I'm about to say that I'm 10 years older, but now I start to understand that 10 years is nothing. As I've taught from my dating experience, my emotional behavior lags about 7 years behind...
My ex-girlfriend (she was 18 at the time we met) said that she would never believe that I was already 24, because I behave like a child. I couldn't complaint. She was right. Actually I've never believed that she really loved me. I guess she just wanted take advantage of my generosity. I shouldn't call her girlfriend, because she's never reached that status in NT terms. She would never call herself like that. But for me.. let's say it was an unique emotional experience and social exercise.
Actually, I've never had a real relationship and during all my life I've met only 3 real friends. I mean NT people who like me as I am for some reason. I put most of my effort into my work to give my unfortunate life a meaning; however, something is missing there... Nobody of those NT friends know anything about AS. They just understand me as "a genius" (no I'm not - I'm just average aspie, but I can imagine that some of my skills look extraordinary to NTs) and they just accept a fact that those people used to be weird.
Recently I met an extraordinary girl. She've behaved like she fully accepts me as I am and she even put much effort to reach status of "girlfriend" (in my point of view). Yesterday, she was in pretty bad mood and she told me all things she don't like on me. Basically, she listed all major symptoms of AS and at this moment I realized that it's high time to break up... She has found my behavior very odd and she asked me why I'm behaving like that. You should understand that AS is something completely unknown here in Central Europe and I was really in doubt whether she can accept the truth. However, she has superior social skills even in the NT world. For her, it was clear that I have an intension to tell her more, but I'm in doubt. I said that I cannot tell her the truth because I think she is not prepared to accept it. Then she laughed and said that she feels so superior to me that I simply cannot tell her anything she couldn't accept. At this moment I couldn't pedal back already and I told her the truth. Honestly, I'm convinced it was a mistake. She has indeed knew something about autism (actually, I'm afraid that she just saw "Rainman", but at least she tried to pretend that she know something about it); however, she has never heard of AS. After that, I said good bye to her and I hope she won't try to exploit it to taint my reputation in academia...
Actually this experience has convinced me that I really need a friend who can really understand my nature and problems I cope. My disadvantage is that I'm not beautiful or cute and I really envy those aspies who do not lack these inherited physical properties.
05 Jun 2008, 9:50 am
