conventional

One of the more defining elements of autism is a disregard for conventional values and norms. At its root, this is not ideological, although ideological nonconformity often develops as a consequence. When this inability to connect with others is severe enough, autistic children have trouble even learning to speak. This is because they aren't mirroring caregivers. They don't learn the basics the way others instinctively learn. 

Even for the most brilliant of us, this can be a profound learning disability. It creates a cascade of consequences as the autistic individual progresses through life, learning how to cope, learning how to act normal, but never actually being normal, and coping never becomes easy. Neurotypical behaviors are called mainstream precisely because that's where the flow is the strongest and most common. It's not a choice to be outside the mainstream, so much as the absence of learned behavior that typically draws people into going with the flow.

Autism is a spectrum, not because it varies in severity, but because without conformist instincts to guide us, we learn to get by in our own ways. Every individual's life experiences are different. These experiences then guide development in a wide range of different ways. We don't follow any sort of standard autistic path, but are forced to forge our own paths, and we go in all different directions.

This often makes it very difficult to relate to others and form healthy relationships. Even other autistic people can be so different from one another as to make connection feel impossible between them, never mind connection with neurotypicals. When people don't share similar values, and have lived our whole lives accordingly, it can result in a devaluation that goes both ways.

A basic example might be materialism. This is simplistic and people are more complicated, but to illustrate the point, someone who doesn't value wealth or owning stuff will probably go through life with very little. Work is not only more difficult for such an individual, but their incentive to work is also greatly diminished. The importance they place on this basic measure of social value might not only be diminished, but negative- it's not something we're going to value in others, either.

Another example might be vanity. This one applies less to myself, but I know it's also common. A person who is indifferent to appearances will not put effort into their own appearance, nor value anyone else's. They might go through life being judged for how they look while judging others for caring about something perceived to be meaningless.

Autism is strongly correlated with social deficits, such as difficulty making small talk and other related conventions. So, even our personalities can be seen as lacking, while we might find those same social behaviors to be irritating, and worse than worthless. We may try to mask these differences, because this whole dynamic can make life so alienating and difficult, while on a deeper level, hating the prospect of being more like everyone else.

When such differences are framed as disability, that is a devaluation. This is why there's often controversy around framing autism as a disability. We do not bring to the table what others are looking for, and that they place importance on things we deem worthless can make them seem like idiots. We go through our lives struggling to find our way in a society clearly built by idiots. If we fail to connect with others who share our values, it can be a very lonely journey.

ok

Laying in bed, overthinking everything, when it occurs to me that my mood is probably improved because I got to train with her today. When it's been looking like I might never get the chance again. We spent five minutes together and it made my day. Like nothing has changed. I don't know how to feel about this dynamic. Is she coming back? Is she fading away? Which am I supposed to hope for again?

I think to myself, maybe just getting to the gym helps, but I was at the gym on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday too, trying not to be trapped at home with my thoughts. I left this morning thinking I'd buy myself something to get drunk with this afternoon, but when I got home, I didn't feel like it anymore.

I guess I'm ok. Wait, why am I suddenly ok? I was ok the moment we came face to face and I had to be.

wrapping up

I'm feeling better today, back to the baseline lonely miserable I'm more familiar with, but I'm still having a hard time getting my head around how powerfully I reacted. I'd thought about contacting my old therapist immediately, but to be honest, writing like this is more helpful to me than he ever was. When I tried to explain the situation to him years ago, he seemed to think the healthiest approach would be to ask her out. He seemed to have trouble understanding the harm that was likely to do, and he seemed oblivious to just how ridiculously bad my odds of success would be. It still bugs me.

I wish people had different values. I wish they could see what an exceptional person I am (according to my own values, right?) I have a lot going for me, aside from my inability to be a functioning member of society. This lopsided mix of strength and weakness can't simply be averaged out. People in between don't understand any of it. People who share my disability without strengths of their own are in a very different world. As are those with comparable strengths, but no disability.

People like me, though? Theoretical. They must exist, but they don't go to my gym, and compounding things further, most people my own age can barely climb a flight of stairs. We need to match based on our strengths- that is, the things we like about each other. That feels extremely reasonable. Disabled people are expected to match on their disability instead though, which only makes sense if your attitude is that any relationship is better than none.

Writing all this out isn't going to help me though. I'm not feeling the need to vent the way I was. I'll probably be closing my blog again soon.

bloodied

Accidentally gave someone a bloody nose at the gym today, for the first time since I've been training there. Not hurting my training partners is a high priority for me. I pride myself on being pretty good at it.

