aspie_giraffe
You sound like an awesome individual who really has unique things to offer anyone perceptive enough to share time with you doing/studying something or going somewhere that's useful/relevant to you.
I'm 20 and would still say that I don't have friends. I don't do anything people my age do and never have. I have been sad and lonely a lot. I have tried insanely hard to make friends and keep them and do things other people like, but it always feels like I am trading my soul, despite a handful of joyful moments with them (but those were more like personal joy in their presence rather than shared joy), and giving my time and effort to people who don't realize how hard it is for me to do so, and in effect wasting my time.
And I value my time more than almost anything else, because as I get older, life looks shorter, time goes faster, and I have this idea that I'm kind of worth something, that I have something to offer the world, that I can do something to help other people. I've been enriched by people who I, at the time, called friends. But i've been far more enriched by going my own way.
When I feel very lonely there a some ideas for myself. I often do not remember them in bad moments, but here are a couple:
I go to coffee shops and study things or draw or write, where, if its indepentently owned, its usually quiet, smells nice, and I can do exactly what I want to do and also feel a sort of human companionship with the people around me who are also working on their own things by themselves. They are there, we are sharing a similar experience, and I do not have to talk to them.
I get in touch with college and university professors (i've done this since elementary school), e-mailing them questions or going down to their offices and talking to them. They are usually very excited to answer young students' questions. 99% of the time, the only friends I think I have are my teachers and professors. And now, because I approached my highschool teachers in this manner, a couple of them are in the .1% of all people i've been associated with that I migh consider calling "friends." (but just be careful to keep questions to topic, to what they are teaching or researching themselves. I learned the hard way that I shouldn't tell a university professor that "I didn't sleep last night, or the night before" or anything about my family at 13).
Recently i've been getting a little more daring and going to a couple nicer shopping malls. When I lived in a city i'd walk around where there were more people. These are periods or days when i'm doing REALLY GOOD in sensory processing ways (and I am still wearing massive hearing protection, more clothing, and sometimes sunglasses) The majority of days I would crash and burn in such places. But I like to watch people. I used to get even more lonely sometimes when I did this, but for some reason now i've sort of put ice on that; i feel it, but it doesn't affect my thought processing. I'm starting to experience more good feelings FOR other people, i.e. when I see kids with parents and they all look happy or I see kids together having fun or I see couples enjoying each others company (except when their sucking on each other. I really hate that and get really angry), and I really love old people because they are usually quiet and interesting to look at.
But most of the time I am just trying to keep myself too busy to notice or care that I have not what the conventional definition of "friends" is. But even when I am really lonely, I don't truly want that kind of relationship with my mankind, if I want to be really honest with myself.
31 Jul 2010, 2:35 am
