In the past year, I figured out I have Asperger’s Syndrome, which I never recognized (even though I knew that was a thing) because of the way my ADHD intersects with it. These two bits of data show a light on so many things, it’s hard to describe it. I notice things now I never would have noticed or would have taken for granted had I not seen them in this new light.

I have a great aunt who is on the autistic spectrum with me in a very noticeable way. That’s not me seeing what I want to see: it occurred to me to ask my grandmother and it was confirmed explicitly, “yes, she has that diagnosis.” She had a masters degree. She used to work at a legal library at a prison, and she wrote the manual they use for how to sort their literature or something. It’s hard to get useful information out of the woman in her late years, but even if she had full command of her mind I doubt she would be so open as I tend to be. The family has never really liked her. She’s always been socially obstinate on top of being socially clueless, which of course gets interpreted as her being an asshole. So, at some point, having no other connections in the world and having no hope of making new ones or breaking through the ones she had, I guess she leaned into the stereotype being made out of her. At least it was a ready-made social mask for her to wear complete with an expected range of dialogue that people would tolerate at family gatherings, even if it made her a mild hiss and a byword at the level of “things which the adults whisper to each other malcontentedly in front of the kids but won’t say to so-and-so’s face, even though they keep inviting her to dinner.”

It’s not hard in this family to give minor impressions of yourself that somehow get woven by others into the general narrative of who you are. I think I knew from a young age how this worked just enough to seek to fit in enough to avoid it. I was what some Mormons might call a sober youth, capable of perceiving much despite my age. But there are different kinds of intelligence, and knowing stuff on the spot is not the same as knowing how to read and navigate the complex social emotional world that is real life. The kind of Mormons that I and so many others have been tormented with, though, couldn’t care to learn the difference. I often demonstrated giftedness in a narrow range of interests with no intrinsic employability, and it seems obvious to some that I was fine and bound to climb ladders and do well for myself. Thus I flew under the social radar of everyone whose job it is to recognize when kids like me need help. People were so busy telling me how much I was gonna excel, it never occurred to me that learning how to get by was acceptable, which doesn’t mean anyone was gonna praise me for that path, but lack of praise and recognition is not a fate worse than death — it just feels like it until it becomes the new normal.

I want to ask my aunt so many questions, but her mind is infirm to the point she lives in a nursing home now and on top of that I hardly knew the woman despite seeing her at family gatherings since I was old enough to remember anything. And then there’s this social dynamic which has seemingly settled in that I’m a loose canon and I’m not to be trusted with vulnerable testimonies. So I’m like the anti-Mormon/atheist version of a predator, I guess, which I would never guess from the way they treat me to my face — only when I broach subjects that might could lead maybe to me pontificating about something with religious or political connotations that they don’t wanna hear. That’s when they let me know how they really feel; I otherwise have to hear from trusted friends who were PIMO at the time that they heard it how I get talked about in that gossip space I always feared. I hate my family so much sometimes.

So, these are social dynamics I have always suffered. On one hand I have a lot of potential, but to realize it I have to piss off all the people who have ever recognized it or encouraged it. The harder I try to create a lane for myself from scratch that adequately represents my real being but that retains the emotional support I had had in some meaningful sense, the more everyone hates me for it. The longer this goes on, the more I tend to flip my shit and the higher my shit get flips when I lose it. It would be wonderful to hear from someone I am related to who was more qualified to speak my struggles than I ever imagined because of the way the family introduced her to me and always talked about her like she was this quirky, crazy odd woman who thought she was better than everyone else but couldn’t even bathe herself correctly. My parents may have protected me in my youth from attracting this reputation to myself, but that was highly contingent on me being silent and only expressing my thoughts and emotions in ways that pleased their order of things.

