Always Feeling 10 steps behind non autistic people

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Lady Strange
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13 Jun 2021, 7:57 pm

Does this tend to be a common feeling amongst autistics? I often feel this way. At my age I always figured somehow magically I'd have it "more together" by now, but now that I have figured out I'm most likely autistic realize this is why its never going to really happen. It just gets alienating around other people realizing how they live their lives and looking at mine and how far behind I am. I do have a job which is good, but never knew what really to do with myself. I've always just loved getting into special interests that make me happy but are of course useless for real work. Sometimes I feel like a job just gets in the way, but has to be done. I mean many my age have families, real houses, cars they own that are nice, and jobs that are decent, and friend networks, like actual many people they consider friends they can just do stuff with and hang around with. I can barely manage the like one or 2 distant friends I do have, and we go months between communications. Its a true mystery to me how people manage social lives. I get so down sometimes cause looking at my family with my cousins and sibling I am way behind all of them in terms of life experience. Ah well, I guess the sooner I accept it and try to make it work the best I can the better. I just get real anxious about the future.



auntblabby
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13 Jun 2021, 8:04 pm

i have nieces and nephews that make me look like like i barely graduated from the crib.



Lady Strange
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13 Jun 2021, 8:15 pm

Yeah I hear ya, my niece is in college and she talks about these experiences, how she's getting a house with her friends and they are going to live there while going to class, and her job and stuff. I am just flabbergasted because when I went to a little local 2 year school I didn't have any friends and felt like I was just trying to survive through. I lived at home, and didn't work, just would have been too much to handle. Course I didn't know about the autism back then, just thought I was a useless loser who didn't know why I couldn't seem to keep up.



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13 Jun 2021, 9:43 pm

there is an infamous old meme about people who had hoped to take a vacation on the italian riviera, but instead, when they got off the plane they discovered they were in holland instead. the NTs were likened to being like the italian riviera [sunny and fashionable] while the AS types were thought to be more like the tulip fields of holland [generally fair or gray skies, damp, a bit windy]. while the riviera would have been nice, there is also something nice, and calm, and forgiving, that comes with living among the tulips. i hope that analogy made sense.



Lady Strange
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13 Jun 2021, 9:44 pm

That's kind of a neat analogy, thanks! :)



auntblabby
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13 Jun 2021, 9:47 pm

^^^prego :) i always knew i remembered that analogy for a reason ;)



IsabellaLinton
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13 Jun 2021, 10:08 pm

You certainly aren't alone. I even feel like I'm ten steps behind autistic people.



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13 Jun 2021, 10:31 pm

I love that story. I'll take tulips over the riviera any day.


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Lady Strange
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13 Jun 2021, 10:32 pm

IsabellaLinton wrote:
You certainly aren't alone. I even feel like I'm ten steps behind autistic people.


Yeah its hard. It would be nice if we could have a place we could all live where we didn't have to try to keep up with everyone else and not have to struggle so much. Like a protected community or something.



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13 Jun 2021, 10:50 pm

the closest thing i've found to that cloistered community would be right here on WP :alien:



IsabellaLinton
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13 Jun 2021, 11:00 pm

Lady Strange wrote:
It would be nice if we could have a place we could all live where we didn't have to try to keep up with everyone else and not have to struggle so much. Like a protected community or something.


I like the idea of not trying to keep up, and not struggling, but the idea of a protected community gives me the creeps. In my ideal world I wouldn't be part of any social community. I'd be away from people in the middle of nowhere and not have to interact at all. I'm pretty sure I put the "aut" in autism, single-handedly.



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13 Jun 2021, 11:12 pm

^^^i have 90% of what you describe, living out in the sticks with my closest neighbor several hundred feet away from me.



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13 Jun 2021, 11:28 pm

If I'm stuck in the company of the kind of people who think a certain set of conventional goals is what life is all about, then I can start feeling left behind, but I try to avoid people like that, so mostly I just see myself as being on a different path, a better one for me. My goals are simply to survive and make myself feel as good as possible for as long as possible. Part of me feels that's superior to running in the rat race. The rat race has its critics and their arguments make sense to me.



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13 Jun 2021, 11:55 pm

having been separated from the rat race since 2006, has made it much easier for me to go my own path.



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14 Jun 2021, 4:22 am

Somebody explained to me long ago that there will always be people who are better at things than I am, be wealthier, better looking, more successful, more talented, etc. I was told that if I looked around I would also see people who were worse at things than I am, poorer, not as good looking, less successful, less talented, etc. It is very unusual for a person to meet expectations projected for them, or for life to turn out the way we thought it might.

I think from your recent posts that you are just beginning to understand how autism has worked in your life. I am newly diagnosed at age 68, and will be 70 this year. There is so much to sort out and so many things of the past to see in new ways now I know about autism, my own, and family dynamics, etc because of the way that autism worked all those years without any of us suspecting. It is such a relief to know everything was not "all my fault", but that most of my "failures" were struggles with my autistic neurology. best wishes. lets keep talking!


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Lady Strange
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14 Jun 2021, 6:59 pm

IsabellaLinton wrote:
Lady Strange wrote:
It would be nice if we could have a place we could all live where we didn't have to try to keep up with everyone else and not have to struggle so much. Like a protected community or something.


I like the idea of not trying to keep up, and not struggling, but the idea of a protected community gives me the creeps. In my ideal world I wouldn't be part of any social community. I'd be away from people in the middle of nowhere and not have to interact at all. I'm pretty sure I put the "aut" in autism, single-handedly.


That's ok. As I was going back over what I wrote I thought "wait hope that didn't come across as cultish", I think I'd like best to only interact with a few people and not super often.


autisticelders wrote:
I think from your recent posts that you are just beginning to understand how autism has worked in your life. I am newly diagnosed at age 68, and will be 70 this year. There is so much to sort out and so many things of the past to see in new ways now I know about autism, my own, and family dynamics, etc because of the way that autism worked all those years without any of us suspecting. It is such a relief to know everything was not "all my fault", but that most of my "failures" were struggles with my autistic neurology. best wishes. lets keep talking!


Yes I have been realizing looking back just how much it has worked in my life. Its like I keep discovering new ways it was there impacting my life when I didn't even realize what was going on. It is nice to know it's not some personal failure going on but quite literally something I could not help or control. Yes thanks for letting me talk, it helps to compare experiences, it is amazing how much it bleeds into every aspect of life.