It makes me sick...

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I just had another one of those lovely days that reminds me why if there was a cure for AS I'd wanna pop it right now. I ended up driving out to another restaurant in the chain I work for to help them out since they had a corporate picnic today for their store and drive there was nice - had the music pumping, I was getting myself in the zone to take care of things. I got there and as usual I was a little overwhelmed and overloaded by all the things that were different about this store vs. the one I usually work with but within an hour I got myself squared away and felt like I was hitting it off there with everyone pretty well. On the other side of things there were 3 other employees from my store - 2 servers and a bartender, who came out as well. When I am in a situation where I'm meeting new people and things are going well I have a habit of pulling out all the stops, dropping all the one-liners I have at the right times, and making a good impression. Trouble is it works, better than what I feel I can maintain a lot of times.

Here's where it takes a turn for the sour - having things go well and seeing nothing but good attitudes toward me had me wanting to chit chat with some of the other people from the store I work at, ask how they were doing, if they were making better money or now - you know, that kind of chitchat. I didn't get the brush but I still got that tone which is a reminder of what my status is where I actually do work on a regular basis. I got kind of minimal mumbled answers, its like a few people at my store talk to me and get along with me pretty well while the rest are either ambivalent, kinda politely as possible give me the post when I do talk to them (ie. they like me as a worker but don't want me feeling I have association with their group), and some others kinda treat me like I'm bugging em or they aren't in the mood even if they aren't even busy. These coworkers were kinda of the second type and thing that makes things more uncomfortable and a bit weird - my roomate has been partying with a lot of girls, good friends of both of ours, and the the guy who lives there who we've also partied with - the bartender is one of his roommates. I've never not gotten along with him but again, I get status posted or usually get less than enthusiastic toned replies if I say hi to him or whatever. Finally my roommate's had a chance to meet and chill with him and what bugs me, that's going to make that whole thing even more akward because while he's slowly finding his way around the other side into my group of friends probably I'm still going to see that posting behavior a lot and it's going to be a lot more akward. One of the newer servers who works at my store (wasn't there tonight though) is also a friend of the girls who we all mutually know and her also, I get that feeling that I would not want to see her outside of work because I'd be 'cool' outside of work and that guy no cool person wants to talk to inside of work - again, really f'd up stuff and I'd hate to watch em go through the inward fits of trying to reconsile all that.

Anyway, I sat back mentally in a sense while I was there working, thought about the fact that when I came back to my original store almost all of those same people seemed really glad to see me back, acting like they'd liked me all along but just never expressed it - then back to the same old. At this place toward the end of the night, although I was still doing well with everyone I still felt a lot of my AS subtleties were showing through, not of the variety that jars people but stuff that subtly odd-angles em and creates akward moments. By the time I was done with my job, I was thinking "Please - get me the f' out of here, I want to be out and not see this place again". Watching things slowly decline over a few weeks and get weird is something that makes me really sick and it's heartbreaking but its something that tends to happen - then after those 2 weeks I might hit another high functioning patch that brings things back up a little, then I drop em a little again - all that of course while people respect me as a worker and I don't say anything weird its the changes in my nonverbals, my timing, and most of what hurts me is what I won't do or the one-liners they might set me up for that I won't spit mostly because at times I will be too overloaded to respond properly. Driving home I put on a good cd, tried to relax, felt like I wanted to break down and cry (though I knew it would take a lot more than this and I've been through this so many times and so many ways that I just can't summon up tears for anything less than the absolute and most earthshattering moments of anger or frustration).

Well, I think you can see what I mean - being into the NT headspace this deep is weird just because in so many ways I feel like I really am one but at the same time I get checked, blocked, really feel like I bring it on myself even though I can't help it (the woulda shoulda coulda's are still something I have a bad case of when those things happen and it's a real hard habit for me to break). I really just wish that I could be who I really am, have all the social skill extensions I need to manifest that properly, and who knows - being PDD NOS pervasive developemental disorders tend to get better with time. Still though, it really sucks to feel like despite your best efforts to be yourself and present yourself well that you're slowly slipping, it's kinda like drowning in quicksand in a way.

I could not follow the plot line. That is a lot of ins and outs and what-have-yous. Are you sure you're AS? All of those convolluted social dynamics you speak of; I would be lucky to be aware of 1/3 of it all. Maybe if I had a bulletin board with photos of all the characters, and connected them with strings (like in cop movies), over time I could figure out what the hell is going on . . . and then it would be based on logic + assumptions and could be totally wrong!

I know how hard days like that can be, I have enough of them myself. It really sucks being so aware of all the dynamics, knowing what people are thinking about you, but not being able to do anything to improve their perception. (I was never very aware of those dynamics when I was younger - it seems to be increasing more and more in time though and it really sucks. I'd rather be blissfully unaware, especially if I can't do much to fix the negative angles.) As nice as the higher-functioning days are, in a way it's almost not worth it because people set their standards for you higher... then you hit a day when you can't come near those standards... On the flip side though if you have enough good days then when a bad one comes along people are more likely to write it off as just a bad day - everyone has those. I have a coworker who's wired very similarly to us and I see her go through this stuff all the time too - it can be pretty painful to watch.

And being in a different situation from the usual - all that sounded familiar too. Doing well at first and then watching it go downhill. I've never run into a situation though where people would be seeing me as a coworker as well as socially - the possibility has come up a few times and I've always been glad that it didn't end up happening, basically for the reasons you said.

I actually have PDD-NOS, my parents had been telling me it was AS since 11 and in effect its real close to AS. I also have noticed something else real uncanny about myself - as much as the Autism Quotient, Empathy Quotient, and Systematic Quotient tests look like junk po psychology they tend to hold true and I've maybe seen one other person on some other boards who didn't even fully believe she was AS score like I did. Truth be told though I do have a problem keeping track of things when all that gets stacked in the immediate here and now, I can kinda keep track but again, the world I live in is pretty busy and there's always something going on. What sucks for me is regardless of whether or not I particularly have the AS people reading problems I still have the people-reaction problems, being different, having my social skills fall apart at times (far more often though I know exactly what I want to say but am so neurologically strained and out of energy that I can't say it). What's sh-- for me is being in the zone, getting it, and still being forced to watch things crash and burn with full enough knowledge to feel just about the full blame - lends a real feeling of hopelessness to things.

Yeah, thats the irony. You have to act as absolutely normal as you can if you have the capacity and push yourself harder and harder to beat that last 5% of the road to get there but it's the hardest one to push and as you said, when people's expectations of you get more and more normal the things you can't do and the up and down cycles start catching weirder and weirder types of social friction.