I have hinted at this in previous posts but never explicitly said this: a massive part of dealing with autism is other people. The vast majority of people will be kind and understanding, even if they cannot understand. There will be some few among them who will try very hard to atually reach some level of understanding. They will likely be the ones with whom you will make firm friends.
For every positive, there is (unfortunately) a negative. There are people out there who do not try at all to understand or be understanding. Some few will think you are a faker or a dramatist. They will often try to "snap you out of it", or force you to learn to control it. These people are not worth the time of day you spend talking to them. Ironically, they are sometimes the ones who appear to be the most understanding or nice/approachable people.
I fell into this particular trap yesterday. I made a split second choice last week to go to an Open Day at Strathclyde University (two hundred miles away) with a couple of girls in my year who I have known for years but never really been close to, until recently. They asked me if I wanted to join them, and (as Strathclyde is my second choice of university) I said yes. All was well for the first hour of the journey, but form there, it all went south (literally and metaphorically).
They started quipping at me, I can take a joke quite well, but four hours of it gets wearing. It was constant. The way back was no different. I grew angry, but hid it. I tried to joke back but they instantly took offence. I put that down to different senses of humor and left it at that.
I told them that I could not tell when they were joking and asked them if they could make it more obvious. Instead, they turned that into a running joke. Every time they made a joke, they would grin grotesquely and expect me to feel better! Hardly the response they got, particularly while they were laughing about how socially clueless I am.
After a while, I wound up (in typical Asperger's tendency) losing my temper rather dramatically. Suddenly, I was the bad guy. Suddenly, the girls appeared justified in what they were saying to me. Suddenly, I felt like I was nothing.
I got home after the row and felt drained (and not just because I was up at some ungodly hour in the morning). My Mum knew that something was wrong, but as I told her that I was not yet ready to talk about it, she left me be. She's really good like that: she knows when to push me for information, and when to leave me be. The next day progressed as normal save for the fact that I felt an anger in my gut the whole time. When I got home, I snapped at my Mum out of the blue for a mistake I had made. Once we had cooled off, I explained the problem to her properly.
All she said was, "The cruel little b***hs". She later told me the most important message of all. As an autistic person, you must not care about how others view you, at least those who you do not like.
I can tell that the girls thought that I was putting on my Autism, that I was just a brat who had never learned how to take a joke and was used to getting his own way all the time. I can tell that the girls were wholly ignorant to the fight I have each and every day to make myself appear normal. Each joke they made was considered, emotionally, then logically, in order to make a decision as to whether I should take offence or not. Each straight face was scrutinized intently in the hope of gleaning some level of understanding as to its meaning. Each moment of eye contact had to be thought about. Each word had to be considered. All on five hours sleep. Such fun!
The girls no longer talk to me, and you know what, I don't even care. If they were willing to be so cruel as to act as they did to me and force me to feel like crap when I fought back, they are not worth the breath of my lungs. Take my advice: fight for those you care about, ignore those who you don't.
As always, ask me any questions in the comments box. I would also like to request that you let me know how I am doing with this blog and any improvements I could make in the box. I hope to put up a new post every Wednesday, though if I have a long list of unpublished posts, there's a chance I will put some up during the rest of the week.
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