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Graelwyn
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06 Mar 2007, 3:34 am

I recently established contact with a woman who I was friends with at school when I was 9/10 years old. She was one of just 2 who still remained my friends, although occasionally they went over to the bullies side. Anyway, I wanted to find out what she remembered of me as a child, and contacted her on a site called friends reunited for this. We had email contact, but I just find it very hard to keep in touch via email. I find it tiring compared to msn etc. So I did not get round to replying to her last email.

Just earlier, she messaged me on msn to check I was ok...and it is like... I am so different and it is painful really. She was talking about her pc not giving her her CD and how she will have to get James(her fiance) to call in a technician...and about the greek woman next door making a lot of noise due to visitors, and it is just so alien to me, her life. We are worlds apart. I talked about my problems with noise and that, and she changed the topic, so I was left pretending to be interested in what she had to say and making smalltalk which I found abhorrent. I hate feeling as if everyone else has moved on while I have been left behind in some other world.

It isn't until times like this that I am reminded how different I am. Has anyone else had this sort of experience? It is things like this that add to my conviction that I do indded have AS.


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Inventor
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06 Mar 2007, 5:00 am

You did it. Something was there, not what you hoped for, but learning.

There is a small hole on the front of CD drives, stick in a paper clip wire, the tray will pop open. Most of the time it will go back to working, just a slight jam, look for dust bunnies, show off your tech smarts.

You can only interact with people where they are, the self centered little beasties. What did you expect, Cosmic awakening?

Show kindness to others, when totally perplexed, say Thank You.

Be glad you do not live within hearing of a noisy Greek family.

My petition for sound reduction is being ignored.

Would you rather be her, or you?

If I was immortal it would bother me, but this is just a passing thing.

Yoga breathing is cool.



DarkStar
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06 Mar 2007, 5:11 am

I know how you feel. I had a lot of friends in high school, but over the years they got married, had kids, and got on with their lives. Now I have gotten older but don't feel as if I grew up much. Needless to say we have drifted apart and I haven't spoken to most of them in years. The ones I do still speak to (once a year or so) seem alien to me.


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Erlyrisa
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06 Mar 2007, 6:02 am

I have absolutely and utterly no friends from my schooling years - I pissed the last one off just last year... I know where he lives so I could visit him again ,,but nah

-The problem was I did'nt want to know people in the first place... and friends in school , were like : sort of just lamp post to stand next too in the rain.

-They have my history ,, all the bad times (yeah they're were good times) and everytime I look at them it just reminds me of my past.... I like it better now that I am out of school - friends today don't know what happened to me in school, or how I was.



ZanneMarie
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06 Mar 2007, 6:43 am

Graelwyn wrote:
I recently established contact with a woman who I was friends with at school when I was 9/10 years old. She was one of just 2 who still remained my friends, although occasionally they went over to the bullies side. Anyway, I wanted to find out what she remembered of me as a child, and contacted her on a site called friends reunited for this. We had email contact, but I just find it very hard to keep in touch via email. I find it tiring compared to msn etc. So I did not get round to replying to her last email.

Just earlier, she messaged me on msn to check I was ok...and it is like... I am so different and it is painful really. She was talking about her pc not giving her her CD and how she will have to get James(her fiance) to call in a technician...and about the greek woman next door making a lot of noise due to visitors, and it is just so alien to me, her life. We are worlds apart. I talked about my problems with noise and that, and she changed the topic, so I was left pretending to be interested in what she had to say and making smalltalk which I found abhorrent. I hate feeling as if everyone else has moved on while I have been left behind in some other world.

It isn't until times like this that I am reminded how different I am. Has anyone else had this sort of experience? It is things like this that add to my conviction that I do indded have AS.


Actually that's even common between NTs with childhood friends, it just manifests differently.

I go through this with my two friends from childhood, but it shows right away because they had children and I didn't. I'm still the same and they often remark on that, but so are they. We all still have the basic personalities and flaws. They inform how we view the world as we age. So, one is still insecure even though she has been married as long as I have and the other is still convinced there is a Mr. Right who is better than the one she has. They still think I was the brainy one who went on to do much more than they did. I think we're all just different and it's ok.

Small talk - yes they do it. They did it when we were young. Yes, it bores me out of my mind. But, I tend to talk over their heads even when I'm trying to dumb it down (which is a terrible term and I do not consider them stupid). They'll small talk about something and I take it thousands of times deeper than they ever wanted to take it. Then they laugh and say I'm using my big words and taking them places they don't understand. Same as when we were all kids. I have to remember that these women were once girls who helped me read people when I couldn't. They remember that I am the one who helped them study when they were desperate before a test. That's what friendship is, giving and taking from each other. Being there for each other. Just caring for each other even when you don't understand. Those two are like family to me, so I take them with their foibles and they take me with mine. That is perfectly okay and it's what all NTs who have childhood friends do as well.

Hope that helped put it into perspective. Just participate as much as you can and put what you can out there. She wouldn't email back if she didn't care.



Graelwyn
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06 Mar 2007, 10:34 am

Thanks guys... this is just honestly the first time it has really hit me how much others seem to have moved on while I am still here, and still feeling the same as I did as a child in many ways. She seemed to have changed so very much...so mature and sensible and well...stable! I felt as if I was still the 10 year old I had been, talking to a 31 year old woman. Very strange and it put me on edge as I was guarding what I said so that I wouldn't put her off talking to me. I have become so used to interracting with the people here, who understand me to a degree, and with a few people I have known some years, that I had forgotten how difficult it is to interract with someone with little to no understanding of who I am. Throughout the conversation, I had the thought running through my mind...she will sign off soon, make ger excuses so that she doesn't have to talk to me...she will realise that I am too this, or too that for her and will not bother again. It is that sort of innate sense of doom you sometimes experience. I have experienced such rejections so often before that I have come to anticipate them now. Of course, this might turn out to be self fulfilling prophecy each time I do it as it turns my language stilted and formal in my efforts to not say anything wrong. I suppose that since my self diagnosis(official within the month I am hoping)this is the first occasion I have really become acutely aware of my differences. Before, I was not really faced with them as I did not interract enough with the NT world.


