Forced Social Interactions

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Assisted Transportation, small talk, Verbal Interaction

I use Assisted Transportation, i.e whenever I venture out I call a cab. I hate having to deal with cab drivers verbally. *Small Talk*. This Morning I went out to fetch a package at the post office and buy some honey at the store, for my Wife who is sick with the flu. The journey out was ok. I got into the cab, handed over my AT-card and all was well. By the time I was ready to go home I was on the phone with my wife. Cab drives up and I get in, I hand over my AT-card, tell the cabbie that I am on the phone and cannot/will not speak, and sit back for the drive home. And the cabbie just doesn’t get it – he keeps talking to me. I had to tell him TWICE after the initial time that I was on the phone, and the last time I had to raise my voice to get through to him! Note that it is common that when I raise my voice (no yelling) the cabbies in this area threaten to throw me out of the cab “for being aggressive and threatening”. So I immediately had a pang of fear that he would stop the car and yell at me to get out.

I hate when people think it is my OBLIGATION to respond to their inane chirpings that violate my person by not accepting my verbal boundaries. People don’t understand why I dislike neurotypicals so much. This is one of many reasons. They have no respect for simple boundaries. They demand that I adapt to their silly little social games, social games that has no real purpose or meaning.

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my receiver is broken

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loneliness, social rules, unwritten rules

for some reason i just don’t compute with social media. or with people on social media. i am either too blunt or too subtle. either way it seems that i end up hurting people or pushing their buttons in ways i never intended. it is discouraging. it makes me feel insecure and odd – even in the autistic community. there are unwritten rules everywhere – ‘do this’, ‘don’t do that’, ‘do this, but not that way’, ‘do that, and do it the right way’ – it is infuriating, confusing and depressing.  it is also scary. of course i won’t agree with everybody i meet, and some wont agree with me. it is all those unwritten rules – ‘remember, you are with us now – have to do it the way we do it’. yes. i read the rules. ‘not those rules, the other rules’ – what other rules? ‘the rules we are not telling you about’.  OK – so even in the autistic community there are rules that are hidden, unspoken. and i am somehow supposed know them through some sort of secret radio waves? my receiver isn’t pinging me, so it must be broken. and right now i feel very much alone and lonely. i wonder when my receiver will be repaired.

home-assistance

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accepting help, cleaning, clutter, home-assistance, shame

today was home-assistance day. i hate it. not because it means i have to do household chores like cleaning and washing dishes. i don’t like doing any of those, but it’s ok to do it  together with the home-assistants. i don’t like it because i have to ‘socialize’. i have to ‘be in charge’ and ‘know what needs doing’ and that takes a lot of energy. then there is the ‘crowdedness’ of having ‘strangers’ so close. it is draining. i often have to spend the rest of the day unloading and decompressing.

accepting help is difficult, because although i know that i need the help due to my neurodifference, it has not always been that way. there was a time when i did not know i was neurodifferent, when the difficulties i had with cleaning, washing dishes, going to appointments and such were labeled, ‘laziness’ , ‘slobbiness’ and ‘unwillingness’. all this created a lot of shame. shame that accompany me every day, and most intensely when it is time for home-assistance each monday and friday.

shame is a very odd feeling in some ways, as it makes me both want to hide three feet below the floor and at the same time scream and hit everything around me in fury. it is difficult to participate in the chores when one feels like an earthworm on fire.

n.e.d 2

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attempted bullying, lies, manipulations, n.e.d, naked emperor, nekkid emperor, smoke screens

ok, it’s time to revisit an old post. the one about my n.e.d, nekkid emperor detector (yes, it is a reference to the story by HC. Andersen)

a new friend of mine (keeps a blog in swedish, among other things about having adhd) shared one of his posts on FB, and someone responded in a way that told him this person was ‘profiling’ (like a psychologist would, or like someone who wants to put someone down would) him, his n.e.d picked it up and he responded by revealing the ‘readings’ of his n.e.d. then he asked me what i thought about his reply. as he asked an honest question, i responded in kind. that the initial question “why did you respond in that way?” would have sufficed. that even though he knew he was being profiled, and actually had the right to be offended, revealing the ‘n.e.d-readings’ was not called for, and could even put him in trouble.

see, in a world where the vast majority are neurotypicals, (who to a large extent do not like neurodifferents) it is not always a good thing that they are aware that we have super talents that can ‘see through’ their  smoke screens, lies, attempted bullying and manipulations.

some times it is enough that i know that i am being ‘bullshitted’ – i do not have to do anything about it, except perhaps be careful around the person bullshitting me.

the trick is to know WHEN to make those n.e.d-readings public. in my personal experience the ‘when’ is most often when there is serious danger to third person, or when i am really hurt. it is a bit like superman – he needs a ‘day-job’ and a regular identity, and then when there is real need, he becomes superman and saves the day.

friends…

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calls, friends, loneliness, reciprocation, relationships

in real life i do not have any friends. except my wife. some 10-12 years ago i was told that if i was always the one calling and initiating social stuff, the relationship(s) were imbalanced and unequal. so i stopped calling the few friends i had, to give them a chance to reciprocate. they never did. even people who claimed i was part of their family, said they loved me, never called me once in those 10-12 years. the only person who ever gave me any explanation was the one i had been friends with the longest – “you are too much”, he said.

too much what?

i don’t know, and i am not likely to ever know. yes, i am bitter, and i am lonely. and confused.

apart from the home assistance team that comes around twice a week to help me clean and a paid personal contact whom i meet once a month i have no social connections in real life.

grown-up school

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grown-up, school, social rules

a new friend posted on his blog (in swedish) about the need for some sort of grown-up school for nds. i can respect his opinion that such a school would be a good thing – to help nds get by easier in life among nts.

but i really think it’s a bad idea. for several reasons.

