[CW: Internalized Ableism/Anti-ND Sentiment]
I'd think my image, self-esteem, and relationships with others would improve tremendously if I learned how to act neurotypical, but I don't even know where to start.
I feel like I have to first acknowledge the fact that I don't think right at all. I want to have the thought process and behavior of a neurotypical person, but I don't know how to perform that.
I first got diagnosed with autism as a child, and the psychiatrist who gave me that diagnosis made me feel a lot of relatibility to this condition I had never heard of before this time. As a child, this led me to believe that this matter was good to view from the angle of "I'm not inferior. I'm just different!", but now I no longer view my neurodivergence that way. I now acknowledge it as my worst flaw.
Effectively, I want to get to a point where any future psychiatrists I encounter will have a hard time detecting autism within me. I also have ADHD and bipolar disorder, and having those stacked on top of something I already deem horrendous makes me feel triple terrible.
I don't think it's truly possible and I think no matter what you think of being autistic, trying to suppress it is going to end poorly. You really should accept yourself and realize that many NT people are just assholes. There are also plenty of great NT people but it's not always easy to find them. I have found a few through living in a share house and becoming friends. The forced (maybe barrier-free is a better term) socialization let us get to know each other on a deeper level than the superficial conversations that people often have with work or school acquaintances allow. I've also met a few people through hobbies who are great.
I think denying who you are is a terrible way to go about life. I spent years, decades even, before I accepted myself being ND and queer. I tried to "be normal" and it always fell apart due to burnout or a mismatch in social expectations with inflexible/unwilling to learn NT people.
I can see the truth in what you're saying to a good degree.
A bit ago, I had this coworker. She was similar to me in some ways. She was queer and neurodivergent. She was autistic just like me, and as I worked with her, I connected with her unlike I did with anyone else at our workplace. On top of that, it was really mutual.
She got bullied, for lack of a better term, by a lot of other people we worked with. A lot of people were needlessly harsh and hard on her, to the point of making her cry some days. I felt a lot of empathy because I went through the same with some of the people who we worked with, and I just didn't like seeing her struggle and seeing her go through immense pain.
Eventually, we started texting each other outside of work, and even though neither of us work at that place anymore (thankfully), we still talk to each other to this very day. The reason why she came to mind for my response to your comment is that I started texting her about some of my depression and internalized ableism that I'm feeling today, and it really put this matter into perspective.
Back when we worked together, she would tell me about horrendous things that happened to her at work, even explaining to me that a lot of our coworkers would only treat her like that when I wasn't around because they knew I would stick up for her.
Whenever I talked to her about anything that I was struggling with or even just our interests, humor, and enjoyment, there was never any judgment that took place. I never felt like she was going to take anything I said the wrong way. There was always empathy, kindness, and understanding in everything we talked about.
That is the kind of exchange I got with a neurodivergent person. I never felt like I was "inappropriate", "awkward", "weird", or "distasteful" in anything I said, and whenever she would say anything that a lot of neurotypicals found odd, I never took issue with any of those things myself. In fact, they were more relatable and easier for me to understand.
I don't get out there and interact with a whole lot of neurodivergent people. In the lens of a neurotypical world, I'm broken, but it seemed like being with other neurodivergent people was the only thing that could teach me that it's not ME that's wrong. There is an overwhelming lack of understanding within a society that takes "different" or "unusual" as a synonym for "terrible" or "less than".
We are called neurodivergent for a reason. We deviate from a norm that's highly expected within our society, but when that norm isn't met, people will immediately feel inclined to accuse the neurodivergent person of failing, not the norm itself.