MetaJess

feels weird to deliberately seek out autistic people to hang out with if i'm not autistic but near the end Sam says something like --

-- she always felt weird and quirky until she spent time with other autistic people, and then she felt *just like them*, not interesting or different at all i'm paralyzed trying to work out how to talk with ANYONE much less be like "hey people w female-presenting ASD hmu?"

(also: i'm getting the same sort of extra buzzy anxious tension thinking about ASD as i did when reading Running on Empty)

it's hard to disentangle social anxiety from possibly-aspie things -- a workaround i've had for feeling like i dont know what other people are thinking is, when in doubt, assume the worst not about their motives, more like: assume they're not interested, or they're annoyed

and i realized today(!!) that a lot of the anxiety i have in my current relationship comes from this strategy. my ex was hyperverbal so i never had any doubts about what was going through his head current bf is much more typical; there've been times where i sensed his --

--discomfort on some visceral level, got anxious in response without being able to understand or articulate why, and then later he told me that he had, in fact, been stressed. BUT i've just had a false positive--and now i suspect it's just that a broken clock's right twice a day

how do you know if you're good or bad at reading people without relying on... avoiding any risk at all??