After a while of thinking it over, I've finally decided to explain this.
In a few more months, it will be I believe, 5 years that I have been attending an autism centered group for socialization and friend making. I have been there enough to see people come and go, enough to know who the regulars are, and who simply shows up once. When I was told there was such a social event, I had a feeling like clouds were parting in an area in my life. Maybe I'd finally have a group of people I'd belong in, but it possibly seems that only a few of the clouds left, or then came back. The biggest lesson I learned there is that just because you have a similar neurological disposition as many others in a floor of a building, doesn't mean instant friends. You still need some sort of existing social skill level. If you can't converse, your times are no different than school, or the everyday public. I thought my interests would be appreciated, given that there actually are subjects that I know something about that pop up, but it's to an extreme. The greatest conversation topics are a large load of movies (the most popular genre, science-fiction), followed by cartoons new and old, western and eastern, plus comics, western and eastern. Not many talk about simply how life is going, where you've been, and what you want to achieve one day. Given, I like those things, but I'm not crazy into them, like what I believe the regulars are. It's like you need to have a beyond wikipedia amount of knowledge about everything to get your voice in. Some participants might even be rude to you when you're just being friendly. I'm usually there with drawing equipment, which is pretty much the only thing I can almost completely get attention for, which is the reason I have those items all the time there. If you can't swim, wear an inter tube right? At the end of all this, the social gathering is not all I thought it was cracked up to be.
I know that's a paragraph there, but what I'm asking is, should I keep attending? I'm nowhere near the loudest, exuberant person you will meet, but I don't think I need total brain reconstruction to have a true friend sometime.
03 Aug 2015, 9:09 pm
