Talk about relationships, both platonic and romantic. Do you have anyone special in your life? Have your relationships been affected by your being autistic? Have you found it hard to make and maintain friendships? Do you have a lot of friends or very few?
For someone my age, I believe I’ve had fewer romantic relationships than is common. With the exception of Voloyda, the majority of my romantic relationships have ended because my datemates think I’m strange, which I suppose I am. People say that I’m weird and I like to state that I’m perfectly normal for an autistic person. I’ve not seriously dated anyone since I received my diagnosis, but I’m thinking that when I do start dating again it might go a bit easier now that I was an explanation for my odd behaviors.
I’ve never really been able to make and maintain friendships. Especially when I was little, I just never really fit in and the other kids thought I was weird. As I got older and my social anxiety worsened, I stopped trying. By the time I got to high school, I didn’t talk to any of my classmates. It was to the point where I was talking to my teacher and a girl I had been in classes with for two years told me that up until that point she thought I was mute because she had literally never heard me say anything.
I don’t have many friends, I’m friendly with a few people online but my only in person friends are Theo and Voloyda. Theo’s been my BFF ever since we met in the seventh grade. We were attending a school for kids with ADHD and Asperger’s and we clicked right away. I’ve known Voloyda since I was 15, it’s kind of been the ten-year on-again-off-again relationship. He’s a good friend, for the most part, and he was a good partner when we dated. I had friends from work but those kind of tapered off after I got fired. I’ve never really been one to ‘keep in touch’ and it felt awkward trying to keep it going after everything that happened.
Though I don’t have many friends, I wouldn’t really say I’m lonely; I like being alone. I do wish I had a few more people to hang out with but for the most part I’m pretty content. People don’t get me and it kind of seems like a waste of time to expend energy trying to achieve and maintain friendships that will most likely end when the person deems me ‘too weird or boring.’
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