Tasia

“Recicprocal conversation, for example, had always been a major stumbling block for me. It's not that I didn't care about what other people were doing or thinking, I just couldn't wrap my head around the necessity of asking them specific things to demonstrate that interest. My ideal conversation would be an exchange of interconnected statements. One person could initiate by bringing up an idea or point that they thought another person could be interested in. The second person could then relate their own ideas or points to those initial statements. The first person could bounce further sentences that were punctuated with periods and the occasional exclamation mark off of that, and so forth. As I have been repeatedly informed, though, this fails to convey proper investment to most other parties. Apparently it can make you sound self-absorbed and aloof. I tried to remedy my natural conversational style for years, but could not properly wrap my head around finding the right things to ask, putting them into the proper words and then making my voice appropriately rise at the end of those assembled words. My awkwardly crafted and even more awkwardly worded questions stopped conversations almost as dead as my lack of them had.”
― Sarah Kurchak, I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder: A Memoir

“I was almost as angry at the world as I was at myself. Everything felt hopeless. I'd worked so hard to be something less than hated for so many years and it had all fallen apart. And I just couldn't envision a future where this pattern wouldn't repeat itself until one of my haters - be it me or someone equally sick of me - put me out of my misery.”
― Sarah Kurchak, I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder: A Memoir

“I restructured most of my outer life - and did my best to adjust pieces of my inner one - through variations of this process: Observe. Mimic. Overanalyze. Catastrophize. Observe some more. Try again. Resort to self-flagellation and self-torture as necessary. Repeat. My ares of focus included my tone of voice, body language, wardrobe and apprearance, and the music, stories and hobbies that I'd admit to liking in front of other people. Some attempts were painful. Some frustrating. Some still leave a bitter taste, while others have become amusing anecdotes. A few became second nature to me after my initial attack, but most require conctant effort to maintain.”
― Sarah Kurchak, I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder: A Memoir

“There was just nothing that I accomplished during my time there that gave me any indication that real life wasn't just as mercenary, scary and completely outside of my skill set as high school. I was still awkward and strange, still missing cues and feeling like I was on a thirty-second (or thirty-minute) delay from everyone around me. I still thought that tolerance might be the best I could hope for.”
― Sarah Kurchak, I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder: A Memoir