The door ajar.

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A structural autistic lives in an awkward and deceptive position vis a vis normal social life. His first instinct is to mimic normality and to try to introduce himself in social life with a full citizenship status. In this he never succeeds really, but his ingenuity in mimicking normality is relatively effective in having him accepted in social life as “normal”. This is a precarious position as he sees doors to social citizenship ajar. He may glimpse and covet sociality (friendship, marriage, family, occupation). It is a delusion: those doors will never open to him but he will go on, sometimes all his life, to think that after some effort he will be admitted. But his life will be a life of frustrating and inconclusive effort. Kafka’s describes the situation in a perfect way: “A man from the country seeks the law and wishes to gain entry to the law through a doorway. The doorkeeper tells the man that he cannot go through at the present time. The man asks if he can ever go through, and the doorkeeper says that is possible. The man waits by the door for years, bribing the doorkeeper with everything he has. The doorkeeper accepts the bribes, but tells the man that he accepts them "so you won't think you've neglected something." The man waits at the door until he is about to die. Right before his death, he asks the doorkeeper why even though everyone seeks the law, no one else has come in all the years. The doorkeeper answers "No one else could gain admittance here, because this entrance was meant solely for you. I'm going to go and shut it now."
The door ajar deceives him and the other people around him. The fact that his mimicking normality can have some fragile result, a precarious marriage, friendship or social occupation, invites renewing the efforts. But all these things were out of his reach from the start.
They say that there is 4 to one ration of males in the Asperger syndrome. May be because opening doors ajar requires some kind of male aggressiveness? It’s only an open question. Perhaps “losers” are mainly males? Scott Fitzgerald, Kafka, Kleist, Andersen, Holden Caulfield and Salinger’s characters were losers, and many others of course, between them Patricia Highsmith. It’s only a line of reflection.

I am at a stage where I can still see through the door and want to go join the people on the other side, but am slowly starting to realise that my bribes are not working. I am starting to realise that the door has been closed the whole time and what I have been seeing is some kind of painting or projection.
This is a very harsh realisation that leaves me feeling a sense of grief, but reading this post reassures me that others experience and understand.
Thankyou Paolo

Males live under a much higher degree of social expectation. For all the talk of equality, many things women are allowed or encouraged to be or do, men, in order to be considered men, must do, and do successfully.

I really thought I had gone through the door but it was an illusion.

Now I see a door ajar some distance away and I have no interest in joining the group I can hear on the other side. They are noisy.

I walk off into the quiet into a beautiful garden, there are butterflies and birds, smells of flowers and trees and fresh air. For a small part of my time, I am joined by a close friend and we talk quietly, sometimes laughing and sometimes silent.

Evening calls and I return to the house in the peace and calm of dusk.

I have bricked up my door.

I do not even try to go though it any more.

I guess I just gave up on it.

What is a "structural autistic"?

I spent the first twenty-eight years of my life trying to get through that door. I would constantly think that sometime in the future, it would happen (when I was at university, started my professional career, &c). I have since come to the conclusion that it will never happen.

Coincidentaly, I have also began to realize that I do not wish to join the majority of society. As time progresses, I find the population in general to be less tolerable. Thus, I have decided to ignore the door, and start to build my own house here on the other side...

I have resolved to go to the door only when the bell rings. As a citizen of this society, I am expected to be capable of answer it when someone is calling. It is not my motivation to open the door when nobody is there.

but where is the bell, there is a sign but i dont understand the language, is it telling me about the bell? or is it just there to say im not wanted

id say ive put my boots on and im wondering whether im gonna kick the opening and force it open, or kick out the hinges and destroy the door altogether

but hell we can see through the door, we can talk to the other side, but we can also enjoy the peace and quiet


perhaps ive taken the door thing a bit too far, seriously i believe life is open to us, but its hard

We can see the other side but we don't know how it feels. Were just looking at the surface.

But remember the old quote about gazing into the abyss.

While Paolo and we may understand what the great poets and artists had to sacrifice for thier craft most people just see it as alien.

I think it depends on where you fall on the spectrum. I feel like I move through a door depending on how I'm feeling at a particular moment. If I feel lonely or isolated, I move through the door to be with society. If I need to recover, I move back through the door to my original side.

My wife (NT) reminds me that even when I'm on "my side" there are people on the other side that think about me, consider me a friend, and want to see me. Sometimes they come through the door unannounced to visit.

But I think the analogy of the door doesn't quite fit. I think of something more like a medical incubator or "bubble" where they keep premature babies or people with poor immune systems. People on the outside can interact with those on the inside via rubber gloves. The person on the inside experiences touch - but it's the touch of the glove, not the person wearing it.