Finding acceptance or changing myself?

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I always have to make this decision. I find that I am a very accepting person, even in environments where I have a clear advantage or the other person is struggling significantly. I grew out of my urge to force others to conform to some "normalcy" in childhood, just because I don't care what others do and often try to find a reason for why they do that in the first place.

I often feel like I'm told what to do and how to do it by other people. Somehow, I just don't have the same awareness of popular culture and trends and I'm perpetually "out of the loop" as I've been told. But in reality, I simply prefer things that others do not and I don't want to do what everyone else is doing.

Sometimes it becomes too difficult to ignore, when almost everyone tells me I have something wrong with me and I should try to fix or suppress it, or when they try to make me change it. I don't cause harm to others but somehow it angers them when I do something the way I want. An example of this is stimming. I do it when not aware and it doesn't do anything to anyone else yet I still somehow attract negative attention just by doing it because they don't. Another thing is having to wear certain clothes because the texture is too unusual. In public I have to do many of these things or risk getting a meltdown.

I don't care if most of the society dislikes what I do. But I still want to find a close circle of friends who like or at least accept the things I do, which might be impossible. If that is not possible, then my only course of action is to force myself to assimilate like I tried to do in the past, to adopt customs of the social mass rather than be myself and find people who I'd much rather spend time with. The reason I am hesitant to try the assimilation strategy is because it is depressing and exhausting.

What should I do and what do you do?

It's taken me a long time and a lot of various types of therapy, but I've since found that truly being myself, without caring what anyone else thinks, makes me feel so much better, happier, and physically lighter. Since I've started embracing all of me, quirks (which, among other things, include a lot of stimming and often not talking, but rather writing to communicate, in public, with strangers, wherever) and all, my symptoms of depression, which previously led to self-harm and hospitalizations, have almost completely vanished, and I feel far more confident in myself than I ever did back when I was trying to "be normal". My dad told me that the kinds of people you want to be around are the ones who aren't going to criticize you for being your own "odd" self. Don't worry about fitting in, allow yourself to live your own best and most comfortable life, and the rest will fall into place.

I find that it's easiest for me to accept myself as I am. I tried to change earlier on this year. After I spent an entire day adding holographic foil to my self-made German helmet, I've decided to accept myself in all my "German-ness". I've also went back to using Schultz and Om Nom for avatars after trying The Kinks a few times. I was going to get my groove back but it didn't quite turn out the way I expected.