Emotional Strength

I do not like the social masking that comes with modern society, where politeness means that no one will actually tell you what is really going on. As an autistic person, I find myself living in my own little world because I do not understand the dance of intimacy that neurotypical people use as code. I say what I mean and mean what I say, often coming across as blunt to the people around me without realizing they think that because they’re too polite to just say, “can you tone it down? Ouch.” I am not a mind reader, and do not want to hurt anyone. But how do you know if you’ve hurt someone if they pretend they’re not hurt?

I have found that when I try to sugar coat things, the actual message is lost. When I say what’s on my mind, it is gravity’s rainbow to a conversation because people don’t know how to respond. I find myself seeking out other autistic people who have also stopped masking, because communication seems easier when neither person picks up neurotypical cues. They, too, just say what they mean and mean what they say.

It leads to a disconnect between neurotypical and neurodivergent society because only autistic people are taught to adjust. It is our job to learn to pick up social cues, it is our job to bend to the will of people who won’t bend toward us. A better way forward is to teach neurotypical people how to communicate with their autistic counterparts.

Right now, the axiom is “neurodivergents run in packs.”

I don’t think we’d keep to ourselves so much if there was a bridge between what we say and what neurotypical people hear. I find that when people ask me to explain what I mean, there is a jump in understanding quickly. If people take my words at face value, they’re generally interpreting them wrong.

This affects me greatly as a blogger because people will read me and the blowback will be vastly different than what I actually said, because their interpretation doesn’t match my thought process. It’s a natural give and take, but it doesn’t make me feel any better when people misconstrue my words and come at me when they’re angry.

For instance, saying that a friend wouldn’t understand me until her mother died, and she thought I was saying I wished her mother was dead. Absolutely not. There’s just no similar experience to losing one’s parent.

There’s no substitute for the process one goes through in the business of death. Trying to express that led the friend right to me being a terrible person because she thought I wished that on her. No, I wished for her to have a deeper understanding of me, and that’s all.

Once we got it cleared up, we were golden. But most people will not take the time to clear the air with me. They will just sit in their own perceptions of what I said and step away.

But they won’t step away from my blog. They just stop talking to me altogether. Because I can read stats by city rather than by country, I have stepped away from looking at them. I am making the modern society around me better by ignoring them, because I know where my friends (former and present) live……….

I don’t want to know if they’re reading, because my writing transcends them. I would rather believe that my audience is all strangers who don’t mind that I scream into the void. I know I am doing the right thing because everyone loves that I write about my real feelings until they’re the ones in the crosshairs.

My writing loses value to them, but strangers take home the actual message.

In that way, I do not belong to anyone. I belong to everyone. I want this blog to reflect my modern society because I am not a subject matter expert on anything but me.

I feel that I am not the best person to write about society at large, just to make my own voice heard in the darkness, one among many. I have the opportunity to record my life as it happens, so that hundreds of years from now, people will see how I lived. My blog doesn’t matter because I’m popular, it matters because it’s here.

There are many anonymous people that have contributed to museums, and that’s how I feel about my digital life. It’s not a goal to be well-known, it’s a goal to have contributed to the legacy that all bloggers will leave behind when they die.

I don’t think about my blog in terms of fame and popularity, which is good because I haven’t had as much success as people like Dooce and Jenny Lawson. I have watched both of them, along with Wil Wheaton, climb the ladder into the stratosphere and it’s not a life I think I want, particularly since Dooce and I both share the same diagnosis and it killed her.

I don’t want to be an influencer or a mommy-blogger, though if I have stepkids they’ll know I’m a writer and be included when they want to be. Some of the best entries I’ve written have been inspired by the children in my life, and I wouldn’t want to give that up. But thinking about it is long into the future because I’m not bound to anyone. I may be single until I die just because my first priority is writing.

I don’t think that my duty is to change modern society as a blogger. I think it is my duty to record it.