having aspergers is not fun.

it's like i have the exact opposite of whatever midas's touch is. i repel people. if someone in a group makes a joke about a dog looking like a grandma, everyone laughs. if i do the same thing to the same group, everyone acts like i just said i wanted to skin that dog in front of them. i've had a long life of tripping over my words, not getting people's slight and subtle verbal queues, not understanding the nuances of things only to realize them way too late and fret over my stupidity...i've lost friend after friend after potential friend over these, including other people who are neurodivergent and are supposed to understand where i'm coming from. (although those people aren't fellow aspies.) i always come off too cold, too blunt. the things i find funny, other people find offensive. the things i find offensive, other people find funny. (and i don't find actually offensive, heinous bigotry funny - see how i always have to make myself clear, just in case?) in a world where there is usually an unspoken "code" of standard behavior regardless of the environment and its self-proclaimed acceptance, i seem to frequently find myself in the place of a sheep in a flock who is mistaken by its peers as a wolf.

i wonder if i'm a bad person, if there's some aspect about me that's genuinely unlikable, and whether all those people in the past who abandoned me or maligned me were right. i do this repeatedly, only to realize each time that they were the result of immaturity, mistakes, naïveté. there's people who love me, i have good qualities, and what one person thinks of me is their thoughts, and not reality. but when this continues to happen, and as i've obtained an official diagnosis, i know there's something innate within me that can explain it. a diagnosis isn't an excuse, but it is an explanation, and certainly one that isn't as neat or pretty as fictional characters and top ten lists make it seem.

i've tried most of my life to compensate for this by becoming adept in many fields, particularly art, programming, and history. but i was always too scared to actually share stuff with others due to this ever-present fear that my stuff will not be good enough and will repel people, thus drawing in less friends. ridiculous, i know. i'm not saying that attracting people was the main reason i continued drawing, but it was one of the motivators, i suppose. i'm trying to separate all of these disparate aspects at the moment and keep them that way. working quietly to improve isolates me from people aside from maybe my boyfriend. i wish i had more people to regularly talk to, but no one seems to care much for me for whatever reason....so i'm stuck in this cycle.

i recently attempted to make a friend online, and they seemed receptive to me - at first. i think they saw a post on a social media account of mine and interpreted it as me having a...not great view which i actually don't. the post, in my mind, had nothing to do with that, and i didn't realize it could have that connotation until they unfollowed me. as this example illustrates, the internet, especially in social media when specification and exception are rare if not myths, can be just as bad for us aspies as in person talk at misunderstanding implications. and for all the effort people put into tone indication and whatnot, these subtle social queues which i seem to consistently miss continue to remain in place.

i hate that my first post here has to be such a negative one, but it's something that's been on my mind a lot lately. my difficulty making friends flashes by me from time to time. it seems that everyone's nestled within some nice friend group in some group message that they consistently talk in. all except for me. i only have my boyfriend (who i love and appreciate, but can't be the only person i ever talk to) and a handful of acquaintances that i merely pass by. what is it like to be in a friend group? how do you meet someone who likes you enough to be included in their friend group? how is it that other nd people seem to be aware of all of these niceties, while i'm treading water slowly behind them?

people tell me that as i get older, i'll find "my people". i am in my early 20s, and i have yet to find them. my boyfriend, i suppose, is my person, but how about friends? where are they? will anyone be willing to be patient enough to deal with a seemingly cursed aspie?