The Loneliness of the Long-Distance ND

People who know me socially would be amazed at how lonely I often feel. It amazes me too!

I am a genuine reach-out-in-welcome, life and soul, gets everyone laughing type. And that's how I am usually seen, I think. A few years ago I tentatively messaged someone I thought I knew from Edinburgh University in 1978. I mentioned that I thought he might have forgotten me. This was his reply: How could I forget somebody who could do an impersonation of a potato being chipped? (And yes. I had forgotten I ever did that...)

So it isn't that I can't socialise. And yet...

In the middle of a crowd, even in situations where I'm leading a group or contributing to a meeting, there is a sense of being behind a glass wall. Looking back I see how it affected me as a teenager and how that has had a knock-on effect throughout my life.

This is why I'm checking whether I may have a label. Just because it really helps to have a reason for this. It helps to know why I have so often fallen at the hurdles when dating, why I look around at other people being invited to things I hadn't even registered were happening, why I haven't even noticed that other people were networking or if I did, assumed that I wasn't included.

I realise now how many social cues I've missed down the years, I see friendship groups that I might have been part of if I hadn't waited for an invitation but just assumed I would be welcome. I see how I could have been perceived as disinterested or stand-offish when inside I was begging to be included. Pretty standard autistic experience... It saddens me to think that all the time I was feeling left-out, others (if they thought about it at all) were assuming I didn't want to be included. I try not to do regrets (it would take so long!) but this is something I really do wish I had had a handle on decades ago.

And it's amazing to think none of this ever occurred to me. I didn't know I didn't know.

Lots of people are the same. Just don't make the mistake of thinking it doesn't matter to them.

I'm lucky because I genuinely enjoy my own company. I am blessed with the most wonderful, understanding and loving family and I have many lovely acquaintances at church.

So if I can feel lonely, imagine how it must be for others.

I try to learn from life and develop as a person every day. So instead of sitting despairing over my past, I would much rather move forward to a different future. But my newly-found passion for unmasking has shown me something I never expected to find. Me, the ex-Clergy Wife who was so good at welcome and helping people to find their feet in a new place. Me, the one who ran the Parents Association at my daughters' school. Me, the one who has played Eliza in both My Fair Lady and Pygmalion... I've just realised I really don't enjoy small talk. For decades I've used my ability to do small talk as proof that I couldn't be neurodivergent. But now I see that you can be good at it without enjoying it. The truth is, I yearn for friends who can stimulate me intellectually as much as my family can. I get bored really easily in conversations, and now that I am more aware of it, I feel rude and - sort of insincere. I remind myself that I've just learnt social conventions and made a good job of it, but I am appalled at having hidden from myself for 6 decades. What else don't I know about myself? I suppose I will just have to go on exploring, as the long-distance runner goes on training...😉

With my daughter in 2014 at Chesterfield's first Race for Life