I have usually been made fun of and called "ret*d" throughout my childhood as well as adult life, but when I look at how I act in public, I do act quite awkward. I tend to act so painfully awkward that people stare at me, and even make comments about me to others or even to me myself. I have OCD, several types of anxiety, hypochondria and Asperger's.
Some examples of what I mean by "socially ret*d":
-Often when offered a handshake, my hands simply stay at my sides and I give the person a blank look, i.e. blank facial expression. Often this angers or irritates people, and they make comments about me for it.
-Although I am not mutistic (at least not chronically), if someone asks me a simple question like, "What do you do for fun to relax?", I would look at them with a blank facial expression and just say nothing, or stutter with gibberish sounds like "eh", "uh", "oy", etc. Then after around five seconds I would answer, but I would answer stuff like, "Watching war movies like Platoon (1986) or Casualties of War (1989)." Then they would look at me as if they had a "wtf?" facial expression.
-I often am a bit worried about coming into contact with other people's germs. Sometimes I put the lower part of my face inside the upper part of my shirt when in a group of people. If I have to drink beer from the bottle of wine from the glass, often I tilt it so that the liquid enters my mouth, without my mouth actually touching the bottle or the glass. I often get weird looks for this.
-For some reason sometimes my balance is off, plus I am very clumsy; I accidentally tilt my torso backwards or forwards almost to the point of falling down.
-I absolutely need to eat finger foods with a fork or spoon. Thus, you often see me eating popcorn, chips, crisps, chicken wings, etc. with a fork or spoon.
-Since I have no natural instinct or notion of flirting, either I say nothing or say something idiotic. For example, either I tell a woman nor give hints that I like her, or I just blurt out straight, "I like you".
-I usually have had no body language or hand motions whilst talking. Lately I tried talking with my hands. However, my hand motions are often disjointed, causing me to accidentally knock glasses of wine and beer down without noticing.
When I was a child and teenager, on and off I went to psychiatrists to try to work on socialising and my anxiety. Nothing really worked, but I do have a history of having problems with social stuff.
Do these traits make me essentially "socially ret*d"?
25 Dec 2019, 10:17 pm
