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hopefulnebulaI think I need to get what I had to say earlier out, but I don't want to violate anyone's privacy. So I'll just edit out any of that stuff. It's more general than anything, anyway, so it isn't that hard.
Also bear in mind that I was in depression mode at the time, as I wrote this on the plane ride back home and hadn't taken my pill for over 24 hours (flying over 7 timezones sucks for keeping track of time).
(Crossposted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
asperger because it's applicable there as well)
How is it that everyone else I know can make friends so easily? How do they connect names to faces and remember, weeks or months later, which name belongs to which face? Is it just because everyone wants to look similar that every face looks the same to me?
And what about flirting? "Joanna" has a boyfriend and she's sitting across from me (traded to be away from me, no less) flirting shamelessly with the cute guy who's sitting between us. (He looks a bit like Tom Welling.) Meanwhile, he and I haven't been able to get past "so... hey... yeah." And when people do show interest in me, it's never in "that way." It's always curiosity. And just curiosity.
For as long as I can remember, I've been just that: like a glass sculpture locked up in a cupboard for its owner to show to guests. The only interest people ever show in me is a passing wonder. In sixth grade, it was a wart I had on my finger. Their interest lasted two weeks. The wart disappeared on its own the summer after that. "Elizabeth's infected!" lasted three years. (It didn't help that until I had it removed in ninth grade, I had a rather large mole on my forehead, right on my hairline.) After that, nobody gave a damn about me, but about what gadget I had brought to school that day. (Oh, for the days when having an iZone camera made you cool.) And yet they'd still trade me out of their cars (WITHOUT my knowledge or consent) for field trips. It's a long story, but that ended up biting ME in the ass in eighth grade.
In high school, at least, I felt more accepted. Whee. So instead of a glass sculpture, I was the most popular exhibit in the zoo. People always returned to my nonsequiturs and large vocabulary (certainly someone else at the area's best school knows the word "anthesis?" Guess not.) as a way to laugh at me while pretending to laugh "with" me. (Damn, I hate that cliche.) Sometimes I'd laugh too. But this year I realized how needlessly they belabored everything that had to do with me. I can count on one hand the number of real friends I have in real life. And people wonder why I spend so much time online? (They ridicule me for that, too, by the way.) Maybe because more people online are worth talking to. It's heartbreaking for me to realize that only four people in my entire life (relatives notwithstanding, of course) have ever bothered to care about me. Me. Not the spacey, oblivious weirdo who can't remember names for the life of her. Not the person who knows how to "save as" in the right file on the networked HS comps. Not the short kid with the weird nasal voice (had major sinus problems when I was little), not the person with a bad habit of interrupting, not the one person at my HS who knows the outcome of the Korean war (seriously, people have asked me about this. As in seniors have asked me.) but not the Friends finale. Am I so unapproachable that not even outcasts want to befriend me? "Rachel" told her mom a while ago that she admired how I speak my mind. Why could she not say that to my face? Am I still so "infected" that people can't even bear to compliment me in person? I thought hearing secondhand that someone was talking badly about you was painful. And yet here I sit, alone again because Joanna traded seats to be with her friends.
Whenever I talk about this with my mother or a teacher or even a counselor, they all give me the same advice: "You have to be a friend to have a friend." I am a friend. Or I do my damnedest. I approach people and talk with them. I invite them to do things with me and do everything friends are supposed to do with each other. Hell, in sixth grade I made a "classified ad" for friends and passed it around to my class, because at the time (end of the schoolyear, even), I had no one. Only one person even acknowledged it. What a sense of irony the Universe has, to give me people and then do everything It can to separate us!
"New starts"-- like the one on which I am about to embark-- are only false hope for me. I've done this twice before. Neither went particularly well, and I have no reason to believe this will be any different. Something like 60% of Centre students are from Kentucky. At the summer orientation, it was obvious that lots of them had gone to HS together, and their friendships and rivalries still stood. And once again, I feel like I'm intruding. The 300th wheel, even.
Isolation is the worst feeling I've ever experienced (and I've had minor surgery without anesthetic).
Also bear in mind that I was in depression mode at the time, as I wrote this on the plane ride back home and hadn't taken my pill for over 24 hours (flying over 7 timezones sucks for keeping track of time).
(Crossposted to
asperger because it's applicable there as well)How is it that everyone else I know can make friends so easily? How do they connect names to faces and remember, weeks or months later, which name belongs to which face? Is it just because everyone wants to look similar that every face looks the same to me?
