Hi everyone! I thought since it was recommended, I should introduce myself.
I'm going by the name MildredHubble as it's a reference to one of my favourite series of books from my childhood - The Worst Witch. I recently discovered that several more books had been published in this series since I was young, so I've been catching up and remembering how much like the disaster prone protagonist Mildred Hubble I have always been. So even though I'm male (though I don't always feel I identify as such all the time) I thought I would adopt her name here. Just as an aside, if you are wondering, I'm not particularly fussy about pronouns, he/she etc are fine by me. I have a tabby cat like the original Mildred. One thing that will become obvious about me is that I love cats! I would have 100s of them if I could!
I've arrived here, as recently, perhaps over the past year, I've started to wonder if I might have some (possibly mild) autistic traits. For quite a long time I've perhaps not been aware that the spectrum is maybe a bit broader than I had imagined. I felt it silly to consider I may fall somewhere on it. But after some conversations online with some wonderful people who were autistic, and finding I shared a great deal of similar symptoms and experiences, I have started to wonder.
Sorry if this introductory post gets a bit long/verbose.
I should maybe give some information about myself. First of all, I really like to have space and a lot of time to myself. I don't dislike people, I'm not scared of people. I just like time to explore my interests and hobbies. I have people around me who I feel safe with and I have a small group of very solid, long standing friendships. I don't think I've fallen out with a single one of my friends for decades now. They understand me, I understand them. They never hold it against me if I lose touch with them for a while. They understand that I have only so much "social energy".
I've felt like I'm often misunderstood. It seems to have improved a bit over the years but it feels, at times like I'm just not on the same wavelength with people despite my best efforts. I know this is a bit of a cliché, but I do at times feel like I'm from another planet and my friendly gesture of a handshake has been interpreted as a declaration of war. I find the strange politics and games people play extremely uninteresting. I hope that makes some kind of sense? I'm not really interested in climbing to the top of any ladders or greasy poles. I'm not interested in popularity contests, but it seems in general that I'm weird if these things are not a priority for me.
Throughout my life I've been entirely puzzled by people asking me a question then getting mad at me when I give them a straight answer. They seem to read all kinds of crazy (to me) motivations for my response. A representative example might be…
Them: "Would you like driving lessons?"
Me: "Oh no thanks, I passed my test a little while ago."
My response is interpreted as "showing off" or "arrogance", when quite simply, it seems obvious to me that driving lessons would not be worth the time or money in my situation. It never entered my mind that a simple statement of fact could upset someone so much. It just seems there's this odd social "dance" I'm expected to do and I'm completely oblivious to it and always have been.
Then there's the no sequiturs like…
Me: "The sun's out earlier today…"
Them: "What are you trying to say?!!! Something about me being late yesterday!!!?"
Also, the situations when I seem to miss some sort of beat and I find the other person staring at me with an odd mixture of confusion, disgust and contempt. I have felt that maybe this could have been an occasion, due to some discontinuity with my presentation as male and maybe sounding a bit, well, "girly". This is one of the things I've been at pains to hide quite often and I wonder if this could be considered masking.
I have, on the face of it, various hobbies. I'm super interested in retro computers, I really like electronics. I was always "that kid" who pulled apart everything to find out how it worked. I still do this and I've learned a lot from it. I like music and music production, car mechanics and (for reasons I won't go into) although I don't so it much these days, I like drawing or painting. I say "on the face of it" as to me, these hobbies are all connected as I see them as essentially "reverse engineering" and one area of interest spread out into the next.
I tend to get on a lot better with people that share similar traits with me, than others do. It might seem a tautological I guess, but the sorts of people that are ostracised for having similar traits to the ones I've described just seem to "twig" with me. We seem to have the right social "interface". There have been situations in work where I've heard all kinds of nasty things said about someone, only to meet them and immediately "get" them and share similar interests with them. I understand their reluctance to socialise with colleagues and that not hearing from them isn't their attempt to wind me or others up. As I say, I need my space and can appreciate others' need for it. I don't take it personally like others seem to.
I'm not a total disaster socially, but it can and does make me anxious. Sometimes I can get into a bit of an avalanche, conversationally when I'm talking about a subject I'm really interested in. If I'm lucky I will notice the vacant expressions or yawning before I commit too much of a faux pas. The difficulty is that this can be hard for me to judge, if someone expresses a shared interest. I kinda realise that perhaps their interest isn't quite as obsessive as my own when they seem to recoil a bit.
I can hold conversations but if I'm thrown off script I can recoil quite significantly too. For example, if someone makes a joke (possibly even at my expense) I tend to be in "thinking literally mode" and lose my orientation and the way I emphasise words can go all to pot and I turn into a bit of a gibbering wreck, trying to reverse engineer the conversation on the fly.
I guess I should also mention that quite a while ago I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and also dyslexia. After quite a long while being in recovery due, I think, to medication, I've had a lot more serious episodes of depression in recent years. As such, right now I don't feel like I'm writing this very well or doing a particularly great job of covering everything adequately. I'm also aware of the length of this post already. I guess being on here though will afford me the chance to elaborate over time.
I've had some rather distressing experiences with a psychiatrist also, so that really does put me off discussing this with a doctor. So I thought talking to others might help me figure a few things out.
Well, this feels a bit rambly. It probably reflects my current state, that being half asleep and quite dozy. My apologies if this all is a bit hard to read
Thanks for reading this far! I appreciate your patience!
