Nov 29th 2016

Beyond sick of people. in People suck. Cats are awesome. Dogs are alright.

•  Nov. 29, 2016, 12:57 p.m.
 
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• Public

Standing with the Male at the checkout of a store I’ve only been to once before, because he generally buys the groceries. The cashier is obviously familiar with him. He says to her, “This is my name. She asks me, with a broad smile, “Do you like the store?”. I say yes. “It’s dimly lit, it’s quiet, the people are friendly, and it’s got a great selection. I spent most of my life in hicville, so things like a half a gallon of peanut oil impress me.” Her smile fades a bit. She asks me how I am today. “Um.. hot”, I say. “Hot?”, she asks. I hold up my jacket draped over my arm and say “yea, I overdressed.” She looks confused and says that yes, it’s a nice day. At this point she’s looking exclusively at the Male and our groceries as she rings them up, and she’s talking to him about the weather, and how he should’ve said hi to her sooner, and being very jovial with him; while I’m standing there looking at the medicine display behind us and wishing we could get out of there. His card gets hung up in the machine, saying “please wait” for no legitimate reason, and a manager has to be called over. At first the bagger girl tries to get it to work for several minutes, and they all seem very frustrated. I say, “I’ve got a twenty dollar bill, if that would help”. At that, the cashier and the bagger both Iaugh. The bagger says, “You just wanna get out of here, huh?”. The cashier says “you got cash!” and guffaws like it’s some great joke. I shrug and say, ” I was just trying to be helpful, you know?” The bagger looks relieved as she goes to help at another check out and the manager arrives. He fixes it and says, “it takes a man”. Getting irritated I say, “Well a man has to be good for something”.

Then the cashier tells us to have a nice day, her smile returned as she looks toward the next person in her line, and we leave.

So I’m irritating, confusing, and funny, apparently. NONE of which were my intentions. And at forty three I am beyond done trying to make people like me. I hate being amusing when I’m doing my level best to be sincere. Annoying when I’m trying to be funny. Confusing and weird when I’m just trying to state facts. And over the course of decades of those reactions, it gets incredibly f@#$ing old, let me tell you.

The Asperger’s subreddit is FULL of people looking for advice on how to get along with other people. Friends, family, girlfriends, and boyfriends, even their own kids. My advice? Don’t f@#$ing bother. We’re not neurologically capable of understanding them, and they’re just too stupid to understand us. It’s a gap that there is no filling. Either you have people who care about you and want you around enough to accept you as you are, or you don’t. And if you don’t, to hell with them. Life is too short to make yourself miserable trying to do the impossible.

At one point we stopped at a gas station, where the Male goes regularly, and he tells me, “They’ve closed it off completely now. You can’t even go in.” This is a bad neighborhood, and when I went through the door, I found myself in a plywood, plexiglass, and chicken wire box, about the size of an elevator. You can see the snacks and sodas and cigarettes, and the cashier up on a raised platform behind heavy plexiglass. I say, “Well, that’s one way to prevent robberies. Put your employees in a jail.”

The Male was not happy. He grumbled under his breath something about “I never should’ve left the house with you.” And I ranted at him for several blocks about it. “I honestly don’t know what I said wrong. I was just stating the obvious.” He says he goes there every day. I said, “So? I’m sure the people who work there feel the same way!”. He doesn’t respond. In situations like that he never does. He just waits for me to find something else to draw my attention. And he won’t apologize, either, unless I specifically ask him to.

He thinks I just let all this pass and move on. How wrong he is. I literally keep track of every time he bothers me enough to consider leaving him, so that if I ever decide to do that, I have reassuring documentation to remind me of why I did; or to help me make that decision in the first place.

He can’t wrap his feeble little brain around the concept that this is what I am.  He doesn’t know how thin the proverbial ice he skates on is. That’s behavior that I won’t allow to slide forever. Contrary to his apparent misconception, he isn’t irreplaceable.

And even if he were, I’d rather live alone than be insulted by my partner for the rest of my life.

All of this meaningless talk of “helping those with autism”. He about people just learn not to be pricks? Is that such a revolutionary idea?

Just because I can articulate and tie my own shoes, it doesn’t mean that I don’t deserve any f@#$ing consideration. But if I just snapped one day and set fire to something, they’d say “she was mentally ill”, and it would never cross anybody’s puny mind that maybe, if a person gets enough negative feedback, for a long enough time, that cracking under the weight of it is inevitable.

Hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE people.

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Last updated November 30, 2016