Atumai

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In I Never Promised You A Rose Garden (awesome book) a girl creates her own world including a language her own called Yri. One of these words is "atumai" which she described in terms of the kinds of people who things always go right for, and who, if memory serves, "The light is always green with." (I loaned the book to a friend, apparently permanently, so I do not have an exact quote for this.) Googling it, it has been roughly translated as confidence, but that's not true to the original text; it also involves luck, charisma, and other such qualities.

To give you a clearer idea of atumai, I'll list a few fictional characters you may know of in order of least to most but all have quite a bit of it:

"Hobbes" from Calvin and Hobbes (sometimes)
"Hyde" from That 70s Show
"Lisa" from Girl Interrupted
"Ian Malcolm" from Jurassic Park (The book! Read the bloody book!)
"Alucard" from Hellsing
"Hannabil Lecter" (if you don't know what he's from I can't help you)

You getting the drift? That imperturbability, that justified self-confidence, which there is no adequate word in the English language for.

Now, you can rank people in conversations by their atumai by how they interact. People with large amounts of it tend to take the piss out of the people who have less. (I love that expression, I talk to a British person who told me I was doing it and it stuck, deal.) If you view every friendly conversation as a sort of sparring ground, the person with the greatest amount of atumai will win.

I have the most of it when I'm in a good mood. A "I would never have guessed you're an Aspie" mood. (We should have gang tattoos.) Most of the time, when I'm in a neutral mood, I have very little. And am aware of it. Which drains it more. This is a large part of why I don't make eye contact or "recognize" anyone on campus when I walk past. I figure people don't want to say hi to me and would only feel forced to do so if I made eye contact and I don't want to put them out. I know, I know, it doesn't make sense, but I'm a chick, we rarely do things that make logical sense. (I like blaming things other than disorders for my dysfunction. Something to offend everyone.)

Anyway, do any of you guys feel like NTs kind of have this in abundance, while people in the spectrum have less, in general- or think they do, which is in effect the same thing? You think you have it, you have it.

Hey look, you have a thousand posts.

That’s exactly why i ues to do it not its cos i know i dont want to talk to them
But I have no atumai

Ever the worst luck
really bad confidence lucky I have learned to fake it
and take the piss i love doing that

I don't think it's necessarily to do with luck, more that you find some way to roll with the punches.

Exactly. You can be lucky and still ahve none of this; unlucky and still have a lot. It's a sort of "worldview" thing.