Wimpy + Brutus = Too much for spinach?

Why is it that some people will go out of their way to avoid living up to their obligations and then act offended when someone gets upset over their actions? Worse yet, why do those people look for opportunity to act offended before anyone has said anything about their actions? I realize that the first is to try to get something for nothing at the expense of others, but the second serves only to warn people about what they are doing. Why would someone give themselves away like that? Why would someone who is trying to “get one over” on someone else be foolish enough to provide warning that could allow the person they are trying to cheat the opportunity to take action to protect themselves? Do they think that playing victim will gain them some advantage?

Is it simple stupidity? Can someone who uses people to get ahead really be that stupid as to give themselves away? Could they be so stupid as to not even be able to remember what lies they’ve told to whom so that they end up giving their lies away themselves? Could they be so stupid as to be unable to remember from one day to the next, or even one hour to the next that they had told you ABC while they are now saying 8 9 10? Can users really be that stupid?

If so, just how is it that they manage to ever cheat anyone in the first place? If these people are truly that stupid how do they not end up continually worse off for their efforts? How is it that these people even manage to get people to believe that they will “gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today?”

Preying on those who are not neurotypical would certainly account for some success, but even with the number of people who aren’t neurotypical out there it would be extremely difficult to get by on just them especially with the difficulties we generally have just managing our own lives. If you add in those who are simply desperate for human contact because of personal inadequacies you still do not have a huge pool of potential victims.

So how do they do it? How do they convince normal people that they’re a good person? How do they convince the normal people of the world that they are someone worth calling friend? How do they get others to believe they are deserving of help? How do those who use others and throw them away manage to have more than just small, momentary gains before everything crashes down on them? How is it that they are not continually living in squalor? How is it that word of what type of person they are doesn’t spread and prevent others from falling for their lies?

How is it that bad people prosper while the good stuggle?

Where have I been?

Some of you may be wondering where I’ve been, the answer is simple. I’ve been afraid. I stopped posting my thoughts here, stopped posting on my personal facebook, stopped going to the places I’ve always gone, just stopped doing anything at all because I was afraid. I’m still afraid. I only go a handful of places and even that is mostly only at need, I rarely go anywhere simply because I want to and even then I need someone I trust with me. I hang out with only two people which may become only one in the near future. I’ve stopped trying to make the dream I’ve been trying to achieve for almost 20 years real. Online and off, I’m still afraid to try to have even a small place in the world.

I need a routine to manage day to day but I’m afraid to have one. I need places I’m comfortable so I can do more than sit at home or drive around alone but I’m afraid to go to those places. I need someone I’m comfortable with so I can let down my guard and just talk but I’m afraid to trust anyone like that or let them close. I need a little bit of “normal” in my life but I’m afraid to even try.

Thanks to other peoples tantrums, attention seeking, and lies this is my life.
Thanks to being used, taken advantage of, and discarded too many times this is my life.
Thanks to being to broken and stupid to see what’s going on in front of me this is my life.
This is my life.

This is David

Great video for understanding the autistic mind.

If you tell someone who has autism something, even if its only mild, they will believe you.

“I’m your friend” means you’re they’re friend.
“I care about you” means you care about them.
“It hurts that you feel isolated and you’re so used to it you consider it normal” means it hurts you that they feel like that.
“You’re not alone, I’m here for you” means you’re there for them.
“If you need to talk you can come to me” means they can come to you if they need to.
“If we can’t talk here you can email me” means it’s OK to email you.
“Yes, but I’m not on facebook much so I’ll accept it when I go on again, this is my name on twitter” means you’ll accept their friend request on facebook and by giving them your twitter name you’ve told them they can add you there.
If you talk them into using a chat app and tell them to add you they will.
If you talk them into using a social networking site they aren’t on you’ve given the OK to add the only person they know on that site when they signup.
If you write a note to let them know something that isn’t anyone elses concern you’ve told them it’s OK to use written notes to communicate with you.

Of course all that applies even to the non-autistic people in the world, but to someone who’s autistic and is completely literal because of how their brain functions there is no other possible way for them to view those things. A B D means exactly that, the autistic brain does not seen an implied C which means if you do not say it they do not see it.

So why am I sharing this? Why am I being repetitive in my posts lately? The politically correct name for my condition is Asperger’s Syndrome, the polite no social stigma way of saying mild high functioning autism.

Paula Seaman, Manager of Tack’s Sandwich shop in Reading, PA knew this when she said all of the above things to me. She knew I would take it at face value because my brain wouldn’t allow me to see it any other way. She knew because I’d come to trust her and one day I opened my mouth and it fell out. The wall that kept it inside disappeared and I told her how I’m broken. Her response was simple, honest understanding.

