I have missed you. With Autism, I don’t say much, but I’m glad you’re listening.

I am so glad to talk with you again. Writing to you is a source of inspiration. And, I don’t know what works for you, but for me, writing to someone is therapy. Others may pick up the phone and call a friend, or likely visit with a friend in person.

In my autistic world, talking with people is a learned skill–learned by rote. My first step was to learn to talk to people, which I learned in baby steps, yes, to learn the skill and to gain the confidence as I went along.

Goodness, there are times when I talk incessantly about a topic of current fascination that I have researched extensively. (Don’t get me started!)  Talking about something is not the same as talking to someone. It’s a mental shift. I had to learn awareness of other peoples’ minds, and I learned the hard way.

My feelings would hurt when people would interrupt my diatribes or stop me, so I thought nobody cared to hear what I had to say. I took it as a personal rejection, so I spoke less. I didn’t have the social skills to carry on a two-way conversation, and it never occurred to me that other people would want that. The compulsion to chatter with people wasn’t in my mental makeup.

Do you know how your mind works? I didn’t/don’t. It took years before I realized that other peoples’ minds were different from mine. That awareness, that shift gave me the ability to talk to a person, not just about a concept, because I became aware that the other person was in there. It was a revelation at the time. It came about in university when I learned about theory of mind–fascinating.

I am still learning to talk about my private feelings and thoughts with my closest people. That brings us back to the whole concept of talking with a person, which is a confounding thing to learn. I’m working on it!

Thank you for listening, and I know you are because you are reading this.

Take care,
Eileen.