When I was in school, I was never the type of person to socialize during class. I never really had a solid group of people I hung out with at lunch. It was different depending on the day. I knew people in every grade, so I just hung out with whoever knew me and they seemed to be all right with that. I never felt a connection with the people in my grade because I found them to be judgmental, especially the classmates I didn’t grow up with.
I never had a close connection with the people I met on the first day of school. It seemed like they were in it just to make high school the best years of their lives and they didn’t care who they were friends with to make that happen. There were people I would hang out with outside of school. They would become my BFF for a few months, get bored and move on. Then we just became someone we pass in the hallway, not acknowledging why we stopped hanging out. It would be something we never talked about, a nonverbal agreement to never bring it up.
When it comes to going to places where there’s lots of people, I sit in the corner and observe what’s going on around me. I’ve always been shy and quiet. I never know what to say when it comes to people I don’t know. I’ve always wanted people to come up to me and start a conversation. If people were interested in getting to know me, I felt like they would make the first move and approach me. A lot of the time, I won’t go somewhere if I don’t know anybody or if I know there is someone going that I don’t like being around. I’ll try to avoid them and not make eye contact, which in my case, not making eye contact is pretty easy.
Going up to someone in public and saying “hi,” especially in a public place, is never easy. If I don’t know you then I won’t talk to you. I know going up to people is a way to make friends, but I have a thing when it comes to doing it. I have this feeling that they don’t want to spark up a conversation with me because they sense there’s something “off” about me and they don’t want to be associated with that. I won’t get over it, step out of my comfort zone and make friends, but interacting is hard. I hate not knowing what a person is feeling or thinking. I want to be able to read people’s emotions and expressions, but everything looks the same to me.
We all meet and lose friends. It happens to everyone. If we kept the friends we met in kindergarten, I don’t think we would grow as individuals. We have to find who we are without the influence of others. Some of us may go down the wrong path, get into trouble with the law, find drugs, develop a criminal record. Other people would want to change that about themselves because they grew up in a house with that kind of atmosphere and they don’t want to end up just like the people they know. They want to make the world a better place. We need to meet people who bring us up and not kick us when we’re down. We don’t need that kind of negativity in our life.
I try to be a good friend. I try to be nice to the people around me. Being nice can go a long way and I don’t want to be known as someone who gives off bad vibes. I want to bring positivity and not make someone feel like they’re alone in the world. I want to think good thoughts and hope they get passed on.
I’m not all that interested in having in depth conversations unless its on a subject that I’m interested in then I could go on for hours. I can’t just randomly go up to someone and ask them about their day because they don’t continue on, it then becomes a one sided conversation. It’s always awkward and embarrassing.
I always felt more connected to adults then people my own age. I never was able to relate to my peers because I knew I was different. I felt thought that adults understood more about and would not pressure me into something I wasn’t comfortable with. Even know as an adult, I feel more relatable to people older then me then someone who is the my age and under. I don’t know if anyone else feels the same way, but I always felt closer grown-ups.
Approaching people even in a store is something I rarely do. If I don’t have anything to say to someone then there’s a chance that I won’t engage. I like having people come to me because it’s easier for me to have a conversation with them because their the one that started the small talk.
Due not being able to understanding social cues, meeting people on a regular basis is a challenging in itself. We don’t know if we’re saying the right thing or if the person we’re talking to is uncomfortable because we don’t pick up on facial expressions or body postures. If you don’t verbally say something, we won’t know if what we’re doing is unacceptable. Sometimes we can make things to personally. I know I can take things to heart, sometimes its how someone says something that I think its me, but in the back in of my mind, I know they have nothing against me. If it really bothers me, it takes me a couple days to get over what was said. Sometimes I can shrug it off, but once in a while, it sticks with me and I over analyze it.
People assume that it would be easier to meet other people who have Aspergers because they would understand what you’re going thru. It’s not that easy. We want to be treated like we’re “normal”. We want to be able to make friends that don’t have Aspergers and have them help us with our daily struggles. A lot of people tend to hide their Aspergers from people so a lot of the time we could meet another aspies and not know it.
Not many people know that I have Asperger’s and that’s fine. It’s either you know or you don’t. The people that do know are people that I talk to and see on a regular basis. The people I talk to on a regular basis are people I’ve met thru social media or from an old job I had. When I’m not actually in public, I’m usually on my phone texting or tweeting someone. There are only a few people that I know personally that I can call my true friends and those are the people who I’ve told and they said they were fine with it and moved on to the next thing. There are people who I’ve met and stayed in contact with over the last few years. It’s those people who I consider my true friends. They’ve stuck with me before and after I told them about having Asperger’s.
You can’t make someone with Asperger’s to go out and meet people. We have a difficult time with social situations as it is. We aren’t able to make eye contact and don’t understand social clues and facial expressions. We don’t understand sarcasm. We may not look like we care and show lack of interest, but we do care. We can’t read situations where facial expressions are needed and observed by other people. It takes time for us to get used to the idea that we’re in a group setting. Sometimes we don’t want to be there because it’s overwhelming. There’s so much stuff going on for us to handle mentally. It’s exhausting.
Everyone is different, I’m high functioning. I can do everything a non-aspie person does, but I just need some extra time. When you look at me, you wouldn’t even know that I have something, but if you know me long enough then you will start to understand.