Dyssocial Butterfly

I haven't posted in here for quite a while.

Thats because I "came out" on my main journal goddess_amy .

I don't really have a need to keep a seperate journal anymore, so go friend me over there if you want to keep reading.

I don't have a very good rig for playing First Life. My monitor is tiny, the speakers are low quality producing fuzzy sound, the cpu can't handle the input so the whole game is laggy. The keys are worn off on the keyboard and some of them have to be pressed hard. There is no mouse. Plus the enviroment in here is so noisy, the tv is always on and the radio too. The sunshine shines on the screen so I can barely see. It's so distracting! Not to mention all you other players insist on using video or voice chat which your fancy systems can handle just fine but are almost unusable on mine.

So whats your setup like for playing First Life? I'm guessing you've got a powerful machine which renders the world in real time, a professional sound setup with multiple speakers for 3d audio, a quiet room to play in. Do you have a VR headset and gloves so you are immersed in the game world and can interact with it directly?

Here's a song which perfectly describes how I felt when I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome:

Isolation from The Mighty Boosh

All the things I'll never see
All the things I'll never be
All there is that's left for me
Is here in this eternity
Of isolation

The cavalcade, the jamboree
Of life I thought was meant for me
I never dreamed that it would be
Replaced by this eternity
Of isolation.

All the things I'll never see
All the things I'll never be
All my hopes are memory
All there is that's left for me
Is isolation.


I still feel this way. The song has been stuck in my head all day and making me feel a little sad. So now I am going to lie here in my bed and listen to it on repeat and cry and eat chocolate.

Something happened and now I'm in a familiar place of feeling like I'm stuck between two ways of living and not being happy but unable to choose either one of them.

The incident wasn't much, but it reminded me of the fact that people don't get on well with me (or I don't get on well with people) and I'm not so good at social stuff. It's not like I forget this, I'm Aspie 100% of the time and aware of it, but most of the time it kinda fades into the background and doesn't hurt. It's just part of being me.

But when I am reminded of it, it hurts and always puts me into this frame of mind. If I'm around people at the time, I withdraw and go into shutdown. This is why often tiny things that anyone else would laugh off can cause such huge and lasting effects on me.

As for the two ways of livings, one is to be social and live in the NT world, have friends who care about me, go out, etc etc, something I'm not even sure if I'm capable of or would enjoy. The other course is to withdraw into my own head, spend my days playing computer games or working on my latest obsession. I would be happy doing this, but it wouldn't be living in the real world. My sensible side prevents me from wasting too much time on unproductive activities. Plus where would I get money/food from?

I have a part of me which desires each one. Scary, adventuours social life with emotional ups and down vs a safe secure life in my bedroom with a stable but rather low mood.

I don't even know how to choose or to start living it, even if I could choose one.

(Maybe it's not a binary choice? Are there other options I am not seeing?)

I seem to have a new obsession with a particular store. It's an importer/wholesale and they sell bulk lots of beads and jewelry findings really cheap, and they list things for a dollar on eBay.

Everyday I check out their $1 starting bid items and bid on them. Only a couple of dollars on each auction usually and I usually get outbid at the end which is OK.

But I've just won the same lot of 2,000 beads for the third time now...

On the bright side, they're local and close to my parent's place so they drive me there to pick stuff up which means no shipping fees. And bidding at $2-$3 isn't going to send me broke anytime soon.

OTOH, I have now have 6,000 beads the same (they're big one too, not tiny seed beads).

It's really hit home over the past few days how much I rely on hair to recognise people.

A girl in another department so I don't see her that often but enough to recognise her and know her name, changed her hair colour from blonde to brown. It took me a few times of seeing her to work out that she wasn't a new employee, but was an old person from that department. And it's only now after racking my head for five minutes that I could recall her name.

Another guy that comes over to our area frequently had his hair styled differently. I recognised him from his glasses but he looked completely different to me.

I approached one of my good friends who I've known for like 8 years from behind and he looked different. He was sitting at a computer and I was trying to edge around to get a better look at him to see why. After seeing his face properly it took me a few minutes to work out he was clean shaven. To me, it seemed the whole shape of his face had changed.

I'm watching the tv show Roswell. Just saw the first episode of season two and am trouble telling who people are because all their hair styles have changed. It's bad because one of the main characters now has the same hair do as a guy from another tv show and my brain keeps trying to read him as the other character.

I have huge trouble telling people apart if they have similar hair. In high school there were two girls in my year with longish blond hair. Their faces were completely different, but it still took me about 6 months to learn to tell them apart. At work there are two guys with dark hair in the same department. One has long hair and one has short hair. It still took me a good few months to learn to tell them apart and remember which name went with which person (I use a mnemonic).

Most of the time in real life it's not a huge issue because hair grows slowly and I can use context to tell who people are. But when hair changes dramatically, yeah I can't tell who people are.

I'm a visualiser. It comes easily. I only wish I could paint or draw the imagery to share what I see.

Last night I stayed up very late reading stories from the Tears in Heaven universe, a crossover between The Tomorrow People, Stargate SG1 and Highlander. Mostly focusing on the Kevin/Alex stories.

Usually I feel sad after reading romantic or slashy stories but last night for the first time in like ever, I felt OK with being single and OK being who I am.

I haven't been in a relationship and I don't think I ever will be. Often I think about it, and while knowing it's true and accepting it, I still felt sad or upset. But last night I really felt fine with it. No regrets, no sense of unfairness, just "this is me and relationships aren't for people like me".

It was a dusty pink feeling.

It's still with me. I read on my (other lj's) f'list about a co-worker who's just met someone and the great time she had with him, and I didn't feel sad or jealous. Instead I truly felt happy for her.

Thank you darthanne

It amuses me that since being diagnosed with AS (Asperger's Syndrome), I've gotten a rating of AS (Above Standard) in every performance review at work. I obviously work at an AS level :D

My team leader said she'd like to work one to one with me with some stuff she learnt in her manager's course about different personality types. Which I eventually figured out was a nice way of saying we're going to teach you to get along with your co-workers.

I like my team leader.

Following on from the last post. It's more than just not having friends though. Because of my social disability I can't network or find out information from people, which I feel considerably reduces my options in life.

In the documentary there was a guy who had found a house to squat in via talking to people, a guy who got an apprenticeship as a jockey, two girls who were married, a guy who was secretary for 5 different clubs at uni!, a casual labourer.... I wouldn't know how to do go about doing any of those things!

It's like there's unlimited options and paths to take in life and interactions with people, but I'm limited to a tiny tiny subset. I see other people doing other things and wonder how they managed to do it. Sometimes people try some of the other interactions with me, which leaves me feeling confused and not knowing how to react or what to do.

Back when you're a kid, anything seems possible because you don't know any better. People are generally nice and understanding and welcoming of questions and willing to help you because you're a child. And it's OK if you say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing because you're a child and don't know any better.

I wish I was a kid again.