She's not entirely gone. I've been making contradictory statements, because it's more complicated than that. Her heart doesn't seem to be in it anymore, but she's still part of the gym community and still teaches. She shows up a lot less and hasn't been participating or training much, herself. But she's around.

I've been avoiding the classes she might be at. I showed up today, and the regular coach for today's class had called in sick. She was substituting for him. Doh. Funny how these things work out. She even asked me to spar during open mat after class, for the first time in months. I swear, I barely touched her. It's winter, her nose bleeds really easily.. but yeah, funny how things work out.

It forced me to face her and what could I do but accept and adapt. Nothing has changed.

Well, not nothing exactly. I can't go on the way I had been. Think I'll still be avoiding her for a while, moving forward.

reeling

I'm not feeling super optimistic about the trajectory this recovery is taking. I was not at all aware of just how much of my psyche was being held together by this. I could always see everything that's wrong with it, and yet, feel I made the best possible choices given the reality I'm dealing with. I'm desperately trying to figure out how to make my life work; how to make my brain work.

What was the alternative, to be less ambitious, to lose interest in training all together and go back to doing nothing? Motivating myself has not been easy. I've had to develop so many strategies and hacks to overcome a rather profound deficit in my ability to do much of anything. Nothing is more motivating to me than an attractive woman.

The whole reason I left my apartment eight years ago was to embark on this quest for human connection, and this is how it plays out.

generative

Composed October 2025

Composed September 2025

 

reciprocation

I used to hate people for not liking me. In driving myself to go out into the world to be around people all the time, I decided this was wrong. I look at myself from their perspective, taking all the reasons for their perspective into account. I understand, and can't hate them, because how they feel only makes sense, given their own lived experience, what they've been exposed to, and what they're entirely reasonable for caring about.

We're not supposed to like people who don't reciprocate. That isn't connection. It's a normative and natural defense of our egos to reciprocate negativity. If we don't do that, if we like people who think very little of us, we can start thinking very little of ourselves. Especially if we like them way too much. This is what I've been struggling with for the last eight years.

Why can't I be someone better appreciated by my peers? That most of my peers are half my age really compounds this problem, although I don't relate to people my own age any better. I don't know of any good ways to meet people my own age, so I don't know how much of a difference that would have made.

In order to become a more functional successful person, I allowed myself to lean into fantasy. I knew it was irrational, delusional even, but I let it carry me. I let myself be motivated by it. I let myself believe on a level I tried not to think too much about, that if I trained hard enough, I could become worthy. I could defy both aging and neurodivergence to find my way to a place in life where I might stand a chance of winning over a heart like hers.

Deep grooves form in the monotropic mind, as I allowed this fantasy to dominate my thinking for years. This winter has been really difficult. I wasn't consciously aware of why. The news itself was merely the confirmation of what I've feared since November. Something has been missing at the gym. Training hasn't been rewarding. I've been pushing myself to keep going, only to go home feeling sad, after every class. Now I know why and these painful thoughts flood the old obsessive grooves that riddle my mind.

I have nothing but the same old loneliness laid bare again, the protective layers of fantasy stripped away. I hate myself for being this way. I hate the world for making me like this. I hate everyone else for not understanding any of it.

chemistry

I met her the day I started training, back in 2018. She was just starting too. She's about the same weight that I am, so we made good training partners. At the time, that was my entire reason for wanting to train with her. I remember an instance where she opted for a training partner much bigger, because we'd been training with each other too often. I'd been careful about that ever since. I was afraid she might get the wrong idea if I tried to train with her too often. So much for that.

Before I joined the gym, I had no contact with humanity, aside from the occasional grocery cashier. I often went weeks without speaking to anyone at all. I've gone most of my life starved for human connection, but suddenly I was getting to know all these people at the gym. Training was a great social buffer, because we don't have to talk much. It was a way of being with people, without needing social skills.

I went from being starved for human contact, to working on mount escape drills with a beautiful woman, and that proceeded to go on for years. The more I got to know her, the more impressed I was, but there's also some basic chemistry there that shouldn't need much explanation. I'm really vulnerable to this sort of thing.

It wasn't until I got back from Philly, that I finally developed the nerve to start really talking to her. We were conversing regularly for a while, until she stopped showing up about six months ago. I would never make any sort of move on her, but I thought it would be great if a friendship could develop, even if only a small step above being acquaintances and training partners. That would take time though, and time ran out.

