I've been thinking about friends and making friends and being friends recently. So here is post 2 of ??? in this set about friends (which is why they are also sort of repeating the same stories and ideas, as I go through and process different closely-related ideas, there will be closely-related similar posts.)
Sometimes my friends have friends who I do not know.
At my friend L's wedding, I had struggles with that. Because she had other friends there and other family, and was busy with the getting-married-part of her wedding. So I didn't really get to talk to her much, which was strange, because usually when I hang out with her, it is usually just me and her.
We had a pattern throughout high school, where we would go over to her house and study AP Biology and try to predict the theories we would learn in AP Calculus without reading ahead in the book, based on what we talked about last class. And we would read books and hang out and bake cookies and just sort of chill at her house quietly.
Whenever I hung out with other people with her, I would follow her around closely. She was homeschooled until high school and so by the time we were friends (sophomore year) she was still not quite as used to all the social things that happen at school and I was oblivious autistic me, so it got along well. But she was generally better at people, so I would follow her lead in social situations.
But then at her wedding, I couldn't do that. Since I was a bridesmaid, there were various things I went to that boyfriend wasn't there to be my social interpreter. But she was busy with other friends and family and his family. So I couldn't follow her around. But it was also a very loosely-defined-casual-bridesmaid role so there weren't really specific things that I had to do, so that didn't help.
Sometimes my friends have friends who I don't have.
And I don't like that.
But I should. Because I have multiple groups of friends and they don't all know each other. (I actually don't really like when my friend-groups-intermingle... it stresses me out).
Sometimes my friends hang out without me, and that is ok, too.
One of my college friends specifically explained it to me. (Multiple times. Because I have good friends.) That it is ok when I hang out with one friend sometimes and not the other, and likewise, it is ok sometimes when one pair of friends hangs out without me. Especially since they would go do things like go to bars, and bars are not really something I do.
Also some of my friends like to do things more than I like to do things. Or at least things around people. So they would be lonely if they had to only wait around for me.
My friends have friends who I don't have.
And that is ok.
Labels: asperger's, autism, college, emotions, fitting in, friends, socializing, theory of mind