Do you exist?

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Do you ever wonder if you exist when it comes from the perspective of your "friends". For those of you that have "friends", do you feel like your invisable or non existent to them. For example, You get together for a meal, but then when you try contact them after by phone or email, they either never reply or don't want to talk to you. Like you'd only hear from them if both of you were the last people on earth. This has happened to me with a couple of my "friends". And I put friends in quote because for us its like a friend is sometimes not real.

It varies between friends, for some I can reliably contact any time I want, others are a lot harder but then I'm not the only one who has trouble contacting them.

its not the trouble you have contacting them but the likeliness they reply if say you email them or call and leave them a voice mail message or text them.

Don't take it personally - I hear NTs complaining all the time that people don't return their e-mail/voice mail.

I can only reply "Cogito Ergo Sum"--I think therefore I am. Otherwise, the notion that my entire existence has been nothing more than someone else's hallucination is more than a little unsettling.

I am not always the most reciprocal friend...so this is usually not too much of an issue...Maybe I don't exist so much outside myself....

sometimes I do see myself as "not a real person" when I am feeling particularly bad about myself...and it seems like people around me seem to be capable of more "in-depth" interactions with each other than I am...but I suppose I do exist.

Yes. I have ONE NT friend. Its always me who take the initiative to contact her and I ask for her whereabouts and what she is up to now and then. But whats making me very very very very very sad is that she dont do the same in return. She never ask how I am and she never approach me at all. Now it has passed some weeks since last contact. I wanted to wait her out to see if she ever would approach me but now Im affraid I will loose her forever if I dont approach her again. I just want to say "you never ask for my whereabouts so I again ask you so we dont loose contact" but are affraid she will just get annoyed on me if I express myself like that. Im always affraid of what Im telling her. If I say something wrong she will drop me emediately, thats how it feels...

I'm not sure I see why this is a problem. People who call for no reason with nothing in particular to say or just 'drop in' without warning are among my most deeply hated pet peeves. If I don't hear from someone for a long time, that's perfectly okay. I generally do expect a response from an email within say, three or four days, but I can't be too judgmental about that, since I often read text messages and if no specific question has been asked, fail to reply.

In any case, I'm much more upset by friends who check in too often, or don't know when to leave.

I sometimes do but in my case I can walk into a room full of people and no one would know I was there. It's alright though, I use that to scare the crap out of people.

^ Same here.

I lived with a group of people once and spent much time around them, but was more invisible than newcomers. When we were out together, I'd feel non-existent; one restaurant owner even stood by our table, asking why no one was speaking to me, and gave me a flower as some form of compensation. After years together, I did not maintain contact with any of the group members, nor they me.

Last edited by outlier on 28 Mar 2009, 7:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

well if i find out that i do not exist, then i am going to sue every company i ever bought a mirror from.

ROFL!

I guess I exist too much, if you will, because everyone stares at me in the corridors at school. They say I'm stuck up cos I never talk to them.

This is how I define a friend. If someone thinks of me when I'm not around, if they ask about me, genuinely want me to be there, worry about me when times are hard- that's a true friend. Anyone else is just somebody I know.

Of course, sometimes I end up with friends I never knew I had. People that watch me from afar that I remain unaware of, or I fail to realize how much they really care. We autistics tend to overlook these people, and sometimes we even get bad impressions of them or think they're our 'enemy' out of paranoia, but they're out there.

I exist because I care. Because others care. Because bonds, invisible or imagined, exist in the hearts of everyone.

Well you're obviously only considered an important friend to them if you do exist to them. I'd say it's a way to judge how much they want to bother with you.

Yes.

I had a friend and we did well one on one but when there were other people, I had trouble getting my input in. Also it was as if anything I said went out the door. I think I took it pretty personal and that's when I stopped bothering. It was too hard to be that extraverted and keep up with what everyone was doing and I guess I was too quiet or boring.

Anyway, good riddens to bad rubish.

I've known a few people who aren't like that and have been pretty patient with my social interaction.