1. who says the nts are right in their ways of socializing. considering that the majority of people are neurotypicals, and the world in general is a hard, cruel and unaccepting place, where ‘survival of the fittest’ is the foundation of interactions between people and nations, it seems to me that the world could do much better with a touch of neurodifference.

2. why should nds have to change, adapt, adjust their ways. for one our ways are often more honest, direct and thoughtful, than accepting. when i am among nds i am allowed to be who i am in a way i have never seen or experienced among nts.

perhaps it is the neuroptypicals who need to learn from us, not the other way around. after all, we are only wishing and wanting to learn the social codes of nts so we can fit in and be accepted, not because they are better.

but is that really acceptance? are nds really accepted into the societal fabric if we act and speak like nts? no, not really – we are ‘added’ to the societal fabric because our neurodifference is not as prominent, as visible and tangible when we act and speak as nts. that is not acceptance, that is discrimination.

i don’t want to help the nts discriminate against me.

‘like’

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alone vs. lonely, communication, conversation, facebook, small talk, social conventions

‘like’. what does it mean? when people hit ‘like’ beneath at post or comment, what do they mean?

do they LIKE the contents of the post? or do they like me? are they simply telling the me that they read the post? are they saying they agree with the contents or me? or are they hitting ‘like’ because i‘liked’ one of their posts?

if they ‘like’, then why not comment, and say so out loud and clear? it seems facebook is a community that communicates through ‘likes’ – yet does anyone really know what ‘like’ means? if no one knows what ‘like’ really means, how is that any true communication? what are we really saying to each other?

the social conventions of the internet, and of facebook is confusing. and lonely.

the war within

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alone vs. lonely, small talk, social conventions

i hate it when my neurons collide. some days i am at war with myself. my addie thrive in company, charges his batteries around people. likes to goof around just hanging and chat. my aspie thrives alone, in quiet and focusing on what he likes at the moment.

i joined a few new groups on facebook. my addie loves the easy, relaxed way people just post and converse. my aspie hates all the small talk and superficial yapping. he wants substances. talk that means something. so his energy is not squandered. my addie keeps coming up with silly jokes or just wants to surf from person to person doling out ♥♥♥s.

and then both end up depressed.

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social rules

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neurodifferent, neurotypical, social rules

social rules are bogus. every NT (neurotypical) claims their existence. and they can enumerate them down to the last period. nobody follows them. not really. especially not if they can come up with an excuse not to do so. they always can. they will always punish an ND (neurodifferent)for failing to follow them. either by ignoring the rules when they interact with you, but demanding that you follow them or by changing the rules when they interact with you, so that you end up violating the rules no matter what.

this was a great mystery to me. the truth is that there are two sets of rules – one set that is basically ‘on paper’ (though they have never been written down) which they demand we NDs follow and one set which changes from day to day, situation to situation, person to person, all at the discretion of the NTs.

they demand that we admit to being wrong, but rarely or never do so themselves. and then accuse us of being weak and cowardly for admitting to be wrong and apologize.

they demand we be courteous and civil, but rarely or never are so themselves. and then accuse us of being ass-lickers and manipulative when we are courteous and civil.

they demand that we ‘read between the lines’, but rarely or never do so themselves. and then accuse us of assuming things when we ‘read between the lines’.

they demand that we be consistent, but rarely or never are so themselves. and then accuse us of being rigid and inflexible when we are consistent.

they demand that we adapt and adjust to their society, but have no problem excluding us as ‘mentally deranged’ on a daily basis. and then they accuse us of not wanting to ‘assimilate’.

they demand that we accept their excuses for not complying with the social rules, but they rarely or never do so themselves. and then they berate us for using our disability as an excuse for not complying with their social rules.

the more i read and learn about adhd and as, the more i agree with people in the deaf community about segregating and creating a culture apart from ‘normals’.

n.e.d

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being manipulative, being wrong, double standards, lying to oneself

i am the boy who cried ‘he has no cloths on’. i have this uncanny ability to detect when people are lying – to themselves, to me, to others. i call it the ‘nekkid emperor detector’. it ranges from the feeling that something is slightly fishy about something or someone; to the absolute knowledge that something or someone is false. logical fallacies for instance. or hypocrisy. i might not be able to say EXACTLY what is amiss – but i KNOW something is. yes i have lost friends because of this – because naturally i cannot keep my mouth shut. i can for the life of me not understand what is so bad about admitting being wrong, having double standards, lying to oneself, being manipulative, etc.

it seems like such a waste of energy and time.