Well, it looked like that on the surface. I’ve learned that emailing her to talk, subscribing to her feeds on twitter and the sites she talked me into using, and writing a note to let her know something bother her, make her uncomfortable, and have her “weirded out.” I know this because the owner of the business told me she’d told him that. She never said anything to me about it, she didn’t tell him what she’d said to me, and he didn’t want to hear what she’d said to me.

Mr. Charles Kondraski doesn’t care about the way someone who is not just an employee of his business but is the manager of his business played with an autistic customers head. He doesn’t care about the things other employees did. He only cared about jumping down my throat. In his defense, though not really, unless Paula told him about my condition he doesn’t know but that’s not really a defense. Treating customers like toys to be played with is very poor customer service and shouldn’t be allowed no matter who the customer is. It’s just worse when the customer is so easily taken advantage of and the employees know it.

Faith or Fear

It seems the truth is out. After a month of lies being allowed to stand I received the following message from the person running the business:

Well if you want to come back. I fired nell all the girls told me they only said those things because she wouldn’t shut up. I was lied to sorry. Hope you forgive me.

The truth was told, so now what do I do. I went in yesterday and today and the owner talked to me both times. One of the people who I’d known was a friend and then had reason to doubt smiled when I came in, said hi, and talked to me while I was there. When I was in today for morning coffee she said hi but was busy and didn’t talk much.

The friend/not friend/friend admitted to helping set me up for the stalker accusation and said she did it because the now former employee threatened to go to CYS with lies that would get her children immediately taken and have her fighting the system to get them back.

I’m not sure how I feel about being there. Part of me wants to believe that it wasn’t all a game, but the logical part of me can’t see past what happened at the beginning of January and has me on edge. Being there doesn’t feel the same, I don’t know if it ever will, even the memories from my childhood feel “wrong” now. I’m going to need to talk to her but I don’t know when or how. I don’t even know if it will matter if I do. Part of me wants to trust her like I did, part of me is telling me to put up more walls, I don’t know which part to listen to.

Trust means risking being used, having things inside me more turbulent than they are now, and being hurt by her.
Walls means risking shutting out a real friend, having nobody to help deal with the turbulence inside, and hurt myself.

Faith or Fear, I have to choose one but I don’t know which.

New Old Chapter

Recent events in my life have reminded me why I spent 13 of the las 14 years with almost no direct human contact.  I kept in touch with people through the internet; e-mail, instant messages, social networks,  etc, but only saw them by chance as I ran errands that couldn’t be handled online.  I’ve never understood people, they’ve always confused me. 

Instead of saying what they mean they use “hints” that are often counterintuitive to what they’re trying to get across and then get offended when you don’t get it.  They created the misunderstanding when they decided to not be straightforward but they fault you for it.
They tell you one thing then do another and act like you’re the bad guy when you discover it.
They say one thing to your face and the opposite behind your back and get angry when you tell people about it.
They make assumptions without talking to you, act on those assumptions as if they are proven fact, and refuse to believe anything but what they’ve assumed.
They play games to make others lives more difficult than they already are.
They betray friends who are willing to go out of their way to help them.

I could go on but I think the point is clear, people can’t be trusted.

Even the ones that just “get” you can’t be trusted. Understanding that it’s not a choice to be sad and that depression is something you just can’t control doesn’t make them trustworthy. Understanding that the conditions that make socializing not just hard but highly stressful and scary are something you have to fight with everyday doesn’t make them trustworthy. Understanding that the conditions that make you naive and allow others to take advantage of you leave you feeling cut off and alone because you don’t know who you can trust doesn’t make them trustworthy.

Sounding like they’re going to cry when they see your tears and tell you not to cry doesn’t mean they care. Sounding shocked that you even had to ask if they saw you as a friend doesn’t mean they care. Sounding truly upset that you’re so used to being isolated that you consider it normal doesn’t mean they care. Sounding sincere when they tell you “You’re not alone, I’m here for you” doesn’t mean they care. Sounding upset when they say “I’m sorry, I only have decaf for you” when you ask for a coffee because they know you don’t like decaf when you’re visibly upset doesn’t mean they care. Leaning on a counter while talking to you when you’re visibly upset as if they don’t want you to feel small by having to look up at them while talking doesn’t mean they care.

All the big and little things that say “I care” can be faked. Some people are good enough at acting that they can put on the charade for months, even years. When they play their games to amuse themselves with others people can put on a show of being a real friend for as long as they need to keep stringing you along. When people are so miserable in their own life that they feel a need to destroy others lives they can, and will, do whatever they have to to do as much damage as they possibly can and the entire time will appear to be honest, caring, concerned, etc to keep their “plaything” from realizing he’s really a victim of deceit.

For 13 of the last 14 years I assumed that if they were given a chance, everyone in the world would take advantage of me, use me for their own gain, stab me in the back, and throw me away. With everyone I encountered my walls were rock solid, my armor was on, my defenses were up and unless there was no way to avoid it they didn’t even get as close as arms length.

