One of the costs I’ve found of being autistic is that I have to get REALLY REALLY good at managing, understanding, and explaining my emotions to others.
I see other people work out their emotions through the process of interacting with others… I rarely have that privilege.
When people see unfiltered emotions on my face or hear them in my voice, I’ve been accused of being abusive FOR THE SHEER ACT OF HAVING AND NOT HIDING EMOTIONS.
Being required to filter everything you think, feel, say, or express before it gets out of your brain is exhausting.
And yes, obviously, people should be careful and thoughtful about how they express themselves publicly and especially in situations of power.
But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about dealing with people who would have called themselves my friends.
It’s damned near impossible to have any sort of meaningful friendship if you’re not allowed to say things off the cuff and blunder sometimes and show your genuine feelings.
Friendship needs to be a place where you can be yourself, and we’re all imperfect.
One of the most significant friendships in my life, I realized was over when I spent four hours composing the perfect email that could have saved it, couching my emotions in exactly the right way…. followed by an additional four hours agonizing over whether to send that email.
Ultimately, I didn’t send the email, because I realized anyone who only liked me when I spent four hours preparing the exact right thing to say to them… didn’t like me.
It wasn’t just that the friendship wasn’t worth saving, it already kind of didn’t exist.
Bringing this back around, I suppose this might be part of why I’m a writer. If real people won’t give me the quarter necessary to play out my emotions and figure out what’s going on inside me and between us together… then fiction is a safe place to run through scenarios alone.