At the same time, I was learning to talk to someone I was intensely attracted to, something that's proven to be extraordinarily difficult. It took years. As with many things, I thought of it as practice. The first time we had a real conversation, it was a huge milestone for me. If I ever meet someone more appropriate, I'll be much better at handling that. 

I meet new people all the time these days. You never know who I might meet tomorrow, right? I'm always trying to hang onto the hope that the future might still pan out, but that's never going to happen, is it. That makes it so hard to let go of the fantasy.

peer review

When I blog, I imagine lots of other people reading it. Not an audience, but specific people I know, of all kinds. I tap into the anxiety that occurs when I wonder if they might read it. I imagine what they'd think of it, based on my experiences with how they tend to think. Blogging helps me look at myself from many angles.

Often my feelings shift almost immediately, as I take into consideration all these different imaginary viewpoints. I question how well I really know how other people think, or if I'm getting it all wrong. Take the basic premise: I'm upset because a woman that I'm infatuated with just got engaged. This should not be an earth-shattering experience. It's inappropriate for me to have these feelings for someone half my age, and to hide them for so many years just makes it creepier. The whole scenario is me being a weirdo and then crying about it.

My primary defense is that yeah, that's what neurodivergent means. I'm a weirdo in many ways. I know my mind is all kinds of problematic and it's not a good idea for me to be this way. This is another reason I don't often post about this side of myself. My understanding of how it appears to others is pretty awful. A couple different variants of awful, and not a lot of imaginary support. 

Or put another way, my dysfunctional hyperromantic nature is something I'm typically ashamed of and keep to myself, but the state I'm in is making me more indifferent and screwing with my judgment. Let everyone see how pathetic I am. What difference does it make.

Emotional dysregulation is the flipside of emotional sensitivity. I know that there is not a lot of sympathy for people being hypersensitive, and this is similar. It's all in my head. 

Fuck you, imaginary people.

Suddenly my entire world has changed. It's shocking to me, this little piece of news, and bang, everything is different. Or rather, I'm different, so I see everything else as different. Why? I don't even know. It doesn't entirely make sense. I'm a ridiculous person. I struggled for so long to train as hard as she does did. Now what am I doing. I'm still training. I still have momentum, if not escape velocity.

I didn't know I could even feel this way about a real person. It is horrifying that this is the path I had to take to get here. 

processing

This is the best way I've found to process what I'm going through. Type through it, catharsis, that for some reason works best if there's a chance others might read it. I realize this is strange and may have some negative consequences, but it seems to help, and fuck, do I need help.

Why can't I just be happy for her, right? I've been here before, although not at this level. This is different. I absolutely do wish her the best in life, but if we're talking about emotions, you have to understand just how over the top my dysregulated emotions are. 

I never blogged about this before, because I didn't want to take even the slight risk that it might get back to her, but that doesn't seem like it matters now. We're not friends. I wish we could have been. That would be difficult now, but we're not, so it doesn't matter. I was never able to form even that much of a real connection with her. I'd still prefer she never finds out, but I've got nothing to lose anymore.

So how over the top are these emotions that I'm supposed to just set aside and be a grown up about? What words am I supposed to use? Is it just a crush? Is it stupid to call it love, because we don't have a real connection? Is it autistic limerence, a clinical phrase that twists the whole thing into an abstraction? This is not rational. My more logical circuitry has been rebelling for years, to no avail. It's how I feel. 

I've never told anyone how extreme these types of emotions can get, because I know it's borderline psychotic. I would do anything for her. Whatever interests she has, I would make my own. I would have followed her to the ends of the earth and worshipped the ground she walks on, if she'd let me. Insane, right? It's clearly been an unhealthy obsession, but a lot of it has more to do with me than her. This is how my brain works.

I used to think I just needed a relationship and I could map these sorts feelings onto whoever would let me, but it doesn't work that way. I hate the idea of dating because I need to get to know people before getting into anything like that. Turns out someone needs to be exceptional for me to feel this way. I have to admire such a person. I hate to admit this, but of course it matters that she's also incredibly fucking beautiful.

I should probably elaborate on why I've kept this all to myself, in case it isn't obvious. I've touched on the rain man problem, and for me that's first and foremost. She's a happy person living an incredibly successful life, and the idea that I'd be a lot happier if someone like her liked me back does not bridge that chasm. A relationship with someone like me would make no sense for her.. never mind the fact that she's also twenty years younger than me. That she was at times already taken felt beside the point. 

