Navigating social landscapes as an autistic person can be quite challenging. It can be hard when you intend to say something that is not intended to be said or received by the other party when all you want to do is be a part of the conversation that you so desire to be a part of. However, it is knowing what to say and the time and the place to say what needs to be said.

I wish that I could say that understanding social construct is easy, however it is not, and I had to learn the hard way with no skillset of any therapeutic value. It was from watching and learning the hard way by modeling others and even having to be ridiculed the hard way when it was not appropriate to be a part of a conversation. It was not easy but after being able to learn what was needed to be learned the hard way, it made it mostly concrete of what was expected to be said and when to say it.

There are moments that even today as well versed as I am that it can be difficult to produce the wording when having to ask or communicate about things. I constantly rehearse what is going to be my next conversation move before I say it, especially if it is with someone that I am not familiar with how their reaction back to me will be. This is because I fear that I will not know how to act if I receive feedback in return for what I say that can be hard to digest and process, as it takes time for me to process information, especially if it is compounded with many pieces of information at once.

There is no cut and dry way to interpret the communicative landscape or how things are going to go during any conversation. It can be hard to imagine that I do things that I would have never thought I would have done as part of my employment such as cold calling individuals on the phone and asking them to conduct surveys as that is part of my job, even if they have signed permission to do so some time prior, it still does not guarantee that they will remember the call coming through or that they even agreed to do what I ask of them. It requires me to be constantly on my toes and quickly respond to whatever is communicated to me in that conversation, and I have done exceptionally well, which is no small feat for someone with my challenges.

Nonetheless, even though it may seem as if I have it all together, as I can type my thoughts out, it is not always seen as that if I am put in a way that I must communicate with others and that can be one of my biggest challenges even if I get to know someone, it doesn’t honestly say that things are going to go swimmingly well because it is going to take some time to get to know how I can relate to someone and be able to learn how to communicate with that person. Yet, it is still learning and knowing how to say things and when to say them in the proper motions so that things do not seem as too awkward, and I can live my best life.