Friends that don't know you well enough

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corey acted like they only thing he cared about, about me, was that i have a bachelors degree. so what? he has plenty of friends, and some of them have advanced degrees, bachelors degrees, some of them have high school diplomas. his friends have a wide range of educational backgrounds. he himself has a masters in Math.

having a college degree hasn't had much of a positive impact on me. maybe intellectually, a little. but none of the jobs that i have worked @ required a high school diploma, much less a college degree. other thing - structural engineering. 42 years old and STILL haven't gotten over structural engineering. any time anyone mentions a college degree, it reminds me of structural engineering. so whatever.

corey often doesn't answer the email.

or answers in a way that sounds like he didn't read it or understand it.

but i don't have anyone else to email.

For that reason, among other reasons, I have not told anyone at work that I have a college degree

Other things I did not tell them:

Transsexual
(Told some of them I am autistic)
Jogging
Eating habits
Litterbox
_______________


Kind of want to talk to someone but don't want to have to keep repeating and explaining myself. And don't want to hear "huh" or "what" or get manipulated

corey acts like he knows me a lot better than he does, but he doesn't know that positive judgments are just as judgmental as negative judgments.

situational versus dispositional

and i didn't like the way he had the nerve to keep peer pressuring me to take community college classes

or peer pressuring me to do anything else

he acts like i never considered working @ a home depot closer to my house. which is actually kind of like saying i am really not that "smart". even though he keeps saying i am "smart". besides, "smart" means nothing b/c everyone is "smart" and he acts like i have to believe everything he says.

there is no law that says that cory has to know me better.

nobody is paying cory $$$ to get to know me.

maybe my standards unreasonably high.

if cory knew me perfectly, (whooptie do).

there is no good reason why cory or anyone else just "has" to know me better.

so whatever.

(rolls eyes)

(puke)

been working on a six page essay to corey.

but he often doesn't answer, or completely misses the point, or doesn't believe what i said, and he keeps reminding me that i have a college degree.

he's not listening, but nobody's paying him cash to listen, and there's no law that says that he has to listen either.

today, went to the library, for one hour, typed a letter to corey.

on the other hand often he:
doesn't answer (don't know if he read it)
completely misses the point
keeps reminding me that i have a college degree

he thinks he knows everything about me but the only thing he cares about is that i have a college degree

he's kind of annoying but i don't have anyone better to confide in.

Past two weeks been working on a 33 page letter to Corey

He often does not even bother to read my emails

But whatever

Nobody else to write to

Uni is a normative institution. It's best navigated by people who fall comfortably in the middle of the normal curve or are (very) slightly above average.

That is not intended as a value judgement. I just think most of the time the fact of a degree doesn't say anything particularly interesting about a person.

But going through that system depressed, autistic, and coming out with a degree is I think genuinely amazing. A really striking achievement, even 16 years later.

I certainly couldn't do it! I entered in the final year and still dropped out without finishing in my case the factors were childhood depression, autism, recent trauma, an inability to navigate the system.

Whenever I've spoken to bosses about it, they've said a degree is desirable... essentially because it shows sticking power and an investment in the system.

The piece of paper - as someone without one, I am with Corey in thinking that it opens some doors.

Whether you want to go through those doors or not is a different question. I have wheedled my way through once or twice and haven't found the other side more pleasant. (Easier in some ways, harder in others.)

Having said all that, I am returning to uni now in my 30s as a mature student. Hoping I have by now acquired a few of the qualities you had 16 years ago, hey? hoping we're not going to be watching me cry for hours in the toilet again because the lecturer simplifies complex phenomena to the point of misrepresentation, or because a fellow student normalises ignorance about something I care about (e.g., the subject matter of the course). Hoping I have grown, matured, and cope better now with the realities of institutionalised learning.

For many employers the degree demonstrates employability [as distinctly opposed to intelligence]. I think even years later your degree shows employability, just as, in a certain anti-utopian but nevertheless real sense, my lack of degree shows poor employability. But shows to whom, exactly? To people who are going to provide a good workplace experience?

In my experience, the good jobs come when someone sees you as a human being and takes a bit of a gamble. But in that I have been simply lucky.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a friend to *want* to know you. They definitely should want to know you as you truly are, whether or not it's possible for them to succeed.

And if you have made the choices that were right for you, or the choices that were *viable* for you, it's not unreasonable to expect those choices to be supported.

We get something and we lose something; sometimes we lose more than we gain, sometimes what we gain is worth it...

Working hard to be understood is a generous investment in a friendship.

