One trait of people with Asperger’s Syndrome is difficulty establishing and maintaining friendships, ultimately leading to failure building personal communities. Community is a central part of all human beings’ existence, and though people with Asperger’s tend to come off as aloof, they desperately crave a sense of community as much as anyone else. Social awkwardness and the inability to process social cues from others prevents one from creating a personal community, leading to a great deal of frustration. If not understood, this frustration boils over into anger and rage.
When I look back at the people and events of my life, it is difficult to see my community. When I think of coworkers and supervisors from past jobs, I feel isolation because of my perception of burned bridges. I remember very few positive encounters with people; most of my memories of social interaction are tainted by my feelings of social awkwardness, that I somehow behaved inappropriately.
This lack of community is devastating for the career-minded. I have long held that I simply do not want a career, knowing subconsciously that I lack the community-building skills for success. That I have done as well as I have is amazing to me, yet I have always felt that security hangs on a fragile thread.
Publicly announcing my social problems is not exactly great career advice, but there are two important goals that I am working toward with this weblog: one is simply personal therapy — it is liberating to examine and analyze these issues both personally and publicly; the second is so that others who share in my experiences will know that they are not alone, and to encourage them to raise their voices as well.
Dawn Prince-Hughes penned in her book that she feels a million years old, something that I have always deeply felt. I perceive most other humans as having “young souls.” Why then do I have such difficulty relating to others? This question is a source of great consternation. Ms. Prince-Hughes theorizes that the feeling of age is a manifestation of one’s closeness to animals and the earth. Somewhere along the evolutionary line, humans developed an advanced mechanism for interacting with each other to form large communities to advance technology and civilization, at the expense of our place in the larger community we share with the earth. People with autism spectrum disorders may be a link to the past, having a closer sense of community with animals at the expense of understanding the advanced social cues of modern humans. I have always felt a special ability to relate to animals, that I understand their subtle language where other humans fail to listen. Maybe I share this link to the past. While I don’t like the connotation that I am somehow lower on the evolutionary scale, I also feel that my point of view is an important one to understand if humans are to become truly civilized. Humans tend to sympathize with themselves before the earth and its ecosystems; perhaps it is my place to help bridge the gap between humans and their environment.
