Hey y’all. Just wanted to vent a bit. I’ve been feeling really down lately, mostly because lately it feels like no matter what I do or how hard I try I can’t seem to make people understand me. It doesn’t really seem to matter if I’m talking to another neurodivergent person or not, people just assume they know what I’m saying and run with it. It just keeps happening and it’s been creating more and more conflict at work, with my friends, with random people I have to deal with day to day. I feel so much like a fucking alien lately, like I’m speaking some language that no one around me understands but thinks they do. I had a meltdown the other day at a work friend who just could not stop for half a second to listen to what I was saying. I don’t know if it’s something I’m doing, I’m sure people will read this and assume that it is. At this point it doesn’t even matter it just feels so pointless to even try. I want to cry with how badly I want someone to just listen to what I’m saying and try to actually understand. Like literally that’s all I want, but it never seems to happen these days. I feel like it’s going to cost me my job and friends. I feel like I’m going to lose everything and have to start my life over again somewhere else. I see how this is really a me problem. It’s not fair but the burden is on me to make people understand what I’m saying. I see how my lack of energy and motivation to do so is making it impossible for me. I want to put forth the effort but I just have nothing left. I fucking hate myself for that, even knowing it’s not really my fault. Thanks for reading if you got this far. This was stream of consciousness.
If it’s any consolation, everything you wrote above makes perfect sense. It’s not uncommon. It’s not just you.
I think the reason a lot of human speech is useless small talk is because people barely understand each other, and small talk gives them a baseline to start with.
Anything more complex than that, and it’s a crap shoot.9
I think there are so many things that are taken as granted and therefore omitted in the communication. This makes it more difficult to communicate as the personal experience of the participants diverges. Sometimes a wide gap will cause awareness, and therefore exposition of some of the normally unspoken components.
I see the same thing with “common sense”. People assume everyone knows these things, hence the label. However the knowledge under that label is actually the accumulation of many small lessons, any number of which might have been skipped by any individual. Especially today, as more and more people are raised by screens instead of parents and community, people can end up with glaring gaps in their accumulated knowledge.