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ZanneMarie
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06 Mar 2007, 10:46 am

It could be self fullfilling if you let it. Just remember, she knows you are different and chose to talk to you anyway. If you talk to her about that feeling of still being ten, I know she will tell you how many ways she still feels like that. My NT friends do. It isn't the same as what we experience ( I understand exactly the feeling of still being the child), but they have something similar and it's a connection.

Don't dwell on your AS issues, but don't hide them either. If something happens that you know is AS, just say, Oh! My brain just misfired. Don't make a huge deal out of it, but let her know that you are aware it happens. It will put her at ease so she doesn't feel like she's on egg shells.

Try to find something, anything in common - a book, a movie, an art museum. Make the most of those things and don't dwell on the others. Some moms want to get out and do girlfriend things. If you can find anything in common, go do those things and concentrate on just enjoying it. Sometimes friendship doesn't have to be everything. Sometimes it can be enjoying one thing that you do together. That's fine. Each person doesn't have to fulfill all our needs and when we realize that, it's very freeing.

Hopefully you two will find your common interest. Just keep trying. You're making progress.



KimJ
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06 Mar 2007, 10:57 am

I've had both feelings of "feeling left behind" and that I'm better off than my childhood friends. I remember my parents always comparing me to the popular kids, "____ wears the cutest jumpers, why don't you wear something like that!?" "____ is going to school and majoring in business, he's doing really well!"

The thing is those kids were no better off than me and in some cases are seriously messed up. Too much money, too many expectations, too little real support. I have a friend from college who didn't finish her degree, bought a house with an inheritance and has a circle of friends that she keeps up. She is trying to differentiate herself from the "losers" who don't own anything or do anything but she is no better. She hasn't earned anything and she knows it. But for some reason she isn't willing to grow up and change.
So, my point is, superficial things don't indicate happiness or success. People get degrees and careers only to quickly realize they don't want that. Someone else made them do it. Being yourself is success.



nutbag
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06 Mar 2007, 2:35 pm

I simply do not understand or identify with people. I wonder if I am truly human.


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ADoyle
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06 Mar 2007, 3:10 pm

I have some friends, but there are childhood friends that I no longer speak to because our lives are so different. Gradually, it got to the point where we saw each other once a year, but lately I've stopped even that. There were no fights or anything, just that we went in different directions. I've even gone to the point of crossing their phone numbers out of my address book, and haven't put them in my cellphone. One of these friends is also aspie, but never given the diagnosis of Asperger's, only being told that he had "autistic-like" traits.

This isn't an aspie thing to not have anything in common with friends from childhood as my NT friends have had similar experiences.


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tyciol
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06 Mar 2007, 4:42 pm

Yeah, I recently met a girl I knew when I was about 8 by looking up old schools on livejournal. She's gotten on with her life and writes about stuff like partying and drinking, whereas I'm pretty much at home on the comp into comics and stuff.

She was my friend's girlfriend but I always had a bit of a crush on her but was too shy to talk about it. They don't even talk anymore, lol.



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06 Mar 2007, 4:55 pm

Yes this happens to me when I went to school...And I'm going back so I'm going to be reminded of it again.



SteveK
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06 Mar 2007, 6:06 pm

Guys and Gals,

It's best just to not dwell on it. They DO have problems ALSO. I ALSO have trouble. Just today I had to make a call, and the wait music had one note LONG and SUSTAINED that hit a frequency that might as well have been a DRILL going through my ears! I ended up holding the receiver far away from my ear because of it. But HEY! Outside of some alarms, such notes are RARE! I try to remember that. And YEP, I had a LOT of dumb problems probably due to AS, but I know a lot of "normal" people that have worse.

I have goals that I am working towards and just for enjoyment and theraputic capabilities. It would REALLY be nice if I could be really social, etc... Heck, in a way I am RELIEVED I found out about AS. I can just give up. So much time has passed anyway. I'm going to just have to try to find a way to make some nice friends, and be content.

Steve



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06 Mar 2007, 9:53 pm

When I look back on some of the people I went to school with, some ended up in prison, but others wound up making something big of themselves. I am somewhere in the middle. I have been working at the same job for almost five years and enjoy it a lot. I am at work on a book about my pets, particularly my Siamese, Samantha, who lived to be 20. She is the central theme of the book, entitled, For the Love of Samantha. I am not world class in the Roger Bannister sense, but his example inspires me. He had feelings of not belonging as well when he was growing up, but made a good life for himself.



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07 Mar 2007, 1:17 am

Comparing oneself to others is part of gaining insight. It is part of growing up; Aspies are late developers. I went through the same experience a few years ago. I started to notice at the age of 27, that other people had friends and relationships but I remained strangely isolated. I felt that I had no social skills, I was clever (I was offered a PhD) but I could walk up to women I hardly knew and say, "Hi, would you like to date me?"

Don’t compare yourself to others, they have bought into a lifestyle that is a myth, an invention of a capitalistic pseudo-fascist society that discriminates against people who are not happy consumers; it wants couples with 2 children, a house and a dog named spot. In any case, marriage and friendship are no guarantee of happiness, people with those things can be as miserable as anyone else.

Also gaining insight precedes, in my experience, an improvement in social skills and an alleviation in isolation. You will find a new equilibrium soon. I also learnt to compare myself to other Aspies, not the NT's. They are foreigners.