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This.
This is why people who stay in my life are neurodiverse like me!
this!! I swear I lost like all my friendships bc of this, like I had a group of friends in hs that one day I realized โhuh I havenโt talked to this people in a whileโ and popped in to say hi and they were all awkward?? because they hadnโt seen me in a while?? and thatโs when I realized that friendship works different for them?? I was like yeah I havenโt talked to you in like four months but itโs not like Iโve forgotten about y'all why would anything change, and they were all like we havenโt talked to you in four months why are you here again acting like nothing happened? and it was really confusing for me
YEAH! THAT!
Also I have a thing where I just put the people on pause. If I donโt see them or contact them, my brain kinda put them in stasis. I donโt think about them nor misses them, and I stay on what I last knew about them (how they look, what they study/work). So when we meet again Iโm like โwait, youโve aged?โ and I have the same familiarity with them thanI had before.
Anyway all my mutuals I havenโt messaged in forever - this is why
oh my gods this makes so much sense??? there are people who i havenโt talked to at all for literally over a year and weโll pick up like nothing happened, but for their people itโs just likeโฆโฆ falling apart but onesided???? i think weโre still on the same level but actually weโre strangers??
Ohhhhhh
OHHHHHHHHHโฆ.
Ok but listen, on the other side of this, as a person who moved hundreds of miles away from everyone i knew and then became a hermit for several years, it was SUCH A FUCKING RELIEF to get in contact with an old friend and have him be like, โmy friendship levels do not degrade, so in my mind we are still awesome close buddiesโ and i almost fkn cried. I thought he would be mad or would have moved on because i had slacked on my reaching out to him and staying in touch and doing all the friendship things. But NOPE. 800 miles of distance, depression, and life changing circumstances didnt steal our friendship and i am SO GRATEFUL.
#came back to tumblr after four years #lottie and I immediately went like that spiderman meme yknow tags via @rudjedet
I have literally no friendship degradation whatsoever. I will not have spoken to someone for 5 years or more, and theyโre still as much a friend to me as if I had only seen them yesterday. Iโm just very bad at communicating if someone is not in my direct orbit. So when Sonja reappeared on this site I basically screeched into her notes like a banshee because I was delighted and we picked straight back up where weโd left off.
Happy to go on the record that I donโt expect regular contact and will welcome hearing from people after a long time
Holy shit, I didnโt actually realize this was a Thing.
Crazy to me that within neurodivergence there are wildly different experiences at play here. For me at least, degradation isnโt a slow thing, itโs total black and white. If I donโt talk to you in a while, youโve basically become a stranger to me. I have to re-learn how to interact with you based on how you yourself have changed.
Like, my sister can maintain relationships with our relatives across the country. I canโt. When Iโm asked why I literally throw my hands up and ask โwhat am I supposed to say?โ How lifeโs been going! Ok but I canโt just dump that on a stranger, vulnerability like that ainโt a light switch itโs like turning the power back on in Jurassic Park.
Meanwhile Iโve been told my whole life โif you want to talk weโre hereโ ok but 3k miles and 3 hours time difference make you totally out of sight out of mind. In the room with them? All is fine. On the phone however and itโs like Iโve never met these people in my life.
Which translates to โI have to maintain an impossible level of energy and investment and do all the work keeping communication going otherwise this whole thing dies.โ Which is exhausting, if we only communicate over distance. And yet. Iโve lost friendships with the understanding that if I did not keep texting first, we would never interact. So the paranoia ainโt wrong.
