I'm worried that I'm ableist and I'm not quite sure know how to fix it

Okay, so for context I’m in high school, and I’m in a couple of extracurricular clubs. There’s this friend group. They use the term “friend group” loosely. They’re just people who happen to be friends; it’s not like they’re a defined group. But there’s a couple of them in each of the activities I do outside of school.

I’ve never really liked any of them. I don’t know why. I just don’t. I feel like the reasons are very nitpicky. Like, I don’t really like the cadence or volume of their voices. They always just feel a little bit off to me. Or like, I don’t know. Every time I’ve talked to any of them, I feel like they’re just looking straight through me, and it kind of makes me feel uncomfortable.

Obviously, I’m not going to be a jerk and go out of my way to be rude to someone just because I don’t like that. That’s not their fault. So I just avoid them. You know, let them enjoy their day, and I can enjoy mine separately from them. It’s not really that hard, because none of the activities we participate in force interaction.

So the other day, my friend at lunch asked me to go give their table a flyer because our team (that we’re all on) is having an end-of-year fundraiser picnic. It’s the kind where you bring your parents, they donate money, and you basically just celebrate the accomplishments of the year.

But I don’t really like going to their lunch table because, one, it makes me feel very creepy and unnerved. And also, one of them has a lunchbox. You know the type that has plastic on the front that changes what you see depending on the angle? I don’t know if I’m describing it accurately. Kind of like those phone cases where, if you look at it head-on, you can see what’s on the phone, but if you look at it from an angle or whatever, you just see black.

Well, they have one of those lunchboxes, and the person who has it—let’s just call him Alex—loves to run his nails across it. The sound of it just makes me want to crawl out of my skin and go die. I hate it.

So I just said to my friend, “I don’t really want to go to that table. Can you do it?” And they gave me this kind of weird look. Like the type of look you give somebody when they say something really messed up. And then they asked me why I didn’t want to go to the table.

I listed a bunch of the reasons I’ve just mentioned, and then they go, “You know that everybody at that table is autistic, right? So the reason you don’t like those people is because they’re autistic.”

And I sat there and thought, well, no, not really. I don’t like them for XYZ. But the more I think about it, all of those nitpicky things I mentioned are probably effects of them being autistic. And I don’t want to be ableist and not like people just because of their autism. That’s not right, and it’s not how I was raised. But I just... I don’t know how to force myself to like people I don’t like.

It’s made me think. All the way back through my whole life. How many times have I just disliked someone at work, or school, or just at the park, based on vibes? And the whole time, I was just being some ableist jerk who’s hating on neurodivergent people.

I really don’t know how to fix this, and I need to. Because this isn’t the type of person I want to be. It’s not the type of person I think I am. And I just... If it was just one guy who was autistic that I didn’t like, I feel like that could be okay. But it’s literally like eight people. I can’t dislike that many people who all share that in common without it being a reflection of me, not them.