This strikes close to home, for me. I can and do make friends, but it's serial...one at a time. A serial friendship-maker, hah.
I feel that my problems making friends and understanding people have really affected my life negatively. I would definitely prefer to have been born NT or my parents accept a cure in early childhood. It's quite possible my life wouldn't be successful, but I'm not just alone I'm very lonely and I haven't managed a close relationship. As I write this I think I've decided I would take the cure. Sorry if that's the wrong answer.
I don't think there's a wrong answer to this one. We each suffer in our own way. The only thing that has helped me--and I do think this is the wrong answer, for
me, not necessarily for others walking this path, is a hefty dose of anti-depressants and stimulants. Somehow people still experience me as different in a way they don't necessarily like, but even enemies grudging remark that I'm "easier to get on with." Sometimes it's worth it.
I wouldn't take a cure for anything. This is the way I was born, for a reason. I accept it and embrace it. I wouldn't be me any other way!
I hope this for myself.
In a heartbeat...I like who I am, but it would be one less obstacle to me getting regular human contact and being able to navigate socially...I feel as though someone chronically isolated against their will, obviously unable to properly comprehend social settings...I often want to reach out to struggling people, but how can I offer them advice and encouragement when I obviously know nothing of how to get along with human beings? All I know is me. All I know is how I can not argue unnecessarily, not judge too quickly, and genuinely thank people. I cannot draw anyone else in and have nothing to give, although I very much want to.
My words would only contaminate them with my own social ineptitude, which remains after books, workshops, videos, and more.
I sense there's a lot between the lines, especially when I redact parts of this to focus on the pieces that caught my eye and tugged at my heart. So please forgive me if I misread any of it, I'm only speaking for my reaction.
Advice and encouragement can have their biggest effect with very small gestures. You wrote this post. You clearly wish for the first responsibility of medical professionals: "First, do no harm." As an aspie, you suffer the social ineptitude of socially skilled people who can't adapt their skills to cope with you. Instead, you, and I, and many, many others here and elsewhere, know that we are socially unskilled, and have poor aptitude for learning skill, and are held responsible for having to overcome the aptitude deficit, the know-how deficit, and then the disappointment when we try and fail.
It's pretty clear you don't have a compassion deficit. Rather the opposite.
I challenge the word "contaminate." Asperges means "cleanse." (While I don't like pumping my own posts, I do have one in particular addressing the roots of the word "asperger" and the curious conincidence of its name's origins. And it does mean cleanse, but also roughly.)
A thing I notice about people is that those who cure must develop some coping mechanism for avoiding sympathy exhaustion. We aspies have it built-in, in a most curious way: we get tired so much faster. We get a lot more practice in how to recover. That makes us good people to know when our socially skilled siblings face emotional exhaustion or overwhelming sorrow.
You know a lot about human beings. It's the social niceties of conventions that don't get your attention that hurts you. Not the same thing, in my view.
You are right, I think, when you say words remain after all the other media. It's a two-edged sword. However, learning to wield it is not necessarily as tricky as being social is. We need the surgeon as well as the nurturer. Those of us who are both learn from practice.
Grace and peace follow you today and always.
-A4H
