"Tharr Be Monsters" Many times in my life people have feared me for unknown reasons. Most of the time it has been strangers trusting their (incorrect) gut instinct about me based on my appearance, and idiosyncratic actions. In these cases, it's a lot easier to chalk these situations up to their misunderstanding of your intent and walk through that information. After all, they don't know you right? What's much harder is when you have cultivated a relationship with an acquaintance, co-worker, or friend only to have it come crashing down in the exact same way. Many times I will have had several conversations about people fearing me with people who would eventually do the exact same thing. You probably read this comic and though. "I didn't get it." Well, neither did I. Because, like you, I did not know what got me to this point. The person in this comic was a college friend who was mutual friends with the person we were talking about. The person we were talking about had been doing something behind my back that I didn't find out until later and had been building me up as some kind of monster to make it easier in his own mind to do the things he did to behind my back. As if I "deserved it." While he was building this up to himself, he was also building it up to mutual friends of ours in the close-knit "nerd group" we were both a part of. So when he finally severed our relationship, and it got brought up in this conversation, whatever sorrow, or anger I may have had no matter how much I hid them, were magnified by this person's insecurity, and preconceived notions of me. And further amplified by the lies, and stretched truths of my ex-friend. So I became in his eyes, the monster he already believed me to be. When you are Autistic, these things often go completely unsolved even with all the facts, because you have to factor in personality types, insecurity, intent, ulterior motives, and many other things that do not come standard with our way of thinking. People in this mode aren't interested in the truth. You often cannot pull them back out of it no matter how hard you try. No matter how true your words, or pure your actions. At that point, it's almost always better to walk away. -The Monster
