Far Removed

I'm experiencing the world directly.  Others seems to be experiencing it through a screen.  Communicating and performing rituals are different endeavors, but too often they are not separate.  Language works best for communication when it's utilitarian.  Posturing confuses language, adding layers of code that obscure meaning.  This is the screen: a preoccupation with attitude presented symbolically, suggesting rather than saying.  This isn't an aspect of language that evolved naturally, like syntax.  Polite indirectness arises from something other than a need to communicate ideas and is imposed on language out of what I presume is a fear of each other. What if everyone said exactly what they were thinking?  Would there be more strife and unhappiness?  Is it necessary to protect ourselves and others from insufferable truths that we engage in polite obfuscation?  This seems counterproductive, but then I am largely outside the common human...

I have great trouble decoding hints, implicit meanings, and rhetorical questions.  Such great trouble in fact that it appreciably affects my ability to communicate well.  Nonetheless, I understand the concept of indirect language.  I know that people don't always say exactly what they mean.  What I don't often know is why or how to tell when they might be doing so.  I am only well equipped to handle the very clear, the glaringly obvious.  When communicating with me anything less than directness is a bad gamble. I'm continually surprised by how often people hide what they mean behind little language puzzles.  One can find people hiding even when there's no need to hide.  It seems to me that directness is perceived by many as rude, even on the smallest scale and in situations in which nothing is at stake. Obfuscation becomes second nature.  I will try to understand even when there's no hope that I will.  I've had to learn to ask for cl...

Symbolism isn't important to me.  This can cause problems.  To many, symbolism is of great importance.  If I say that I'm not interested in participating in ritual symbolism, said people can interpret that as a round rejection - or even as scorn.  Many it seems are wired to look for symbols everywhere no matter what.  They can hardly be blamed.  Symbols permeate human interaction.  Even language as a system is symbolic.  But I'm not wired that way.  I am wired for the explicit. I can interpret some symbols as easily as anyone else can.  Others, often common ones, confuse me.  And I frequently become confused about whether someone is employing symbolism or not.  When thus confused I make no decision in any direction.  I abandon the investigation.  Even when I understand symbolism, symbols only obscure meaning. I don't know why people want to obscure meaning.  So I assume they do so for nefarious reasons. ...

Recently I announced to both sides of my family that I would not be visiting on holidays anymore.  There was little response.  I made this decision for a few reasons. First: because I have a particular neurodevelopmental disorder, and because of the way it is expressed in me, I can't experience any motivation to socialize.  This may be difficult to understand.  Most people don't even know it's possible to have a persistent defecit, or even a lack, of desire to interact with others.  You can't see the problem, and you've never experienced it, so how do you know that it's real?  There is available plenty of clinical research about asociality, but instead of talking about that let's talk about phobias.  If someone says they have a phobia of balloons, there are two main kinds of response they might get.  The first is understanding.  The second is harassment.  An understanding person will believe someone when they say in all honesty that...

I need help in every aspect of my life.  It took my a very long time to realize just how much help I need.  Left to my own devices I have very little independent agency.  Outside of my creative endeavors I am not naturally inclined toward action.  I am absentminded to a fault, though I do remember to take care of myself.  I forget about chores, dates, and rent.  I cannot support others. On my own, I'm capable of trying to do things.  But I usually opt not to.  I can't see ways forward in the world.  When it's not clear what I should do, and when I can find no clarification of such, I do nothing.  I'm comfortable doing nothing.  Trying to act with no guidance causes me severe anxiety.  When pressed or judged I retreat.  I am comfortable retreating.  Being that the world is hopelessly confusing to me I rely heavily on the safety of inaction - the only safety I know.  Forced to leave my zones of safety I experienc...

When I was a child I broke my wrist.  Another child who was there when it happened said to me that a broken wrist was no big deal.  That when he broke his wrist at football practice he just shook it off.  With this he grabbed my arm and shook it, causing, predictably, extreme pain.  Why did he do this?  He was wrong about some things.  He was wrong about what was happening at football practice.  It could be that he interpreted any wrist pain of certain intensity as being indicative of a broken wrist and therefore believed without thinking that he was capable of repairing a broken bone by shaking it.  He had apparently misdiagnosed me, but he had done so in a very specific way.  He looked at what had happened to him and imagined that the same thing must be happening to me, but where did he get the certainty of this that allowed him to grab my broken wrist and cause me agony? He was young and inexperienced, yes.  But I have seen adults m...

I need repetition.  I don't seek excitement.  My small, quiet life might seem boring.  Boredom is predictable.  When I go out, I go into a world I can't interpret. I have no handhold anywhere there. So I need predictability to make me feel safe.  I keep routines I devise because I can know them. The World of Other People is crowded with signals.  There's pressure to be part of everything.  Gatekeepers to acceptance fold their arms and wait for me to impress them with my social acumen.  I know some signs but none well.  I have to think hard about every aspect of every interaction; I can't improvise.  Being outside my safe zone, forced to follow social rituals' mystifying protocol, I feel like I'm somewhere I don't belong.  It's a desperate, drowning feeling.  A squeezing, crushing.  I overload trying to process posture, context, facial expression, tone of voice, hints and intimations, trying to guess what I'm expected t...

Friendship looks good on paper.  People appear to enjoy their friendships and to want, or at least to expect, to have friends.  I don't have this experience.  I don't want friends. It took me a long time to understand that I have no desire for friendship.  As a child I thought I had to seek friendships because everyone around me wanted them.  It was part of trying to pass; I know that now but I didn't then.  I wasn't aware that other people didn't have to try to be like each other.  How could I have been?  I had no basis for comparison besides myself so I assumed everyone was like me.  I thought I was neurotypical and this was conducive to my feelings of inferiority.  I didn't know why I was so bad at being like everyone else.  It was because they were being themselves and I wasn't.  But I wouldn't realize that until long after my formative years were over. I was a very confused child.  I had few friendships and I wasn...

I want autonomy but I'm not inclined to do very much with it.  If I had perfect freedom to design my life I would design it so that it was small and quiet and so that I would need only to sit still and think in order to enjoy it.  I don't need to be in a stream of new stimuli.  I just want to look at things.  The world is a gallery I am obliged to pass through on my way to nothingness.   But there is pressure to seek excitement.  Or to live more, to engage, lest life pass one by.  I am perfectly happy to let life pass me by and I don't see why such would be a bad thing.  I don't collect experiences, perhaps because the emotions that are associated with experiences are for me very limited.  I am in general happier when I am not part of things.   Emotions aren't attractive to me.  I don't seek them any more avidly than I seek brief flashes of dim light.  This is not to say that I don't want to feel happy.  I...

It can be hard to understand asociality.  When I tell people that I have no impulse to socialize, some of them think I am misdescribing the experience of being reluctant or afraid to socialize.  I want to find a way to make it easy to understand what asociality is and what it's like for me. Here is the simplest explanation I can think of: the impulse to socialize is caused by an event that happens in the brain.  Some people never experience that event.  I am one of those people. I had trouble with this when I was young.  I didn't know that asociality was something that could happen.  I tried to make myself be social because I believed I had to.  The people around me were social and they seemed happy.  I wanted to be happy, so I tried to be social.  But that made me unhappy because I was forcing myself to do something that was not normal for me.  I became very confused.  The world seems hostile when you feel like you can't be you...