A common phrase we often hear from NT's is "You cannot choose your biological family, but you can choose the people you surround yourself with..." Which goes to say that you have the ultimate control over who is in your life and who is not. Umm... really? Cause as an autistic adult I have never found any statement to be more wrong, confusing and stressful than this one. And here's why.
Ever since I was little, I didn't really care who is in my life. It didn't really matter and everybody looked the same to me, I could not tell who was different and in which way. I remember distinctly in high school having a black classmate (which is a very rate thing in Greece) and it never dawned me as something noteworthy or even noticeable until somebody else mentioned it. Same thing happened when I met people with physical disabilities, different stylistic choices etc. It's not that I didn't notice or that I didn't care, it's just that it didn't dawn on me that this is something I should care and I should keep in my head under a label called "different", because apparently it's important that this person is in a way different. I always say that back then it was physically impossible for me to be racist, because it just didn't matter to me what everybody else did and looked like.
Having said that, there were also a variety of other things I couldn't (and sometimes still can't for a long time) tell about people. Who was nice. Who was mean. Why is this person considered nice and the other one mean. Who could be my friend and who could hurt me. What to do to make the right choices concerning the people who will surround me and how to get rid of someone that is not good for me. And this, in today's society, is a very dangerous thing to be.
Whenever I am in a social situation, I never know what to do. And it seems like when you don't know what to do, you rarely have a choice on who you are going to surround yourself with. Looking back at my life, all the friendships and relationships that I had was either because a) somebody took me under their wing and "let" me be their friend or b) told me how to be in a relationship/friendship, was my relationship coach if you will. Not only that, but I did not seem to have the ability to get rid of the poeple I didn't want/weren't good for me from my life. No matter how bad a person was, if they were familiar, they automatically became good. I don't know if that makes sense to anybody else but, for me, there were times in my life where hostile familiarity was more appealing that a potential future nice friend that I didn' know/had to get used to.
And somehow like this, I always end up crossing my fingers and wishing that some "cool kid" will talk to me and bother talking to me enough to realise that we could actually be friends. And then the next step is crossing my fingers that that said "cool kid" doesn't turn to be an a****le. And then I end up still crossing my fingers wishing that said cool kid won't get bored of me and want to move on, because then I will have lost my only chance to have a friend.
I know that sounds pathetic and that it makes me sound really passive, when I am really not. I am a really strong person that will fight for what she wants, when it comes to ANYTHING ELSE but personal relationships. And it's not like I don't WANT to be more active in my personal relationships is that I don't know HOW to be, when everything I do to approach people is going to be either awkward, weird, too forward, not forward enough or even inappropriate at times. And I might do the exact same thing an NT will and still do it wrong for some reason... It must have something to do with that darn body language that I can't seem to be able to crack. I think something about me just screams "weird". And I end up either alone, or in the mercy of the people who will bother themselves enough to deal with me.
If you are an NT you cannot possibly know how it's like to live like this every day and to constantly feel threatened and worried about everybody and everything. To be too trusting and open or to be so hurt that you are paranoid and suspicious of everybody and everything. And above all else, you don't really know how it's like to feel that you don't have any control over who gets in and out of your life. But if you are an aspie, then hopefully you know what I am talking about and I can relate. If you do. just know that you are not alone. And let's all hope that the world will soon be a safer and more accepting place for us all...
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