I’m 47 in the US, and I have felt this way most of my adult life. In my teens and 20s, I always felt like an afterthought. I’d ask to be included to group events, and I rarely remember ever being invited. I’d try to chime in when people were talking, but what I’d say never quite seemed to land right. The microexpressions on people’s faces indicated to me that I wasn’t a social equal but that I was simply being tolerated.

It didn’t even occur to me that I was autistic until I was 39, and it took until I was 46 for me to get myself diagnosed with ASD1. But I’ll tell you…something happened in my 30s. I don’t know what it was exactly that changed things for me in this regard, probably a multitude of things, but I am no longer the person I was in my 20s.

Maybe it was the fact that I got two degrees. Or that I was married for 17 years (now divorced, but it was my decision) and have two great kids. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I developed a career as a teacher and have felt pride in the accomplishment I’ve made in my vocation. Or maybe it was just the passage of time that allowed me to develop coping mechanisms thya work for me…time that tempered my worries about myself and my place in this world among others.

Whatever transpired, I’m no longer the sort of person who cares what people think of me. Of course, I always aim to be the best version of myself, someone people will admire and recognize as a safe, consensual, trauma-informed person, so I do want people to consider me a good and decent person.

But I can never control their perception of me as an autistic person. I’m different. Everyone knows it when they get to know me. When I discovered at age 39 that I was likely autistic, I told my colleagues, and they were shocked that I didn’t already know that about myself because they all clocked me as autistic pretty much immediately after meeting me three years prior.

So, instead of trying to hide it better in order to fit in. I wear my autism right on my sleeve. I tell people “When I’m in a group and say something awkward, and I can see the awkwardness on their faces 🤨, I just respond with ‘🫤😯…I…I’M AUTISTIC. 😬🙃’ And then everyone goes 'OH! Okay, that’s what it is, gotcha…I knew it was something like that! 😁”.

By telling people this, it let’s them know my sense of humor about my condition and sets them (and me) up for awkwardness in the future. Because it’s going to happen. Not all my jokes will land. Sometimes I’m gonna chime into a conversation and my comment will completely flop. But my out can always be “'🫤😯…I…I’M AUTISTIC. 😬🙃”. They’ll remember that my awkward comment isn’t my fault, that it’s this wacky thing about my brain and the way it works, and they won’t just sit their with a weird look on their face trying to figure out how to move past what I’ve just said. They’ll laugh, because I can laugh at myself! And I don’t feel so alone any more. I get invited to parties, and I’m included in the conversation.

Beyond having a sense of humor about yourself, the best advice I can give is to learn how to really listen, ask questions, and care about the responses and the people who give them. Low self-worth was been a constant companion in my life. I rarely felt valued, so I tried to create value among others by providing them with entertainment…being the funny one, or having off-the-wall talents (developed through periods of hyperfixation). I know now that my worth as a person can only be evaluated by me, and I know that I am as valuable as a human being as anyone else is, regardless of what I provide others.

That being said, what brings me great joy is being considered a friend and confidant, someone people value as a companion. And I foster that by caring about them, their experiences, and their feelings. I listen to them…really listen…not just waiting to say what I want to say in response, but thinking of questions I can ask, considering how their experiences make them feel, and proferring up advice when it is requested.

Anyway, that’s a lot. Off to work. Good luck to you!

I’m 5’ 9" and dated a 6’ 3" cis woman for a year. She’d wear six-inch heels when we’d go out. There was no “poor fella” about it, she was an Amazonian knockout, and I got to fuckin’ climb her like a tree.

If the budget is there then I’ll consider it, kupo!

I want to open a Final Fantasy-themed Vietnamese restaurant in south central Arizona. I’m going to call it “Pho Enix”.

Not sure where to open up shop, but I’m thinking Scottsdale.

A relationship isn’t LGBT; a person is. A cishet man who has two bi/pan female partners who date each other isn’t LGBT because his partners are queer.

British people prolly call this “Nuts and Bolts” or something summat.

FTFY

sell all your stuff at the uh, forgot the name

Sovereigns

My cousin was a raging alcoholic. He got clean, but not before he fucked his liver right up. I don’t know if they even allowed him on the liver transplant list or not, but if he was, he was very low on it. He died in early 2015 at the age of 43.

I finally got diagnosed with ASD Level 1 last summer, and this summer I drove over 2000 miles from DFW to PDX. I spent over 40 years in Texas, and escaping that hellhole is no longer a dream. It is a reality that I manifested, and I super proud of myself for making it happen.

I also have the XM4s, they work great. Don’t bother getting the more expensive XM5s…hardly any noticeable difference from what I could tell.

Two words: Skillet Nap

Modafinil, along with redundant calendar, alarm, and Alexa alarms and reminders.

I forgot Benjamin Bratt was in Demolition Man. Of course, he and Sandra Bullock were both in the Miss Congeniality movies as well.

That’s right, I had forgotten about that less-than-memorable Voyager novel in which Dr. Lewis Zimmerman leaves behind holoengineering for cryonics, nice catch.

Why is Crowley side-eyeing Richard Woolsey?

Stargate: Atlantis!

Robert Picardo played Richard Woolsey, a member of the Stargate Program’s international oversight committee. In the fifth and final season, he was made head of the Atlantis Expedition in the Pegasus Galaxy. Here, he is standing next to Dr. Jennifer Keller played by Jewel Staite.

If you want to get into that life, be prepared to watch a major motion picture, a made-for-TV movie turned pilot, 351 44-minute-long episodes over 17 seasons of three television series, two more made-for-TV movies, and a 10-webisode origin series, not to mention literature set in that universe. The visual media took me six months to binge watch the first time I did it.

What a fucking beauty. Isn’t Robert Picardo just a fucking beauty?

I know someone who died from huffing heroin pills.

He is 30 now. That was filmed 25 years ago.