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I'm sick of this. Up till now I have answered my share of rhetorical questions, taken things too literally, and missed almost all facial expressions.

But now I am taknig a sign language class. I have known some for a while and while I really like the class, the socializing is driving me nuts. I just can't do it. Last night's class was one of the first where we focused mainly on chatting in sign language and I am even worse at that in signing than in verbal language.

I pretty much yelled (signing and verbally) at the teacher when he made a promise that was generalized. I mean it doesn't make sense to me that anyone can make promises for a profession. If you specifically know someone you can know what they will do in a given situation. And I know I have made promises for people I don't know. We do that with religions. I do too. Yet for some reason last night I couldn't handle it.

And how do I do the facial expression part of sign language when I can't even see faces? I can tell you what a few people look like since I have seen them in class long enough and managed to glance at them enough times.

My AS is showing up more as I socialize more. I'm struggling with that it is worse than I thought. I mean, I work part time but co-workers are obvious when they say anything sarcastic. It's like if they say the color of something blue is really green (an example not a change of topic). It's more of a disability now.

How do you look at faces and listen at the same time? And then remember what someone looked like? Or if I do see their face it is more of a glance. Either way I don't always remember what a person said. It's like conversations are a list of so many details I can't handle them.

Yet in class the other night we got a paper about how to sign numbers. I need to comment that ASL (American Sign Language) can't be interpreted into word for word English grammar. It took me a while (I wasn't paying attention to the time), it took what seemed like half the class to figure out, and then confirm with someone sitting by me that I trust to not judge me by my question, that the first sentence was a main idea and the others were details.

And when the teacher signs his stories I can't separate what he is talking about from the main idea. It's like I might pick up an event or a place but not know what he is talking about. And when I do, I confuse pronouns (that is the only part that might be because of struggling with learning a new language. I struggle some with figuring out who pronouns refer to when reading but not nearly as much as when someone is signing and seem to do ok with spoken language).

And I have no idea who I can consider friends. I mean there is one person who talks to me when upset but I don't feel I can talk to her. Or is that just my normal (to me) struggle on who to trust? It seems there are some people I instinctively trust and talk to but as a general rule it takes me a long time. And then there is one person (a few others but I can't tell them as much or talk to them about the same thing) that I can talk to but again, it doesn't go both ways. Isn't friendship supposed to be something that it does work both ways? If something good would happen that I wanted to share, I could see what happens if I do share something positive. Yet things like I will have time to watch Star Trek today or that I talk to my mom weekly or more often and talk to or email my dad (their divorced) isn't something that can really be shared or that is important to other people.

Aside from what I just wrote, I can't drive so I feel completely unable to serve or help anyone. Even the one person who talks to me when upset, I have no idea what to say or if I am helping at all. I mean, I try to listen and she has talked to me more than once so I guess I am doing something right around her.

Is dwelling on things part of AS? I think I remember it being on one of the questions on the paper before I was diagnosed though. Do you do it? Do most of you over analyze why things happened or why you react or respond the way you did in a certain situation?

I pray a lot and am religious, I just need someone on earth to listen as well.

Thanks for reading this and in advance for anything you say that might help.

Hello. I wanted to say that I relate to your post about dwelling on your own behavior and how it might be interpreted by other people. I don't know if it's something specific about AS, because I started paying close attention to everything I said, before I thought I had AS. I had negative experiences in socializing which humiliated me. I think once it's come to our attention, it gets hard not to notice our behavior and we become ultra-sensitive to other people's reactions to us. I notice I am more vigilant, now that I'm older.
I relate a lot to your post. I don't know how to comfort people and rarely know what to say to people I don't know, except for a few awkward comments or just over-thanking them for something minor. I try to have a sense of humor with myself, just to get along.
It's good that you have your religion and prayer helps you. If you ever need someone to vent or talk about it, I'd listen. I'm going through same situations and it's lonely to feel like no one understands. The concerns we have are very different from other people's. I usually just end up writing about it.