Underneath my social anxiety is loneliness. I want to know people and to be known, but I don’t know how to pull it off. I’m scared that the more I depart from the set of scripts I was born into, the more no one will bother wanting to get to know the real me. There is nothing on this earth that feels as good to a human being as being seen in true-tone emotional color by other real people. The old scripts were smothering me and keeping me away from even an ability to live in my own skin without severe dissociation from my own body and my emotional needs. Why can’t I live in my own skin, live true to myself, have the emotional support I felt like I once had, and be a whole and complete person who has some to give back?! I’ve had to become my own Jesus and work out my own salvation from the dumpster fire that they left my developing mind in, and without realizing why they were doing it my historical emotional support network turned on me to punish me for my blasphemy without thinking that I was happier that way. They turned on me and told my story for me without ever pausing to think the real story was vastly more interesting and real and dramatic. And now I have to just smile and nod at the dinner table while learning for the first time that my aging aunt who I could have been communing with this whole time is just like me, but I didn’t know that because they unwittingly isolated her in the same ways they did to me beginning many decades before I was born.

I’m pretty drained and restless at the same time right now.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2022 03:42AM by Cold-Dodger.

This reminds me of Bruce Willis in "12 Monkeys". He is put in an asylum knowing he's sane and eventually becomes convinced he's crazy and has to be talked out of it.

I used to want to be understood and seen, but few people see me. Just a few who matter. Everyone sees an image of you, not you. Mormonism consists of distorted images. It's a carnival fun house.

What is external validation really worth? What's good about being accepted by nut jobs if they want you to be as wrong as them?

The truth is inside you. Always was, always will be. Mormons told you different to get your time and money.

I can relate to so much of what you say. I hear you. It sounds as though you came close to finally feeling some validation.
I’m having some major realisations about myself right now and the relationship dynamics I’ve been caught up in - basically they were not of my choosing and don’t correlate with who I am at all. Worse, there is no scope for any change within that closed system; I therefore have no power within it. I’ve been set up to be seen a certain way and there’s no undoing it. I’ve come to think of it as a double-bind.

As relieved as I feel to see things clearly, awareness is not enough. Trying to change any of it would be futile. I lose whatever I say or do. And now that I’m becoming more aware of just how different I am compared with how I’m seen and what I’ve been treated as, it’s actually become intolerable. The trick will be, how do I escape when I’ve been so isolated, my self esteem damaged so much that I’m not exactly doing great? I just know I have to and that somehow I will. For now, I’ve literally disengaged and emotionally detached myself. I’ll need to find my own people. If I can choose who I am, I can do that too, eventually (holding on to that).

Is there a term that defines ‘being treated as though you are someone else entirely’, beyond character assassination and gaslighting? Because I’m not fully convinced I’m chronically misunderstood.

What I do know is that I’ve had some periods of time (before I knew family were gossiping etc) where I’d moved on and gained more independence. I had better experiences. So I’m hoping that with therapy and being able to move away with some very rigid boundaries, I can find happiness. There are definitely more loving, accepting people out there. I just need to sort myself out first so I don’t keep repeating patterns.

Most of the healing doesn’t happen until after you leave the toxic environment. As long as you’re stuck in it, you will be survival mode to some degree. Getting out of survival mode and having people see you for real and reciprocate your real emotional existence is wonderful. You have no idea.

I don’t think there’s a word for it: catfishing as myself, maybe. Inverted pretend life. Involuntary masking. Being a marionette on the run. Being ghosted and replaced with their imaginary friend who wears your likeness.

To some degree, no matter where you go or who you associate with, people will view you as the person you give them cause to believe you are. There’s no such thing as perfect impressions of who people are. But what the Mormons do is banal 1984 bs at the interpersonal level of human communication. It’s all of the individual and social control and it’s not even a little fun to think you’re in the matrix or something. It’s just dark and and lonesome and makes you feel kinda violated in a way you can’t put your finger on.

Here’s something about autistic masking if I read you right. https://youtu.be/_nt7mGPTwCM

a while back on one of your threads. I'm too messed up myself right now to say much of anything. I didn't see this poem until after my mom died. She wrote quite a bit of poetry. My aunt gave me this one. It home for me. I know my mother wrote it about herself:

She hid in self-imposed corners,
Trying to become unknown.
Took to a room forever
Where fears and anxiety were sown.

Could we have knocked louder?
Opened the door to her black hole?
Seek for better understanding,
And find God in a wounded soul.

That’s beautiful.