Salutations, malefactors!

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I have a terrible time with subject lines. In translation: Hi! My name is Eia, and it's nice to meet you. I've been "weird," "special," and "crazy" my whole life - it's only recently that I've learned of Asperger's and HFA, and for the first time I feel a sense of belonging. Reality has never felt real to me, and I've spent my life buried in fantasies that I create inside my head to avoid what I viewed as a depressing, mechanical world populated by people who seemed disgustingly ignorant at best, and callously cruel at worst.

I have a somewhat better view of humanity now. The world still doesn't feel like my world, but at least I don't feel like I'm alone in it. I'm fortunate enough to be surrounded by family and friends who prefer me the way I am, eccentricities and dysfunctions and all.

I am 23 now. Most people would not guess that I'm ASD. I maintain eye contact, offer sympathy and support, and adhere to a strict code of politeness and friendliness. The thing is, I'm also an excellent actor. I have several highly-developed "masks" that I use, depending on the nature of the situation I'm in. My sympathy and support usually subtly redirect a person's heartfelt complaints (which are extremely uncomfortable and frustrating to me) into a more neutral ground. My eye contact is only excellent when I deliberately initiate it - if someone else intitiates it, or if I make eye contact accidentally, I feel a kind of intense anxiety and, to a degree, violation - it feels like sitting in my bedroom and having someone completely unfamiliar walk into the room, touch my things, and leave.

The politeness and friendliness is primarily my way of avoiding social faux pas and confrontation. I basically make myself so nonthreatening and agreeable that I slip "under the radar" so to speak. In high school, I was so adept at this that a girl actually SAT ON ME once because she didn't know I was there!

Recently I've been evaluating these masks and altering them, as I know they attributed to a good portion of my feelings of alienation. It's stressful enough to be in a world you don't belong in, without the added pressure of trying to pretend that you belong.

I look forward to talking to everyone here. My posts won't always be so somber, LOL.

Welcome to WP! I hope you enjoy posting here.

Welcome to WP! Hope you have fun!

Welcome to WP!

Tim

Welcome!

I don't think I can quite explain it, but I like you already. ^_^ When I read over your post, it looks like something I could have written myself, with only a few minor adjustments.

Welcome!

As a relative newbie myself, I can tell you there are some wonderful, and very supportive, people here.

Good gods, you sound just like me. Except I refer to my "masks" as "human interactive constructs", "constructs" as shorthand. I've tended to have different constructs for dealing with different people, from specific people to more arbitrary people like a clerk at the grocery store. Specific constructs tend to reflect the people they are designed for to a high degree. My ultimate goal is to discard the use of constructs in favor of one master persona, which ideally will most closely express who I really am and really want to be. I often use this place as a vetting ground for some of the adjustments I'm making to the master persona, codenamed "Project Icarus". I don't plan to ever give up my fantasy worlds though; ironically, they're probably what keeps me sane (assuming that I am, which is probably a stretch); I will always exist more in them than I do in the "real" world.

If that made any amount of sense, the Wrong Planet is likely the right planet for you.

Welcome.

Good fortune,

- Icarus is Nirvana

Welcome to WrongPlanet

Hail and well met!


Seems to me that aspies can be quite talented actors and "social engineers" at times, as long as they have their mask on. I've managed to get myself out of loads of trouble with fast-talk and later was mystified as to how I could have possibly done this. Anytime I attempt a conscious planned effort it falls flat.

Yo

Nice first post ! ! Welcome, welcome, you'll fit right in.

I've always identified with the 'mask' thing since hearing Roger Waters song "Paranoid Eyes".

Welcome,

A teacher of ways.

Nice to meet you, Eialune.

Keep practicing the eye contact and in a few decades you should be comfortable doing it. I no longer have any problems with eye contact, but when I first started working on it, the contact was excruciating.

Hi Eialune,

Welcome to WP

I can relate to you in that I still don't feel like I belong in this world.
I have to say that I have improved with things in the past year such as not stimming in public (used to do it all the time without realising until someone asked what I was doing) and dealing slightly better with change.
But like you, I still struggle with eye contact and feel extremely uncomfortable when giving it.

I hope you enjoy posting here.