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flamingswordI have weather veins.
They are especially sensitive
to dust storms and hurricanes.
When I am nervous my teeth chatter
like a wheelbarrow collecting rain.
I am rusty when I talk.
It’s the storm in me.
- - Andrea Gibson - -
* I used to be so afraid to talk, so afraid that I would say the wrong thing, and try to fix it by saying another wrong thing, say all of the wrong things inside me, dams against the words I meant never to say all bursting across the silences that I cultivated between me and everyone who absolutely was not allowed to know how broken and horrible I was. Words breaking in and giving meaning to the silences I walled in around my ability to care about my inability to see myself. Eventually the humidity would get too high, and there was a slow condensation that dripped bits of my truth out to me safely, but I knew that disaster was never far from the first word. I feared the power of words, because its hard for me to lie, and because the act of speaking calls up the truth in me. Erica Jong says, "How can I know what I think until I see what I say?" I feel truthsome tonight; I'd better start talking and let my words out before they backlog.
* I wonder a lot about whether I can ever train my skillset to approach normal enough that I can feel like I belong to this world. I am afraid that this world is composed of truth and lies intermixed in such a way that I can not unravel or understand or trust or belong. Maybe I can only accept, and hope that accepting is enough to make me happy with being an alien here. Sometimes it is. I function pretty seamlessly in most environments, and I've managed to make most of my inabilities (disabilities) look deliberate.
* I might have been a liar if I'd been any good at it. The temptation to hide things was pretty strong, and I got used to living behind a lot of false indifference in junior high and false enthusiasm in high school. I can mimic feelings and that warps people's context enough to smokescreen truths as long as you consistently err to one or two directions. But making a verbal lie appear to be true was only something I got away with if I knew the person really well or they weren't paying attention. There were only ever three or four people who knew me really well at a time. And I could never tell if they knew I was lying. It was a point of anxiety every time. I eventually gave up because it was more trouble than it was worth.
* What would I be like if I had enough facility with the theory of mind that I could more easily be dishonest? Would I have gone to a manipulative place with it? That would have made me a bitter person. I would never have been able to learn to care about people from that perspective. I like to care about you, and I'm pretty good at it now that I've got fifteen years practice. Maybe I would be better able to comfort you. Part of the ability to give comfort is to tell people what they need to hear, but my decreased fluency in theory of mind means not knowing what that is. There are a standard set of comforting lies, but which ones go with this situation? By the time I can figure it out the moment has passed. I look like I have integrity and grit because I don't understand how to comfort you. I try to comfort you by accepting your pain as a necessary part of this time in your life, and not fix it, and offer my presence or to leave you to feel it alone. I am, I think, finally learning compassion, the suffering-with, through my repeat failure to replicate any other form of comfort.
* It makes me sad that I can never let myself be exceptional at any of the things I'm really good at because that would make me less human. Within the time and energy and resource constraints, I can either be a passable human with slow-growing skills that will take a lifetime to hone to anything remarkable, or I can backslide on the continuous training and fall out of the habit of having friends and maintaining relationships to focus on the INTERESTING thing I'm doing from which people are a DISTRACTION. I will tolerate you then because I need reality checks and people to disagree with to generate new ideas. But I will be a friend that has forgotten how to be careful of your feelings, forgotten rules and social boundaries and returning phone calls. That's not a me I want to go back to, not even if it is selfish to deny the world my unquestionable ability to go after something until it is FIXED. I learned how to give up on things, and I never want to forget that relaxing acceptance of deliberately choosing to fail.
* I think I used to have social anxiety disorder before I figured out that you're all big fakers who don't know how this stuff works much better than I do. Bravo.
They are especially sensitive
to dust storms and hurricanes.
When I am nervous my teeth chatter
like a wheelbarrow collecting rain.
I am rusty when I talk.
It’s the storm in me.
- - Andrea Gibson - -
* I used to be so afraid to talk, so afraid that I would say the wrong thing, and try to fix it by saying another wrong thing, say all of the wrong things inside me, dams against the words I meant never to say all bursting across the silences that I cultivated between me and everyone who absolutely was not allowed to know how broken and horrible I was. Words breaking in and giving meaning to the silences I walled in around my ability to care about my inability to see myself. Eventually the humidity would get too high, and there was a slow condensation that dripped bits of my truth out to me safely, but I knew that disaster was never far from the first word. I feared the power of words, because its hard for me to lie, and because the act of speaking calls up the truth in me. Erica Jong says, "How can I know what I think until I see what I say?" I feel truthsome tonight; I'd better start talking and let my words out before they backlog.
* I wonder a lot about whether I can ever train my skillset to approach normal enough that I can feel like I belong to this world. I am afraid that this world is composed of truth and lies intermixed in such a way that I can not unravel or understand or trust or belong. Maybe I can only accept, and hope that accepting is enough to make me happy with being an alien here. Sometimes it is. I function pretty seamlessly in most environments, and I've managed to make most of my inabilities (disabilities) look deliberate.
* I might have been a liar if I'd been any good at it. The temptation to hide things was pretty strong, and I got used to living behind a lot of false indifference in junior high and false enthusiasm in high school. I can mimic feelings and that warps people's context enough to smokescreen truths as long as you consistently err to one or two directions. But making a verbal lie appear to be true was only something I got away with if I knew the person really well or they weren't paying attention. There were only ever three or four people who knew me really well at a time. And I could never tell if they knew I was lying. It was a point of anxiety every time. I eventually gave up because it was more trouble than it was worth.
