Overture

This may not make any sense to a lot of people, as it’s riddled with blog and IM jargon, but I need somewhere to explode in frustration and confusion, and rant about Asperger syndrome and Aspergian angst.

1^st Movement

A few days back I accidentally offended a friend, apologised and they accepted, saying it was totally fine.  I thought that was an end to it, but then a few days later this friend unfollowed me on a blogging website, and I IMed her to chat, but also to ask her why she’d un-followed.  I assured her that it was no problem, I wasn’t offended and there was no pressure to re-follow, but that though I would understand if she didn’t want to say why, it would be good to know if I had accidentally offended with my blogs, in case they had offended other people too.  She said I hadn’t offended, but she’d rather not say why she’d unfollowed it, although she made it at least semi-clear that it WAS something to do with the blog itself – my blog specifically – rather than the blog feed or it being connected to twitter.  But I said “I take it we are still friends though?”  And she replied “I still follow you on twitter >_>”

Well then, I said that was all fine, and made the attempt to carry on the conversation in a brighter way, but this friend then said they weren’t able to continue talking right now, which again I said was fair enough, and we stopped.  And now, I’ve tried tweeting in response to her tweets several times and got no response.  Which again isn’t a worry – often I get no response and it is nothing personal.  But just now I did another tweet in response and then did something else for a while, and then came back and found, immediately after my response, the tweet ‘Why can’t some people just take a hint?’  Now, there was no indication as to who this was directed at – no @ tags or anything.  But it was IMMEDIATELY after my tweet. 

So I decided, because I know I am often ridiculously paranoid, to carry on as usual unless blatantly/bluntly told to get lost.  So I IMed her again, and she said she was on the phone at work, making multiple conversations difficult.  So I went onto her profile, and she’s now just today hidden her list of friends. 

I have asked this friend to be very clear and direct with me, because I struggle with non-verbal communication, ESPECIALLY over the net (doesn’t everyone – there ARE no non-verbal cues and words can be ambiguous!).  So I assumed she would do so, not least because she herself is very paranoid and likes people to be clear and direct with her.  But now I’m really not sure what’s going on, and she has expressed a wish not to discuss it.  I understand the fact that it is her business what she discusses or not about her personal life, but isn’t our friendship a LITTLE bit my business too? 

I can’t ask her anything else without looking paranoid or intrusive or putting her in an awkward situation or looking creepy and obsessive (which I am, but I don’t want to flaunt it!).  I can’t ask our one mutual friend (who I know from experience is frank and honest when he has to deliver bad news) because that would make him the middle man, which is unfair on him.  Besides, he’s said he doesn’t know what could be going on, and I believe him.  And there’s nobody else I can talk to about it without my mutual friend knowing (I don’t want him involved because he might feel I was slagging her off behind her back and be uncomfortable with that, and/or feel obliged to argue her part – he is very fair about such things).  And after one close call I will never again make a move to initiate a friendship breakage when it’s not absolutely clear that this is what is wanted/needed.  Besides, I don’t want to appear to be accidentally targeting her and lose her to baseless paranoia. 

In short, I would so much rather she unfollowed/blocked me on twitter and removed me as an IM friend if she doesn’t want to be friends, or just was plain and clear about it to my face – then we could both move on.  And that if she does want to be friends I wish she’d be open and clear about things concerning us, and again we can both chat as normal from now on and again just move on.

2^nd Movement

Asperger syndrome can be a real pig sometimes:  It’s difficult enough building a flesh and blood social life having problems with social interaction, so you take refuge in the virtual world.  But surprise, surprise, Asperger syndrome gives you COMMUNICATION difficulties on top of all that, just to make having a virtual social life hard, draining work as well. 

But I do have both a real social life and a virtual social life, and I don’t think most people realise how tough either of those can be if you have Asperger syndrome – even if you have got masking the ‘traits’ down to a fine art.  How does it feel?  Well, the mutual friend I mentioned does a thing online which we refer to as ‘juggling’ and the things he is juggling are known as ‘oranges’.  Sometimes he gets overwhelmed and exhausted with the juggling and can’t reply to things, or replies sporadically in only one word answers.  For me, real life is like juggling hundreds of oranges all the time.  Visual oranges, auditory oranges, tactile oranges, olfactory oranges, taste oranges, speech and language oranges, non-verbal oranges, organisational oranges, response oranges, the lot.  And it is often just as draining too.

The thing about being mind-blind is that I can supplement my deficits using observation and deduction – a bit like being visually blind but building a different, equally efficient picture in my head using touch or hearing.   But that does mean that not only am I constantly building, fine-tuning and updating these pictures in my head, I also necessarily have to sift through every bit of new ‘data’ I obtain and decide what is a joke, what is gentle teasing, what is a subtle hint, what is role play, what I agree or disagree with, which pieces of data require responses from me (and following that what appropriate responses to give) and which ones are figurative and literal.  

A mind-blind person has to become very skilled at working with such data because they have nothing else to go on, not having the luxuries of instinct and intuition like most people do.  Not being able to interpret hints from the outside world they must also develop highly tuned self-awareness and very frank self-criticism (which often leads to paranoia).  In order to build on the data once they’ve chosen it, they must take everything to do with that data very literally – if they do not then they have no solid foundations.   That literalness in turn makes me very gullible in some ways.  For example, I am very forgiving.  I try to assume good faith always.  I get very attached to people.  I take the blame if I’m at all in doubt.  I am therefore a very easy person to keep in the dark about something.  It really bugs me when people intentionally take advantage of these personality qualities which should be blessings. 

In defence of the confusing friend, she has been through, and continues to go through, quite a few difficulties of one kind or another, so it makes sense not to leap to conclusions or judge harshly.  And besides, if misinterpretations occur, and a friendship survives them, it often grows stronger and deeper as a result.

Reprieve

There are enough nail-biting, bewildering oranges to juggle in life without people who should be allies muddying the water.  In my opinion a good friend is one who understands this and behaves accordingly.  Friendships are kind of like nail varnish.  You are very, very careful as they dry, but over time if the friendship is to last, you would expect it to be able to withstand more chapping.  And with solid friendships, like thoroughly dry nail varnish, you would expect to be able to hurl almost anything at them and not have them break.  No matter what happens I am very, very blessed to have many friends who are just like that.