This post was just the motivation I needed right now. I can relate to pretty much all of your feelings and experiences right now. I’ve also found that the older I get, the more difficult it is to socialize, maintain meaningful relationships, and not feel ashamed of myself all the time. It’s so frustrating when you finally meet people you have things in common with and it goes nowhere and you stay awake at night wondering what you did wrong or why people have no interest in you. Same with jobs…no matter how well I think I do in interviews, I never get the job, and when I ask them if there’s anything I can do to improve, they say that they were really impressed with me but chose someone else. And it’s like, that’s great, but how come I’m still not getting jobs? It’s so frustrating.
I also agree that therapy is so important when it comes to dealing with coping with emotions. I hate the stereotype that people on the spectrum are emotionless, cold robots. I’ve always been a very sensitive person who experiences emotions way too strongly, from crippling anxiety to love to excitement to sadness. Therapy helped me develop coping skills so I didn’t have meltdowns in public, although it is still difficult to maintain my cool sometimes.
And OK! Cupid is terrifying! I joined in college and got one meaningful relationship out of it, but the majority of messages I got were so insincere and inappropriate that it scared me away. I tried to rejoin again this year and it was even scarier than I remember. Oh well. At least the quizzes and questions were fun. It’s hard to date when you’re on the spectrum in your 20s when everyone else is just trying to hookup or get married right away. My perfect idea for a date is a night in playing games and watching movies.
It’s so hard out there for us people on the spectrum, so I’m glad to see increasing camaraderie on the Internet. Despite the challenges, however, I don’t think I would want to be normal either. It’s like in Hercules when Meg is incredulous of Hercules wanting to be like everyone else and says, “You want to be petty and dishonest?” Life is painful, but it’s made me a better person because of it.