I’m pretty confident I’m not autistic and I feel this way all the time. Solidarity my autistic brothers and sisters
same boat
God does it suck explaining to people that yes, I want to meet people and do things and have a relationship outside of work and home
but it’s terrifying and I don’t even know why
I have to consciously remind myself that people are mainly paying attention to themselves and their own inner monologue, and not paying attention to me, certainly not closely enough to make and long-lasting value judgments about me. Worst case scenario in most situations, someone will give me a weird side-eye for something, and soon after forget that I even exist. I can be generally certain that this is the case, because I have no memory of any specific person who was thoughtlessly blocking an aisle in the grocery store, for example, even if I was laser-focused on how annoying they were in the moment.
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See, there’s a huge different for me between “people” and “my people” - they can be two separate groups of strangers, but I can tell them apart in seconds.
In the rare times I want to socialise, my quest is to minimise contact with the former and maximize the latter.
