say that here what with the levels of privacy and encryption I’m going to protect this file with, plus they repealed DADT, but it didn’t make any real difference to your levels of bullshit, did it? Oh if anything it made it worse. After the repeal, when you so enthusiastically assisted in my break-up with Jennifer, I thought . . .‘But no. Nothing. Worse than nothing, actually – lots of hints, touches and teases in private and in public an escalation of the distancing and put-downs. In the last year or so, Colonel, you’ve said and done things that make that Lemon Stunt you pulled with Mitchell seem almost kind. And for the record, the Lemon Stunt was basically an adolescent beating on the school nerd or the school queer, or in this case both, in order to curry favour with the cool kid. Pathetic, Colonel, and rather obvious.
‘I mean, you manage more or less to pass for straight and manly. Well, apart from the hair, of course. While I maybe don't get read as bi, I do fall foul of all those stupid gender norms, something you were always careful to point out to others, especially if we had recently fucked. But in the end I’m not sure your passing for something you’re not does you any favours. You manage to hide the fact you’re a big nerd too. Great, you have access to a whole world of things you probably don’t enjoy all that much. ‘Here's the thing, Colonel . . . I can see now that every time I ever bullied someone it was in the cause of distancing myself from who I really am. I said mean things to others because I was trying to fit in. Because I thought that's what people did. After all, I've had a lot of mean thrown my way. But I still have to take responsibility for my mean.‘I can see through every time you proved your masculinity by putting me down. I can see all the times you distanced yourself from me, your friend, because you wanted to be the cool, popular soldier not the socially awkward geek who at the very least has ADHD or some other quirky neurodivergent thing going on.
‘Kirkland says it’s common to see neurodivergence in others once we discover it in ourselves but that we shouldn't run around pointing it out to people. But please. You’re a big queer neurodivergent square peg who fails to follow the rules because you don’t understand them half the time, even though you’ve wasted far too much of that enormous, beautiful brain of yours trying to learn how to be what you never can be. You are a walking tragedy and a big lie and honestly, Colonel, it’s made you mean and a little bit brutish playing the role you've practiced.‘Oh and . . . Only you, Colonel, could be so pig headed as to run away from the conformity of your awful family and wind up in the one institution that is actually more stifling, more controlling, more homophobic and more questionable in its moral compass than the Sheppard dynasty. ‘What I’m trying to say is . . . Colonel . . . John. I wanted nothing more than for you to be a part of my family, but I cannot be a part of yours. I’m headed to the SGC for now, but the plan is to get away from being employed by the military before I become the next Oppenheimer. Or am I already the next Oppenheimer? ‘So this isn’t all about you – it’s about me and what my . . . oh god, forgive the sentimentality but what my heart and soul needs, because it turns out I am more than just a brain.‘At heart, you are a good man and I think you’ve been a good influence on me. I like that you liked me, when you weren’t thinking too hard about it. I think that did me good, so thank you.
‘I may be being particularly mean and critical right now because it’s hard to say goodbye, even if I can’t do it face to face. I guess, too, I want to burn bridges here, because I cannot go on dangling on the end of this thread.‘Dr Kirkland would probably be pissed at me for all of this. I’m sorry I couldn’t be a better man and say something inspiring, like thank you for saving my life more times than I can count. Despite your/our morally questionable employer there is something quite ridiculously heroic about you. ‘Also, I love you. I wish you’d given me more of a chance to say that to your face, but I think you know. I’m saying it now. But I really do have to go.‘Goodbye, John.’
Epilogue
From: [email protected]
Sent: 06 August 2012 14:52
To: [email protected]
Subject: NoneRodneyFuck. Fuck. Am thinking. Fuck.John From: [email protected]
Sent: 06 August 2012 15:30
To: [email protected]
Subject: NonePS Me too for what it’s worth From: [email protected]
Sent: 06 August 2012 15:47
To: [email protected]
Subject: NonePPS You’re probably right about all of it. From: [email protected]
Sent: 06 August 2012 16:24
To: [email protected]
Subject: NonePPPS Fuck. I’m sorry. Fuck. From: [email protected]
Sent: 09 August 2012 10:34
To: [email protected]
Subject: NoneJust completed proforma tests, possible ADHD, some signs of autism. Huh. From: [email protected]
Sent: 14 November 2012 23:55
To: [email protected]
Subject: ChristmasSo, Jeannie invited me to the usual Miller Christmas thing. Bugged me til I said yes. Sorry if inappropriate but really wanna see Mads.
OK not just Mads.See you there? Please?Still thinking, a lot.
Colonel John Sheppard
Military Commander
Founder, Atlantis LGBT+ Society