Madam Autism

This immediately clocked me in the beginning and now I need to rant about why.

People who know me will hear “have difficulty connecting with others” and think that’s not me because I talk to people so easily in a lot of situations. The old me would’ve even think the quote doesn’t fit me at all because I always made new friends wherever I went as a kid and even as an adult I tend to find people around me I feel like are “my people” in a crowd of “not my people”.

But “connecting” is the key word here. (When I’m in the right headspace) I’m great at talking to new people, even sometimes getting them to open up and talk about things they don’t normally talk about because I’ll skip small talk and get deeper quicker than others and the trauma dumpers and trauma “nobody cares”-ers LOVE ts. But, at least to me, connecting feels like a connection. Like this person is one of my people. Not like the “my people” I mentioned earlier. That was people who are similar enough to me that I can confidently interact with them. This “my people” is the people in my life I’d actually be torn apart to lose. People who if they started hating me I’d become distraught. The people I actually truly care about.

That’s really rare for me. I’m good at matching people’s energy and the type of people I am comfortable talking to is a wide enough range that there’s always someone around who fits the criteria. And when I’m socially forced to talk to someone, I can check their vibe and fit the kind of person they would want to talk to. I can figure out how to make people smile and laugh and feel comfortable around me. It’s a skill I learned early on and I have pretty privilege plus kindergarten teacher personality so I tend to be seen as palatable by the average person.

But talking to people was always more about survival than making connections. In social situations you always need a partner for a class project or someone you can stay with at the party when you feel like an outsider.

“Difficulty connecting with others”. I say this phrase describes me because I’m good at making people like me, but that’s not connecting. Connecting to me means I would care if they suddenly dropped out of my life. Not because I’m worried they’re gonna hurt themselves or something, but because I just want them in my life. Because they make me happy. And that’s just not something I have a lot of. I have plenty of friends. I have very few connections. Maybe one or two people I have I actually feel really connected to. But when I sit and think about it, I know I can always meet other people and make new friends. I don’t feel a pang in my chest when I think of losing most of my “loved ones”. I might cry if my boyfriend dumps me but it’s not because I can’t live without him it’s because breakups are sad and I feel like I did something wrong. When I miss people I don’t miss their personalities or their smile, I miss the fact I had someone to text in the middle of the night or someone I could talk about cartoons with etc. If I lose all my friends I’ll be sad because I don’t have friends anymore and need to start over and now that I’m unmasking it’s a little harder to make people like me for more than one interaction.

Maybe I’m just in one of my moods where I’m severed from my real emotions because this is all hypothetical and if these people left I would actually miss them. But I don’t think it is… maybe in the morning or a day or two I’ll come back to this and have something different to say.

Made dinner with friends and went home with a condensed brick of fresh spaghetti

Idk I think about A from time to time because none of the teachers liked him and gave him a hard time and he deserved it sometimes because he did joke around and goof off and said cuss words and talked about not school appropriate things. But I knew back then that if I got to know him I’d see he was actually pretty smart and fun to talk to and a good person. And I feel that way about every asshole kid I meet.

Adults you meet have been assholes for too long most of the time and trying to change them will only hurt you. But kids? Kids have time to grow up learning the world isn’t as bad as they think it is. They aren’t as bad as some people might say they are. Unless a kid is being physically violent, my first reaction to bad behavior is always to talk about it. A lot of kids don’t even get what they’re doing is wrong so I start there and if they know it’s wrong it’s often because something is wrong and they’re acting out as a cry for help. Maybe they’re not being beaten at home or smthn that huge but maybe their best friend just told them they don’t wanna be friends anymore and that’s why they yelled at the quiet kid for sitting too close to them. And talking about whatever that reason it tends to help a lot

If you don’t wanna hear all about the cozy games part itself, at least watch the last 10 minutes