And what about flirting? "Joanna" has a boyfriend and she's sitting across from me (traded to be away from me, no less) flirting shamelessly with the cute guy who's sitting between us. (He looks a bit like Tom Welling.) Meanwhile, he and I haven't been able to get past "so... hey... yeah." And when people do show interest in me, it's never in "that way." It's always curiosity. And just curiosity.
For as long as I can remember, I've been just that: like a glass sculpture locked up in a cupboard for its owner to show to guests. The only interest people ever show in me is a passing wonder. In sixth grade, it was a wart I had on my finger. Their interest lasted two weeks. The wart disappeared on its own the summer after that. "Elizabeth's infected!" lasted three years. (It didn't help that until I had it removed in ninth grade, I had a rather large mole on my forehead, right on my hairline.) After that, nobody gave a damn about me, but about what gadget I had brought to school that day. (Oh, for the days when having an iZone camera made you cool.) And yet they'd still trade me out of their cars (WITHOUT my knowledge or consent) for field trips. It's a long story, but that ended up biting ME in the ass in eighth grade.
In high school, at least, I felt more accepted. Whee. So instead of a glass sculpture, I was the most popular exhibit in the zoo. People always returned to my nonsequiturs and large vocabulary (certainly someone else at the area's best school knows the word "anthesis?" Guess not.) as a way to laugh at me while pretending to laugh "with" me. (Damn, I hate that cliche.) Sometimes I'd laugh too. But this year I realized how needlessly they belabored everything that had to do with me. I can count on one hand the number of real friends I have in real life. And people wonder why I spend so much time online? (They ridicule me for that, too, by the way.) Maybe because more people online are worth talking to. It's heartbreaking for me to realize that only four people in my entire life (relatives notwithstanding, of course) have ever bothered to care about me. Me. Not the spacey, oblivious weirdo who can't remember names for the life of her. Not the person who knows how to "save as" in the right file on the networked HS comps. Not the short kid with the weird nasal voice (had major sinus problems when I was little), not the person with a bad habit of interrupting, not the one person at my HS who knows the outcome of the Korean war (seriously, people have asked me about this. As in seniors have asked me.) but not the Friends finale. Am I so unapproachable that not even outcasts want to befriend me? "Rachel" told her mom a while ago that she admired how I speak my mind. Why could she not say that to my face? Am I still so "infected" that people can't even bear to compliment me in person? I thought hearing secondhand that someone was talking badly about you was painful. And yet here I sit, alone again because Joanna traded seats to be with her friends.
Whenever I talk about this with my mother or a teacher or even a counselor, they all give me the same advice: "You have to be a friend to have a friend." I am a friend. Or I do my damnedest. I approach people and talk with them. I invite them to do things with me and do everything friends are supposed to do with each other. Hell, in sixth grade I made a "classified ad" for friends and passed it around to my class, because at the time (end of the schoolyear, even), I had no one. Only one person even acknowledged it. What a sense of irony the Universe has, to give me people and then do everything It can to separate us!
"New starts"-- like the one on which I am about to embark-- are only false hope for me. I've done this twice before. Neither went particularly well, and I have no reason to believe this will be any different. Something like 60% of Centre students are from Kentucky. At the summer orientation, it was obvious that lots of them had gone to HS together, and their friendships and rivalries still stood. And once again, I feel like I'm intruding. The 300th wheel, even.
Isolation is the worst feeling I've ever experienced (and I've had minor surgery without anesthetic).
well...
Date: 2004-06-25 08:03 pm (UTC)Re: well...
Date: 2004-06-26 03:50 am (UTC)I personally have known about this for quite a while (well before it was the "gotta have"). When I was little my mom took me to all the doctors/therapists that young Asperger kids are recommended to see, and it wasn't well-known enough at the time for it to have come up as an option. But it's fairly obvious that for me it's real...
Re: well...
Date: 2004-06-26 05:50 pm (UTC)I'm glad to be of help. Yes, I know where to find you. Although, for someone who can't remember names, you seem to do pretty well with mine. ;)
Re: well...
Date: 2004-06-26 06:09 pm (UTC)Re: well...
Date: 2004-06-26 06:14 pm (UTC)*smooch*
Date: 2006-04-07 06:31 am (UTC)Damn girl why am I like, almost exactly like you, and in the ways I'm not now-you, WHY am I like younger-you?
*understands this exactly*