* What would I be like if I had enough facility with the theory of mind that I could more easily be dishonest? Would I have gone to a manipulative place with it? That would have made me a bitter person. I would never have been able to learn to care about people from that perspective. I like to care about you, and I'm pretty good at it now that I've got fifteen years practice. Maybe I would be better able to comfort you. Part of the ability to give comfort is to tell people what they need to hear, but my decreased fluency in theory of mind means not knowing what that is. There are a standard set of comforting lies, but which ones go with this situation? By the time I can figure it out the moment has passed. I look like I have integrity and grit because I don't understand how to comfort you. I try to comfort you by accepting your pain as a necessary part of this time in your life, and not fix it, and offer my presence or to leave you to feel it alone. I am, I think, finally learning compassion, the suffering-with, through my repeat failure to replicate any other form of comfort.
* It makes me sad that I can never let myself be exceptional at any of the things I'm really good at because that would make me less human. Within the time and energy and resource constraints, I can either be a passable human with slow-growing skills that will take a lifetime to hone to anything remarkable, or I can backslide on the continuous training and fall out of the habit of having friends and maintaining relationships to focus on the INTERESTING thing I'm doing from which people are a DISTRACTION. I will tolerate you then because I need reality checks and people to disagree with to generate new ideas. But I will be a friend that has forgotten how to be careful of your feelings, forgotten rules and social boundaries and returning phone calls. That's not a me I want to go back to, not even if it is selfish to deny the world my unquestionable ability to go after something until it is FIXED. I learned how to give up on things, and I never want to forget that relaxing acceptance of deliberately choosing to fail.
* I think I used to have social anxiety disorder before I figured out that you're all big fakers who don't know how this stuff works much better than I do. Bravo.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-01 06:40 pm (UTC)"I am afraid that this world is composed of truth and lies intermixed in such a way that I can not unravel or understand or trust or belong. Maybe I can only accept[.]"
I just posted about how absorbing information helps me to see the greater scope of reality in such a way that understaning, trust, and acceptance invariably follow. My seeds were planted by the Tao te Ching, but it comes down to words being labels and truth being only approximable. Improve your approximations well enough and you can see that all lies point to a truth. At least that's how it works for me.
"Would I have gone to a manipulative place with it? That would have made me a bitter person. [...] I look like I have integrity and grit because I don't understand how to comfort you. I try to comfort you by accepting your pain as a necessary part of this time in your life, and not fix it, and offer my presence or to leave you to feel it alone."
Pretty awesome that you recognize these things. :)
"I wonder a lot about whether I can ever train my skillset to approach normal enough that I can feel like I belong to this world. "
I believe a small change makes the greatest difference and can't help wondering if the only thing that makes you so different is that you became self-aware earlier than others and so your learning was much more conscious and cerebral than anyone else's. Whenever you talk about having to learn how people express themselves, how to read their expressions and voices, etc... those are steps most people have been through, but almost never with an awareness that they were learning it. The learning comes, then the meta. You got to the meta first and then filled in the learning with full awareness of how difficult and bizarre the whole process was. It was difficult and bizarre for all of us, but we were blessed with inattention of that fact most of the time.
"It makes me sad that I can never let myself be exceptional at any of the things I'm really good at because that would make me less human."
Humanity isn't about normalcy, it's about choice. Again, I point to your meta-levels of cognition and say that there have been plenty of humans who were exceptional at things, they just didn't make the same choice you did (if they recognized the choice at all). You have no choice about analyzing and interpreting the world around you: you can't shut that off and you accept it about yourself; but rather than exercise that on a project that would alienate most people, you chose to redirect it toward interpreting the people themselves, giving you conscious insight into what is subconscious and unchosen by most of us. That makes you remarkable in my opinion. Would you choose to do something more with it so others can recognize your insight with fame and wealth, or are you content to thrive quietly? There is no wrong answer unless it is wrong for you. Do you, oh great examiner, know why you make that choice?
"I think I used to have social anxiety disorder before I figured out that you're all big fakers who don't know how this stuff works much better than I do. Bravo."
Again, I want to point out that most people have been faking so long they've forgotten they were faking. That's why you're so powerful (and even frightening) to them (us?): you're the stranger on the corner who clearly saw Superman enter a phone booth and Clark Kent stumble out. You haven't done anything wrong, and there's no reason to believe you will, but the potency of what you know cannot be forgotten.
This is all just idle speculation. Sometimes I think you hate it when I try to figure you out, but I'm going to risk saying the wrong thing anyway. ;)
no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 08:00 am (UTC)"You got to the meta first and then filled in the learning with full awareness of how difficult and bizarre the whole process was." <--THIS.
My everything has always been cerebral. And the fact that I can never forget how contrived it is is part of why it never feels natural I think. It needs ruminating, but there is some piece of truth in this that I need to fit into my understanding of my feeling of alienation. It feels important. Thank you!
"Would you choose to do something more with it so others can recognize your insight with fame and wealth, or are you content to thrive quietly?" I'm still thinking of dusting off bits of this journal and adding some cognitive science and making a book about human interaction out of it for Aspies and people who want to befriend them. Karen told me about your idea on my workshopping a thing on dealing with emotions rationally, but I've never gotten any volunteers before to teach how to do what I do. I would like to try to teach one person some of it and see if that even works first.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 08:05 pm (UTC)