People learn how to talk and don’t learn how to stop. How to listen. This makes everyone frantic to be heard. Even if I model good active listening, I’m taken advantage of and don’t get the same in return. We’re creating the very frantic noise we’re struggling to be heard over. If we weren’t so reactive and defensive it wouldn’t be this Cold War of verbal battery and arms reaches. If we could actually stand to be wrong, and forfeit a rap battle to declare truce and risk connection… now I sound poisonously positive: “Can’t we all just get along?” This is a standoff. Except my weapons and resources are meagre next those of the people I’m talking to. I used to not understand what was going wrong, and got frustrated but gave up. Now I understand more of the nuances but it hasn’t made me any more empowered to cope or solve this communication SNAFU. I want a translator. I’m exhausted from trying and failing. I’m bloody fucking tired. Where, oh where, have the smart people gone? Behind walls of intellect and politics, of sad head-shaking ‘yes it is such a shame, a crime, this inequality and oppression, I’m going to go organize’ instead of risking doing something on a human level and possibly failing a real human person, a human face to a systemic problem? Yeah, I get it, it’s terrifying and heartbreaking, but your fear and mine are making this so much worse. If I can get some basic needs met I can relax and calm down enough to communicate better. But this needs to be trauma-informed, autism-informed, which means the other person needs to concede, and meet me eye-to-eye, and let me take the lead on saving my life. It shouldn’t have to be either ‘do it all yourself,’ or ‘I take over entirely’ when it comes to saving someone. It should centre the person experiencing the difficulty, give options, trust them, let the one who lives with the consequences decide which risks to take. Forcing someone to make a particular choice should obligate the enforcer to take responsibility for the consequences and shoulder the cost or the burden of repair. Whoever makes the choices pays the price. So let it be me, if it’s my life, who makes the choices. You can’t have it both ways — tell me what to do but then I have to pay the price and take the fallout alone. I feel like a prop or a toy in situations like that. If you’re going to make the choices, you need to pay the price, otherwise there’s no risk to you and you can wind up damaging or destroying people in haste and ignorance. Argh I hate how much effort it takes to try to work this shit out, probably because I’m in bad-faith situations with people who ‘mean well’ but may subconsciously have a more important personal ego-driven goal that is undermining every discussion and action. One that only seems clear in hindsight. Maybe if I weren’t listening exclusively to the 10% that is the content of what other people say, and could better tell from how they look and sound whether they’re trustworthy, I could save time and effort. Trouble is, neurotypicals are such fluent liars, with every move and costume. And the neurodiverse are expected to perform and conform. Where’s the actual sheep among the wolves dressed in wool? Anyone? …Bueller?