Confessions of Social Confusion, Part One of an Excessively Long Expose

I have often wondered if I have some form of Asperger's Syndrome. I have some of the characteristics associated with being an Aspie, but I lack other traits. I'm not sure if I'm just ADHD, a huge nerd, and lack social skills, or if there's something more going on. I'll probably never know.

There are two main diagnostic criteria for Asperger's, according to the DSM IV (the DSM V is kind of hazy on the definition). The first criteria is a "qualitative impairment in social interaction", which means my social skills suck but nobody actually has the data to prove it. If I'm an Aspie, my sucky social skills need to be present in two out of four specific sucky social skills.

1. Marked impairments in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body posture, and gestures to regulate social interaction.

I don't think this describes me at all. I have good eye contact (in fact, sometimes too much eye contact, I have to make myself look away sometimes), typical expressions, typical posture (but I slouch!), and while I don't talk like an Italian even though I'm half Italian, I'm very capable of using gestures to make my point.

2. Failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level.

This is unfortunately right on the money. When I was in elementary school, I had no friends. When I was in middle school, I had friends, but they never actually asked me to come over and hang out or anything, so maybe they weren't actually friends. However, when I was in high school, I definitely did have friends.

But they were all in middle school.

I was acutely aware of the weirdness factor of a high school girl hanging out with middle school boys. It just looked wrong, and I knew it. But frankly, we could all hang out and play card games or video games or joke around. High school girls were all about hair and makeup and (high school) boys and feelings, which I just didn't care about just yet. I was sixteen, but I felt twelve, so I hung out with twelve-year-olds. It felt like this. I looked like I was twelve. I felt like I was twelve. I thought like I was twenty. I was emotionally and intellectually all over the place, and I was incredibly uncomfortable.

3. A lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interest or achievements with other people, (e.g.. by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people).

Sorta kinda. It's not like I didn't want to connect with other people and hang out with them. I just didn't really know how to talk to other people my own age. At the same time, I didn't want to talk for hours about the latest movies. I was a little more interested in zip codes and area codes. So yeah. Major fail there.

4. Lack of social or emotional reciprocity.

Again, not really. It truly did (and do) want to connect with other people. It's just that... I don't know how.

And really, that's the core of it all. I don't know how to interact with people. I'd love to, I just don't know how.

Recently I've been trying to figure out how my interactions and thought processes are different from other people. I've come up with a few reasons why I might be socially clueless, even though I have stuff to say, even though I want to make connections. Here's why (in list form, because I like lists, like really like lists).

1. I'm blunt. I'm honest. I'm logical. I want everybody to be blunt, honest, and completely logical, just like me.

I put a lot of stock into what Dan tells me. If he says he's going to be home at 9 PM, then I think he's going to be home at 9 PM. If he's home at 9:30 PM (which he often is, because he isn't as obsessively punctual as I am), I get upset. For a long time, Dan didn't understand why I got so upset. What did it matter if he was fifteen minutes late?

It took two years, but Dan recently said he had a light bulb moment about why I get so riled up over stuff like this. He thought I was being obsessive, perfectionistic, and controlling (which, to be fair, wouldn't be too far off the mark with me). He thought I was just trying to control him and everything in my environment. But he suddenly realized that... wait, that wasn't it. He had told me that he would be home at 9 PM. I expected him home at 9 PM. He wasn't home at 9 PM. But he had said that he would be home at 9 PM, and he wasn't. In my brain, that's the equivalent of being dishonest. He didn't do what he said he would.

For my part, I was confused at why he had been so confused for so long.

"But," I cried, "I've been telling you for years that I mean what I say and I say what I mean!"

"Yeah," replied Dan, "But I didn't think you actually meant that."

Apparently, as Dan kindly explained, many people, when they communicate, do not communicate all of the reasons or all of the emotions behind the words that they say. There's often an undercurrent beneath communication. If I went to defcon five because he came home fifteen minutes late, he thought that I was really trying to say that I was angry angry angry because I just knew he was actually meeting some hott librarian babe at Starbucks instead of going out to buy toilet paper.

No, I wasn't trying to catch him in a lie and or make him miserable. I just wanted him to be home at 9 PM.

2. I usually communicate to either give or receive information, and I rarely talk about stuff.

"Dan," I complained, "I got my hair cut today and the lady who was cutting my hair was blathering on and on about how hot Ryan Gosling is and which celebrity married which celebrity. She talked about it for fifteen minutes straight!

"So?"

"What do you mean, so? She talked for fifteen minutes!"

"So?"

"Ummm... she talked for fifteen minutes?"

"Grace," said Dan, "I was at the gym yesterday and the two babes next to me talked about their (ahem ahem) plastic surgeries for forty minutes."

"Oh. Well, that's pretty banal," I scoffed.

"Welcome to normal people land!"

I punched him in the arm. But I shut up about the hairdresser.

Most people, I've come to realize, talk about stuff. Their dogs, their kids, the romance novel they're reading, past boyfriends, dating troubles, whatever. I don't get it. What's the point? There is no point. They could have said what they said about Spot in thirty seconds, not thirty minutes.

It recently hit me that the point of talking about stuff is... to talk about stuff. What the heck. That's just circular logic.

So here I am asking questions, getting information, answering questions, giving information. Then I'm stuck. What do you talk about then? Apparently you talk about minutiae for half an hour or until you kill Grace, whichever comes first.

And as an aside, that's how I realized why I never fit in with the nerdy and geeky crowd even though I'm nerdy and geeky. It's because nerdy and geeky people still talk about stuff, it's just that they talk for hours about computer programs or World of Warcraft for hours instead of hair or Fluffy the Really Cute Poodle. They're just rehashing. Where's the information?

3. It takes me a while to process what you're saying.

Grace is more than a little slow on the uptake. It takes me a while to get jokes. It takes me a while to respond to a jab or a sarcastic remark. When I watch movies, I am so incredibly confused for the first fifteen minutes or so until everything sinks in and I learn everybody's voices.

I need time to process stuff. When people talk to me, I have to think about what they said, and I have to think about how to respond to what they said. All of this takes me time, and time is something that I don't have in a conversation. So I normally default to vague comments. "Really? Is that so? Seriously! Wow! Wow. Well, that's quite an issue. Oh no! Haha!"

My fillers don't necessarily invite the speaker to continue on with the conversation, and they certainly don't give the other person any further stuff to go on. Shockingly, the conversation soon ends. Then I'm usually up late thinking about some pretty awesome responses to the now-irrelevant conversation.

So how does this all add up?

Apparently, this is how people socialize and complete the "making friends" merit badge award.

First, they go up and introduce themselves, or someone goes up to them and introduces himself. That involves questions and giving and getting information. I can do that. "What's your name? Where are you from? What do you do? What are your hobbies?"

At some point, the information-getting period ends and you have a pretty good idea of what the other person is like. Then you step into the talking about stuff stage. Uh-on. I know this person loves movies, so now I have to talk about movies. What should I say about movies? This person knows me pretty well, so maybe they're interested in what I did this morning. Great, I just killed two minutes. Now what?

The talking about stuff stage is where most of my attempts at connecting with other people peters out. I just don't know what to say anymore. And I mean, come on, even if I'm able to come out and talk about stuff I'm interested in, economic demography and onomastics just aren't anything most people care about.

My conclusion: I may, indeed, be screwed.