Autism: the misadventure of talking.

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If you are able to talk (you may also be a polyglot) you are a prisoner of the “normal” world. That may be an advantage to survive economically, you may get a job, a position, some power in the society, but you are condemned to the hell of a totally inauthentic life, of perennial falsity. You can never say, yell, howl “this is not me, I live in different planet you will never know, you will never visit, with different customs and values, of which you will never understand anything”.

In which context are you using the word talk? By not being able to talk, does that imply being 'mute' or perhaps someone who doesn't speak with the same effect?

No, I talk very little, except when I slide into lecturing about some of my preferred subjects, my "specializations". If if I have to talk in normal chatting interaction I must force myself and, in a sense, I become a prisoner of a world to which I do not belong. I come out of this exhausted and emptied. I am sometimes good at writing, in my native language, but when I write I am alone. Often I write in an obscure way, because I write for myself in a kind of condensed shorthand, following my thoughts rather than trying some dialogue with others.

I often wonder if it's better to be mute, I didn't know there was such a thing as 'voluntary muteness' until recently, otherwise I might have tried it. Language is it's own special type of prison.

I am glad for this post.

I have struggled with this.

I was elctively mute for years. THen I did exactly what you aid! I started to babble mimicking what I saw. By thte time I was 28 I could fake well. But I am certain I did the wrong thing. Where it lead me was hell.

WHen I was mute I was safe. People left me alone.

Now I tend to use language I do not like and go on auto pilot and ramble, saying things I have no clue about and could care less.

How have you maintained it?

oh i had to put years of effort into language, did a degree to become more articulate, but when you don't see the games and the agendas beneath the mask of spoken language (and body language) you're still in a weak position.

^Seconded.

I do however see why it would be easier for someone who was extraverted and articulate to be unauthentic to themselves...it's because it's easier for them to socialize and mix with people out there.

If I wasn't so socially inept or had trouble saying what I wanted to say, it'd probably be easier for me to get away from myself and with other people....not that it's necessarily a good or bad thing.

I managed pretty well without talking much more than monosyllables until my children started learning to talk. After that I got involved, and now - after decades of human relationship and self development work, tertiary education and an aspergers diagnosis - I can sometimes hold up my end of a conversation for, ooh, minutes at a time.

I just prefer not to, that's all.

I still don't know what to say to this since it was posted because, yes, I agree but I also disagree.

Talking is not me, not my thinking, what's inside of me and my head, but despite that I am talking (a lot) and good usually, it doesn't touch or change my inner world. I am not language.

Which means, basically, that I feel as in walking in another world. I don't use language like others. Words may be natural to others or they can convey themselves into words. But I can't. What inside is largely disconnected from what can be conveyed by language and only a small potion of what's me is taken to the outside.

So I'm really not a prisoner in that I am caught up by the use of words. I can't even get into that place to begin with and be imprisoned by words as all these other people seem to be to my mind.

I'm locked out - not locked in.

wrods is the right word!

I am not sure that others who talk freely and fluently are true or authentic. Eavesdropping chat in public places I am convinced that most of what is said is instrumental (to courting, to mask some request of a favor, to fill the void of silence, to find some reassurance) or anyway a repetition of the common opinion picked up here and there. I have been prisoner of this machine for all my life, often feeling unease or even anguish. Now I feel that I have passed that threshold where all that I say seems to me unbearably false.