The drama of not being weird enough

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I'm the same way, Greentea. When I was in school, people thought I was either gay (Mexico not being particularly gay friendly) or very stupid, or just trying to get attention (it didn't occur to anyone that it could be neurological). Afterwards, everyone thought I didn't like people and was very reserved or just very aloof, the more understanding people have thought I am very shy, but mostly people think that if I don't have friends and don't date that's because I don't want to, that it's a deliberate, conscious choice. I am sufficiently well-adapted that many aspies would probably think that I'm just a socially anxious NT (I do have social anxiety, as a result of bullying, but I stim a little, and as a kid I fit Tony Attwood's description to a T, from the awful handwriting and poor fine motor skills to the obsessiveness, mild sensory issues and of course all the social difficulties). At the same time, I'm not sufficiently well adapted that I can make friends normally or date.

I feel like if I pursued a diagnosis, they'd never give it to me. There's just not enough evidence. Yes I stim and have mild sensory issues, as well as social impairment, lack of coordination, toe walking, awkward gait, problems with routine changes, sleep issues, and obsessive interests. However - I still function really well, even though much of it is a front. I do have close friends - I just have a huge amount of trouble making new ones, and I don't flirt and have never hooked up with or had a relationship with a guy. But most people wouldn't guess there's anything wrong, so my social issues clearly aren't awful. They can probably explain lack of coordination as just being clumsy, and NTs have sleep issues and obsessions, too. I think the stimming is the only thing that points directly to there being some autism involved.

Yes, they call me an austronaut, clumsy, rude, blunt, antisocial - but they're sure it's because I don't give a damn.

People perceived me as smart, but weird while I was growing up. Today, I think the weirdness has become a thing of the past, but people perceive me as lacking confidence.

I have a suspicion that some of my friends are, though they don't know it. I see it in my father, some. There's a lot of people I don't see it in, though...the pod people aren't coming for me.

Actually, I feel a lot calmer knowing what the 'diagnosis' is. Next step is how to reconcile my tendencies with the outside world.

Yeah, I am the same. I like to THINK I appear normal. Nobody ever called me ret*d, autistic, etc.... Still, I AM wierd, or strange. I don't know if people would notice the AS characteristics or figure I do not have AS.

I certainly know where all of you are coming from.

I relate - I've been trying to explain this to my two close friends of late, trying to "come out of the Aspie closet" so to speak.

I think if you're fortunate and get the "high IQ" that seems to be fairly common with high-function, then you've got the ability to teach yourself how deal with routine and "casual" interaction - like not melting down when someone tries to strike up a conversation in an elevator, or being able to hold your own when you're 100% focused (like in a job interview). But maintaining a state of high-social-alertness is exhausting, and you can't keep it up indefinitely. In a new job I can manage for a few months, but inevitably I slip up, and then co-workers turn on me - they sense weakness or opportunity, or simply want to offload their stress onto an obvious victim.

I had that happen so badly once that I had to get litigious with an employer who decided to demote me from my senior position into a "back room" job - they wanted my "big huge brain" but they couldn't put up with my social ineptitude (to be fair, I made some pretty callous remarks, but that was just me being my good-'ol-blunt-self - funny that it never seemed to occur to them that I'd have a problem with being stripped of my seniority and shoved in a closet).

At any rate, my close friends refuse to believe that I have Asperger's. They're not really interested enough to try and understand AS, but they're fully prepared to assert that I don't have it - I'm just "socially awkward". Frustrated, I asked them for advice on a social situation I've been obsessing about, and both of them (in a sort of eerie "damn, that's so NT" way) used the phrase "you'll just know" in regards to the other person's possible reaction to my position...

"You'll just know..."

That's the problem, isn't it. There are a lot of different secondary symptoms with AS, but the core issue is not being able to recognize/interpret non-verbal communication from other human beings. The 98+% of the population who "get it" can't even begin to conceive that there are folks out here who don't.

At the moment, I'm trying to frame a response to my friends, though it's certainly hard to do so in an "un-dramatic" fashion.

What I want to say is - "So, if you were in this position, and you were *blind*, then how would you see how the other person is reacting? Tone of voice? What if you were blind and deaf?" But while I think that is a fairly accurate description of what it's like to be AS in an intense social situation, nobody who's NT is ever going to grasp it - we have eyes and ears that apparently work, so it's simply impossible that we can't "see" how someone else is reacting to us.

Perhaps it's more like "emotional color-blindness" - sorry, I can't see "boredom" or "disrespect" or "disdain", and I can't tell the difference between someone who is genuinely interested and someone who is simply trying to be polite (and probably thinking "how the hell to I get out of this freakin' conversation with this loon").

In many ways, being physically disabled is *easier* (though the idea of being pitied for my neurological "malfunction" offends me greatly). A person who succeeds in any aspect of life with a visible disability is given at least some respect for that accomplishment (though I accept that most average folk would still feel uncomfortable socializing with someone who was missing a limb). A person who succeeds in functioning in the "normal" world with an invisible neurological disability is treated pretty damn poorly, and if we take the risk of asking others to help us overcome our own shortcomings it seems to be met with disbelief and (to my experience) disdain.

I wish I had something really positive to say about life in AS-Land at the moment - I mean, I honestly don't want to be anyone other than myself, but I really regret that the folks who don't have to live with this are so prepared to power-wash it under their chrome-steel-carpets.

Nick

I am in the exact same situation.

Tim

I'm on the fence... several Aspies here don't or didn't like me because of it... a lot of the time I couldn't relate to other Aspies in my social skills group because they were too wierd or I found their special interests boring... and the ones that liked to have fun had some rules, morals, whatever that got in the way!

I feel that all I do on here is kill threads.

Tim

Yeah. I was socially awkward, but I let go of some of my sanity to compensate. So now I'm just weird.

Also, I'm too chavvy for the goths too goth for the chavs... it's so limiting to have just one view of reality.

I have trouble making friends here just as much as I do IRL.
Nobody wants to be my friend.

Tim