So today I was reading Aspies for Freedom, and I came across a thread from a student with asperger's who just started college. He mentioned some of the problems he was having and asked for support and reassurance. I responded with a bit about my experience, basically just relating to what he said. I've just gone back and reread my post, and I don't even recognize myself. The kind of attitude I have is so negative and pessimistic, and I know that's how people think I am because I complain so much, but I am REALLY NOT. If I took a pessimistic attitude about my life I would probably kill myself. I wouldn't be able to deal with it. When you have as many fundamental flaws in the things that affect your quality of life (like your health, your support system, etc-- you know, the things I don't have), you HAVE to be optimistic or you won't make it. I complain about things so that I can make fun of them, so that I can vent it out and keep moving forward. I am optimistic to a fault, there is nothing that I don't believe I can fix and make better. I take every problem I hit head on with the expectation that I WILL make it better, which is really a lot of pressure to be under. That's just the way that I am. I know that it doesn't create the image of an optimistic person, but I generally have an almost delusional positive outlook on things.

But you'd never know that if you read what I said on AFF this morning.

"I am in my last year at my university now. This year is much more exhausting than last year was. I feel like I am walking around naked all the time, like everybody can see that there is something "wrong" with me and I can't cover it up-- and at least sometimes that is probably quite true. I really related to what you said when you mentioned steeling yourself to go to breakfast and then being unable to do it. I do that every day for everything I do, going to meals, going to class, going to appointments, contacting professors, etc and so forth. I manage to do most things, except go to the cafeteria-- that is additionally stressful because it is so loud and busy there that I wolf down my food and run out and then get sick from eating too fast, and I am allergic to milk so I can't eat most of the food anyway. But the result is like some sort of wound is just being continually ripped open and getting more and more raw... I think that's a good way to put it... society just rubs me raw. I'm not sure what advice to give you. I just tell myself that at the end of the day, I must be successful. I don't have to be happy or comfortable, I just have to be successful, and I only have to live like that for four years and then I can forget I ever had to do this. So I am able to force myself to do most of the things I need to do, even though they are physically painful. I really don't think that's the best attitude to have, but I don't know what else to do."

That just isn't Jill. I don't know how to be Jill, the way I know her to be, and still do this.

It is a lonely feeling to sit in a room of 50 girls, being given a speech all about the program you're all about to join and what a tight knit community we'll all be, and knowing that come Springtime you very likely still won't have made any friends or established any meaningful connections with anyone in the group. Particularly when you know you have to try anyway, and particularly when you've seen this story repeat itself again and again and again. As I was explaining to someone who is neurotypical the other day, you kind of get used to this. You kind of get used to being shunned over and over and over again no matter how many times you follow that sagely NT advice of "put yourself out there," like it's really that easy. That isn't to say it ever stops being hurtful, no, if anything it gets worse. But eventually you stop trying to avoid pain. It's going to follow you everywhere you go anyway. You can't stop it and there is nothing you can do about it. Even if you're not the type to throw yourself into situations trying to make new friends, there will always be that person at the grocery store who gives you a weird look and you know that once again, whatever is so completely WRONG about you that everyone but you can see is rearing it's ugly head again, and it's not like you can just stop going to the grocery store. It's like that dream most everyone has where you realize you've gone to school in your underwear, and you try to cover up but you can't. You can't hide it, you're constantly going to be exposed and your vulnerabilities are constantly going to take hits. But there isn't any way around it. And people will tell you, oh, you just have to keep trying. And I suppose that's true, and that's why I continue to do it, however now that we are coming up on a full decade since the last time I managed to make new friends, it's hard to take people seriously when they say that. I don't think they quite understand the magnitude of the situation. Their oversimplification of the matter is even sort of insulting. Like really, I know you think you're helping, but I think if all I needed was for someone to tell me to put myself out there, don't you think I'd have done that ten years ago? It's not like I am shy and just refuse to try. I try over and over and over again and nobody is willing to meet me in the middle.

I am tempted to write something about autism to post on my door. Telling people I desperately want to be friends with them but that I don't know what I need to do to get to know them or how to tell if they like me, or that when they smile at me and my return smile doesn't seem sincere it isn't because I don't like them but because making facial expressions is so unnatural to me and I haven't quite got each subtle difference between them all down. Or, you know, maybe I should talk to my Resident Adviser or maybe even the Diversity Peer Educator, whatever that means, and see if they can help. But you toe a fine line there because if you admit how badly you want to make friends, which you kind of have to do in order to get them to understand that your blank-faced standing-in-the-corner behavior isn't out of reluctance to participate, then you seem emotionally needy and nobody respects you or wants to hang out with you-- as I discovered last year, thankfully with people I don't think I'd have hung out with anyway. And of course then there is the risk of people assuming I am retarded or weird or that it will be more of a chore to hang out with me than it really is. Then there is the risk of being shunned even worse and not having anybody left but the people who feel sorry for me. And what kind of friendship would that be?

This was my first week in my new dorm, and this quote from Liane Holliday Wiley (Pretending to be Normal) has never before rung quite so true...

"I had convinced myself that my high IQ and high academic achievement record meant that I was strong enough to handle whatever came my way. In realty, they only worked to help me fake my way to a false sense of security, a security that vanished and left me cold with fear the moment it was overwhelmed by the reality of my AS challenges.

I was hit hard when I had realized smarts were not enough to make it in this world. I was turned upside down when I had to admit I could not find anyone who saw things like I did. I was crippled when I found out it took more than I had to give to make new friends. Looking back, it is really no wonder I was never able to build any friendships in college. I was not very good at figuring people out. And so it seems, no one was very good at figuring me out either. Without friendships, my version of friendships that is, I had very little support. Without peers to show me how to fit in and how to make the most of what I had, I could not stay connected. I foundered."