Just avoiding the subject here.

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I once was called "distempered". The instructor said it wasn't like a dog (oh, good), it was that I had Moods. I suppose "emotional dysregulation" wasn't in his vocabulary. Oddly my ASD-like daughter doesn't manifest this often outwardly, but my NT son does. I suppose I could start calling my son ND (albeit not ASD) rather than NT. Sigh.

Are ASD folks attracted to difference? Misery loves company?

That TV show (the recent one on Netflix that is on the front page of WP) had me laughing/crying (distempered) so hard b/c it was spot on with so many of my experiences. I was that ASD kid in the school closet with the Goth kid. We shared lunch.

I don't like some invisible factors of my brain being represented in media. I think that's thrown everyone for a loop.

Do you mean the ASD stereotypes?

It reminds me of balancing the representation of good and bad of ASD (relative to a character's level of functioning). I noticed that the ASD memoirs I read did not talk about parenting. Probably because with the beautiful there is the ugly. I'm the mom attending/playing with my kids more than most any other, but then I'm also the mom that scares/neglects them when I overreact/shutdown due to stimuli. My ASD-like mom sees the magic in my parenting, but my NT sister is disgusted by it (and me in general). Just can't win with some folks.

Stereotypes, among other things. People get mixed messages about me & all I seem to get back is mixed messages.

Maybe all those mixed messages mix us up.

So how much of the 'disorder' part of of ASD amounts to mass delusion? Seriously we know more about the surface of the moon or the deep ocean than our own brains.

Yep.

I guess that means we're even less understood than NTs, who already make less sense to me than alien star systems. Maybe people will always make less sense to me than everything.

In any case I really do try not to think to negatively about this stuff, but still worry that by doing so perhaps I'm just sugarcoating reality anyway.

I have no idea what's going on.

For that matter, there's a reality show about HFA people dating now. I am confused beyond words. There is no coherent response I ever prepared for something like that. Everyone watches Netflix, there is no escape.

there was a time i'd reflexively change the channel if i saw something like that. now i hardly watch tv in the first place so no more need of that.

I just don't even know what to say or think about that. I was prepared if not necessarily content to remain in obscurity in that regard.

I think the idea of me dating is more normalized in some reality show now than it is in reality anymore. I mean this is far & away the most affected area of my life by some condition basically no one seriously understands; now there's some kind of pop culture aspect to it all that I've never seen before.

I've still got no idea what's going on so I guess I'll keep rambling in the hopes that changes a bit.

I know a lot of ASD feel the need to hide who they are....

But being up front about who I am and my oddities has made it easier to find the people who appreciate it

Some people are scared off by it, but that's okay. The ones who stick around have proven to be pretty good friends

I'm not sure scared would be the right word, although fear is a two way street, in other words I think some kind of uncanny valley effect makes everyone paranoid about ASD & makes us doubt ourselves too much to do much of anything.

I've been hiding too much lately, I guess it beats the alternative of inevitably screwing something up that nobody will ever level with me about.

Not that I'm really all that intentionally critical of anyone. I love my friends, it's hard to see the point of judging them.