I'm a bit shocked at how much this hurts, given that nothing has changed- I had zero chance with her before. Zero chance with her now.. but years go by, dynamics can change. Zero chance in the future? I must have been holding the longshot hope that such dynamics could somehow shift in my favor someday. While minor relationships come and go, getting married unequivocally shuts all that down.

I'd always been nonchalant about training with her. I only had the opportunity occasionally, but I'd always hope for it. If she had any idea how I felt, it would have been creepy and she wouldn't want to train with me ever again. That was my priority, to just enjoy her company as long as I could, to the extent that I could, and now that's gone. The last thing I wanted to do was make things weird.

I always have to return to my lonely apartment and be weird by myself. 

Holding back was not low self esteem, just me choosing to be sane and realistic, despite the insanity going on in my head. Maybe I can finally let go, and maybe that's a good thing, but now my world has this gaping void in it again. The same gaping void that has defined my whole life.

engaged

I knew it was coming. I just had no idea how to protect myself. Let it happen and hope for the best. I didn't know when, but yeah, it turns out that would be yesterday. She just got engaged. 

She hasn't been training much at all for a long time now. I suspected why. I thought I just missed rolling with her. Maybe. So, why does this symbolic ritual matter so much? Nothing has changed- she hasn't been training anyhow. I never knew if she might come back to it at some point. She still might. 

But I don't want to roll with her now. I don't want to see her. All the fond memories I have suddenly become painful, because of this symbolic ritual that allegedly doesn't mean much to me. This would seem to imply that I don't just miss rolling with her. I really have been hanging on to some hope. I really have been in love with her.

For how many years? It happened gradually but it goes back before the pandemic. Every time I went to the gym, looking around as soon as I walked in the door, hoping to see her there. Maybe we'd get to train together. Training was the only way I knew how to connect with people, and I wanted so badly to connect with her.

It's not fair. I desperately want normal healthy experiences, and instead my engagement with the world just gets all twisted into this creepy bullshit that I never asked for and wasn't looking for. I want to meet someone appropriate for me that I feel this way about, but that's not possible, because I'm like rain man. I'm not going to feel this way about someone appropriate for me.

I'm not going to enjoy the company of someone who's as much of a loser as I am, unless they're a loser in a matching way, which is to say, like nobody I've ever met to date of any cohort. She's probably not going to come walking into the gym one day. I'd have to meet and reject lots of women if I were going to proactively try looking for her. That is to say, dating. It's not that hard to meet people online, but I can't deal with the realities of it. It makes me feel like a terrible person. So, my situation seems hopeless.

Instead, I try to get what I can from the life I have, and it's fucking brutal. Disappointment, frustration, anxiety, only to eventually get eviscerated. I hate myself so much. Why? Because I can't attract someone like her. I'm not sure what else even matters in life. I don't know why I'm like this; why I feel that way. I don't know what to do about it. 

I lack emotional regulation. This does not mean that I can't control my behavior or control how I express my emotions. It means that what's going on inside my head is brutal regardless. I want to feel a torrent of something positive for a change, for someone receptive to it, but I've known since I was a kid that I might be fucked in that regard. I'm not like other people. 

What does that mean? It doesn't seem to so abstract anymore. Being around people as much as I have been, it's become pretty straight forward. Twice exceptional, some call it; being disabled and gifted. While I'm far from being the only one, people are disabled in different ways. Gifted in different ways. What we appreciate and what we tolerate has to match. We have to enjoy each other's company, but most people make me feel like I'd rather be alone.

I enjoyed her company like no one else I've ever known. 

The last time we spoke, a few weeks ago, I came as close to shooting my shot as I'd ever come. I felt good about getting it off my chest, in my carefully defused sort of way. She was telling me about how she doesn't plan on doing any more competing. I said she had a really good run. I told her that I admired her. I admired how hard she trained, and how well she did. I told her she had a knack for teaching. I conveyed how much I liked her, in the most harmless way possible. 

For eight years, she was the most positive thing in my life. The closest I came to looking forward to something, in a life where I never look forward to much of anything. Now I just want to scrub her existence from my brain, because this hurts like hell.

To be more normal under these circumstances would be to drink myself to death. Somehow, I just keep pushing forward instead, going nowhere. I don't know how this will play out. How quickly will I recover? Will it fester and abscess or will I just get over it? Every time life fucks me over, it changes me. It damages me. It further undermines my ability to feel anything good ever again.

I know it's my own fault, and nobody else cares.