Ein Mann wird allein geboren. Er lebt allein. Und er stirbt allein.

 -- Erich Maria Remarque

Some quotes from other autistic people:

"Be Honest: Autistic vs Neurotypical Honesty

I’ve learned a lot recently after asking allistic people on twitter what they truly want to hear from other people when allistic people say “be honest.” In short, most of them want a very specific “type” of honesty. At least, neurotypical people may consider this honesty.

Neurotypical Honesty

Depending on the context, a neurotypical person may want the sugar-coated truth. Other times, they may want more honesty or honesty without the sugarcoating if you’re a close friend. Other times, they want to be supported and encouraged, or reassured about a choice they made.

I’ve learned that most of the time, neurotypical people don’t really want honesty. They want curated honesty. They don’t want the first thoughts that come into your head. They want a rephrased “nice” version, which to me, changes the interpretation of those real thoughts. So to me that’s not honesty.

To allistic people: If you don’t want non-sugarcoated honesty – do not say “be honest” because that’s clearly not what you want. Just tell us what you want, with your words. You can utilize phrases such as “Be supportive please” or “be gentle,” and honestly, it’s a lot more honest!

Even while discussing this topic with allistic people, they act as if there is some clearly stated, obvious boundary of what is “offensive” or what is “brutally honest” and what is a better version of honesty. This notion of clear boundaries between those things can be thrown out the window entirely due to allistic people’s negative interpretations of autistic body language and tone of voice.

We, autistic people, don’t get the benefit of the doubt when we say the same exact words an allistic person says, because our body language may be interpreted negatively. To tell autistic people just to “not say anything offensive” is like asking a cat to do advanced calculus. The idea that we know what will be interpreted as offensive by non-autistic people is laughable."

I don't know if "allistic" is a real term, but it's used by some people to mean non-autistic or neurotypical.

 

"I grew up in a home where you said what you meant and you meant what you said. It was awesome! I later discovered that not everyone likes or is prepared to hear this kind of strong honesty. Most people seem to like to be let down gently rather than told things as they are. It interests me. If I am upsetting a person I would much rather they tell me  what I did than what usually happens which is that they distance themselves and I never see them again. I am left puzzled by this and deeply hurt.

I like autistic honesty. It is sensible and I think it is more respectful to be honest. I know how to mask and do small talk but my preference is not to. The honesty thing can be seen as a fundamental difference between autistic people and neurotypical people. It seems that it doesn’t occur to the neurotypical folks to say things honestly the way autistics do. Working on several levels at once and telling people what they want to hear is very different to what autistics do. We  tend to operate on one level at a time and what we say is what we mean.

I have met many neurotypical people who are partners to an autistic person saying how refreshing our honesty is. What interests me is that they think it is a choice! In fact honesty for autistic people is more like a default setting. We are not deliberately being honest we are just being ourselves. Honesty doesn’t just extend to verbal or written conversations either. It also relates to body language and eye contact. As an autistic person I have no way of knowing what my eyes or body are conveying. I am not aware of body language and eye contact in myself or in others. I definitely cannot intentionally adjust my body language or eye contact to convey something I don’t actually mean or believe. A few years ago I was working in a lovely team in Human Resources, My senior manager said something which was a bit sensitive about a colleague. He looked at me and said ‘That’s the right eye contact Yenn!’ It was like he thought I was intentionally doing the appropriate thing with my eyes. In reality my eyes were being honest – they only know how to be honest! Luckily my intent was positive!

There are a lot of misinterpretations in this space. Autistic people are so often called rude or disrespectful because our honesty makes people think we are intentionally being unpleasant. It is one of those cultural type differences between autistic people and neurotypicals. We are (metaphorically) speaking a different language which is rarely recognised or understood by the neurotypical folks in our lives. So instead of thinking we are different and our intentions and approach are different they assume we have the same meaning with our words and actions that they would if they said or did those things."

 

"From what I understand, neurotypical people communicate largely by subtext. There are words, but the tone of voice, facial expression, and body language convey the bulk of the meaning.

With neurodivergent people, the words themselves are the most important. Unfortunately, since NT culture is so used to looking for subtext, those words are often lost behind ‘blank’ facial expressions and ‘flat’ vocal tones."

This is so precisely my lifelong experience that I can hardly overstate it. It pretty much explains everything. My whole life has been one misunderstanding after another: I say something, meaning one thing, and the other person hears something totally different, interpreting my meaning through the filters of this baffling (to me) multi-level normative communication; they (ok, let's be honest, usually she) get offended, angry, and hostile, and start attacking me, or worse yet, they keep acting nice but then begin a campaign of defamation, character assasination, and gossip behind my back, which I have NO CLUE about. Eventually, I pick up on the fact that something is wrong, and so I go and try to fix it directly, being completely honest, sincere, and vulnerable; they either take it as some kind of scheme or elaborate triple-reverse insult or whatever, or they're already so vengeful, or vindictive, or hysterical, or whatever that they aren't willing to try and fix it; and then...well, you know the rest of the story. Over and over. All my life. Since I was old enough to start interacting with people other than my family. It happens with strangers. It happens with acquaintances. It happens in friendships. It happens in relationships. It happens at jobs. It happens at school. It happens at church. And all because I'm autistic. And because I never knew it. If I'd at least known, I could have learned to adapt, and could have explained to people how I'm different. Not that that would have worked with everyone, or in every situation, but it could have saved me a lot of pain.

This clip is from a movie about an autistic young man who's venturing out into the world for the first time.

This is exactly how the world seems to me. Like I'm an alien, observing from outside. Like I'm speaking a different language from everyone else--a language whose words sound the same but have different meanings. Like everyone else is playing a game to which I don't know the rules. Like I'm not part of their species. Just pain. Just horrible pain.

 I bought a new house! Well, I bought an old house.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1533-N-East-Side-Hwy-Elkton-VA-22827/108047013_zpid/

"To die is nothing, but it is terrible not to live."

-- Victor Hugo