Yes, it is all subjective. You have insight into Corey, and then how you feel about it is how you feel about it, not intrinsically good or bad. Whether or not you want Corey to remain your friend is not good or bad, of course there's no formula leading to a correct answer!

It sounds from your posts like your quality of life's been pretty crap lately. People who care about you are going to react to that, possibly in ways that feel unpleasant.

"If I could improve it, obviously I would! Stop telling me I *ought* to do things I can't do!" - me, in tears, three years ago, detonating friendships shortly before major burn-out.

That was a level of exhaustion at which everything was a drain. There were simply no reserves to draw from.

Take friend S. He hadn't understood me, and in some respects he'd been a far from exemplary friend. But it had never mattered before - I simply liked him, and that was enough.

But in that pre-burnout period, processing the frustration and hurt when he didn't understand, wouldn't understand, wilfully misconstrued (so it seemed) what I had taken time and effort to explain cost far too much energy. It was a big problem for me.

With hindsight I should have taken space and severed communication until it bothered me less.

But I didn't have the energy to end *or* maintain the relationship. (Changing a dynamic also takes a lot of effort, for me.) So it just got worse and worse, until it was actively distressing for me. It kept feeling more and more important that he understand. More and more energy was being wasted. We went round and round in increasingly unhappy circles.

"Forget this person even *exists* for now!! Come back to it when it doesn't matter so much," is what I wish I could have told myself. Not that I could have achieved that forgetfulness. I was too exhausted for it.

It doesn't sound like Corey is like that. It sounds like you're pretty much in control of what you choose to give him and what you're asking of him. So being disappointed or grumpy because he doesn't give it is... probably just normal?

i do not want to be "high maintenance" or unreasonable.

besides, even if corey were to have done everything i wanted, then what? whooptie do.

oh well.

corey doesn't "care" about me, except to keep reminding me that i have a stupid lil college degree. but i know that i have a college degree. and it's annoying how he keeps remind me. it's annoying, like how the day laborers have the nerve to scream "Chino!" @ me. i know i am chinese. corey doesn't believe how much difficulty i have had getting a job. he thinks i should have no problme getting a job just b/c i have a college degree. he doesn't understand me or my situation but he acts like he knows everything. he keeps offering unsoiclicted advice and then peer pressuring me to take it.

and just b/c that stupid lil boy has a Masters degree in Math (a STEM) , doesn't "prove" or follow or show or mean that he knows enough about the job market (or anything else) to gimmie stupid lil career advice.

there is no such thing as a "perfect" email and even if cory or any other idiot were to have written it, then what? (whooptie do).

"actions speak louder than words".

i do not want to be unreasnable (like angela d or angela w or juan). or high maintenance.

cory has done a lot more for me positively, than vice versa.

so whatever.

cory's still number one. maybe behind my sister and brandon.

whatever.

high school psychology instructor said that the things that you don't like about other people are the same as the things you don't like about yourself.

for me, yes, that statement is correct. however, "hatred" is not a finite commodity per se. for example, if you have zero apples and i have one apple, and i give you one apple, then you have one apple and i have zero apples. instead, "hatred" is like igniting a flame.

recently, i have come to the *epiphany* that one (of many things) that i absolutely *hate* about supervisor angela w and head cashier angela d (and maybe head cashier juan - he has been acting like angela d's apprentice lately), is that they are *Unreasonable* and "High Maintenance". however, that's the same way that i treated cory - unreasonably and high mainteance.

i feel guilty, embarrassed, and stupid and silly for being a Hypocrite.

I know there is a lot I am not understanding, but it still seems absolutely reasonable to me to want to be understood by a friend.

People at work don't have that entitlement they are supposed to manage their own Stuff.

But being properly understood and seen fairly by the people we're closest to is a human need, I think.

Maybe autism makes it harder for us to go about achieving this, and maybe sometimes we do it clumsily. (I am thinking of myself, not you.) But I don't think that makes us unreasonable or high maintenance.

In fact my impression is that a lot of us end up learning to be a lot more emotionally self-sufficient than is really good for us. We don't automatically know how to do it and we don't want to do it badly so we learn to get along without it.

I have probably said it before but I think trying to be understood is brave and a real compliment to pay to a friend. Though painful when they just don't get it.

high school psychology instructor said that the things that you do not like about other people are the things you do not like about yourself.

angela d
angela w
juan

unreasonable and high maintenance

and that's the way i treat(ed) corey

i feel so embarrassed, stupid, ashamed, hypocritical and et cetera