I haven’t been reading a lot lately, hence the lack of things to write about.
I’ve recently started trying to socialise a lot more, trying to adapt to the way people around me write and speak, and it’s been affecting my English ability more than I expected. I’ve started to struggle more and more with basic grammatical constructions and English expressions, often forgetting which sentences are colloquial inventions and which ones are standard written English.
That said, written language is a relatively recent invention that some have even argued to be unnatural—natural language is spoken; it’s dynamic, adaptive, and not always so consistent. A true nightmare for linguistic prescriptivists, but languages naturally evolve over time and the hodgepodge of grammatical “errors” used in colloquial speech will soon become standardised, just as they always do.
Going back to interacting more frequently with others, a lot has happened, and not all of which have been equally pleasant. It’s easy enough at this point to mask my autism with the superficial, perfunctory social interactions that most people endure on a daily basis, to the point I sometimes wonder if I even am autistic at all. But, when I start to develop rapport with others and get closer to them, things start falling apart as I realise I’m not prepared for them. The scripts I’ve prepared don’t work, I start to notice how their words and actions no longer line up more and more, and my error rate increases dramatically—I no longer know what they’re thinking, nor know what to do or say next.
Most of my free time has been spent trying to work through these new relationships with others. I’ve experienced numerous new situations and emotions. In the past, it was difficult to have gotten this far due to my lack of experience and practice with masking. Now, I’ve even experienced heartbreak, which really got in the way of my focus, as much as I tried hard not to pay any attention to it. Emotions are understandably undesirable if the only thing they make you feel is bad, but I wouldn’t have had this experience had I not taken my chances in the first place—had I not gambled for even better emotions. It’s a risk I took, and though losing did cause significant distress, in time, I’ll be glad I learned so much from having the courage to put myself in such a novel situation.
I feel like I’m a child again, learning things everyone’s learned years ago, but it feels good to be making some progress. The more situations I put myself into, the better I will understand people, as much as all I want to do is continue reading books on my own and playing computer games again while maintaining superficial relationships with others.