So I’m turning the pages backwards. The next chapter of my life is going to be the same as the last. The Bipedal Vertebrate is going back into his cave, I’m returning to the self induced exile of an electronic connection to the world. Hidden behind a computer screen I’m safe, it’s one more wall I need to have.

I should hate you

I should hate you.
I should hate you for talking to me.
I should hate you for pulling me out of my head.
I should hate you for being there with a kind word when I was about to get lost inside myself.
I should hate you for being nice to me.
I should hate you for being understanding of my challenges.
I should hate you for being accepting of who they make me.
I should hate you for seeing past the problems they cause me.

I should hate you for making me belive you were beautiful inside.
I should hate you for making me care about you.
I should hate you for making me think you were someone worth caring about.
I should hate you for making me think you were someone special.
I should hate you for making me think it was an honor to have you as a friend.
I should hate you for making me think your friendship made me a better person.

I should hate you for taking advantage of my challenges.
I should hate you for lying to me.
I should hate you for playing games with my head.

I should hate you for making me believe you cared.
I should hate you for making me believe I mattered.
I should hate you for making me believe I wasn’t alone.
I should hate you for making me believe I wasn’t isolated.
I should hate you for making me believe you were there for me.
I should hate you for making me believe you were a friend.

I should hate you for all this, and more, but I don’t.

I hate myself for being stupid enough to fall for it.

“Friends”

I thought they were my friends, for years I was there everytime they needed me bending over backwards to help them. For years it was me that suggested the help.

If they were out of work, had no money, called to talk and seemed down about how things were going I knew how they felt. I’ve had depression issues my whole life, I know how it feels to be struggling to find a job, I know how easily depression can grab hold of you and drag you down, and I know how much just spending time with friends can help with that so when they mentioned not being able to go for coffee with friends in weeks I’d offer to take them out to the diner to meet up with their friends and cover their bill. When it was the other way around they couldn’t be bothered to even take a phone call when I needed to talk.

When they needed a place to stay but didn’t make enough to get one I let them move into my place, gave them one of the spare rooms, and within a week they were out of work. My bills went up but they didn’t have anything to contribute because they’d been “fired” for not having a birth certificate, or because they didn’t update their address within 24 hours of moving, or their boss found out they’d been homeless even though they weren’t anymore, or some other lie because they’d actually quit. My bills got run up, my food given away, my house destroyed, and when I threw them out the stories of me using them started. When I lost the house because of all that nobody had a couch for me and when not making it to work on time because I was sleeping in abandoned buildings cost me my job nobody had a place for me to shower, keep some clean clothes, or a phone number for me to put on applications.

When their car died and they needed to get to work, the store, or anywhere else I took them without asking for more than the cost of my gas. When my car died because I couldn’t afford maintenance and repairs from all the additional running and theirs was back on the road I walked or took the bus because they were always too busy.

When my apartment wasn’t big enough for me but they needed a place I found a way to make room for them. If it I wasn’t going to have her sleeping on my floor so I offered to share the bed and if she wasn’t comfortable with that I slept on the floor with my curved spine so she could have the bed to herself. When I lost that place because I was out of work and the same friends who’d borrowed money from me to pay their own rent and avoid eviction wouldn’t repay those loans I was again sleeping in abandoned buildings because there wasn’t a couch to be found.

When my fiance was cheating with my best man nobody said a word to me. They knew, but even though she was still wearing my ring instead of telling me they took turns keeping me occupied so I wouldn’t discover them together. When I finally found out on my own, I was the “asshole who won’t be happy for a friend” so I was left sitting home alone crying while they partied at a house that was nicer than mine.

My whole life it’s been like that. Family or friends, it didn’t matter. They knew I’d be there, they knew I’d bend over backwards for them, they knew exactly what buttons to push, what strings to pull, what to say to get my sympathy and whatever else it was they wanted from me.

One by one I was forced to throw people I thought were friends out of my life, and one by one they told everyone who would listen a story about how I mistreated them when I told them off and tossed them. One by one people who’d made assumptions about me without ever talking to me believed those stories. One by one people I thought were friends proved they weren’t.

It’s been over a decade since I really bothered with anyone. I talk to people but don’t consider them friends. It got to where I’d count my real friends and only come up with one name, but that was enough because one real friend is better than one thousand fake ones. It appears I didn’t even have that because she’s showing herself to have been no more real than the rest.

So now I sit alone most of the time, I talk to people that I can’t allow myself to trust, I’m cut off from the world because I’ve been used and mistreated by almost everyone that ever mattered to me. I’m not sure why I even bother anymore. If it wasn’t for my Baby Kitties I wouldn’t have anything to keep me going.