I Can't See Your Smile
The human smile is a mystery to me.
Are you happy?
Are you being malicious and sneaky?
Did you just hear a joke?
Are you having a good day?
If I ask these questions, I'm avoided, I assume because I'm seen as a freak, or that I'm somehow in the same league as the man screaming "no" on the street corner. The fact, however, remains that I can not read a smile. I am literally incapable of telling where a smile originates, why people do it, and when I should also do this. As a result, if a situation occurs where I should smile, I often do not, since I simply don't recognize when I'm supposed to.
The same can be applied to almost any situation; the neurotypical mind automatically checks for body language on a subconscious level, and when someone doesn't display those all-important indicators, they are "creepy" on some fundamental, perhaps even unknown level. I've been told I'm a disturbing individual, that I bother people, and in a few cases, have been asked to leave because I don't have those same responses (in fact, an occurrence earlier today has prompted me to write this). The same however, happens when I look at other people. As much as I don't have properly discernible body language, everyone else's body language is equally mysterious and disturbing to me. My attempts to emulate it result in inorganic, jerky, spastic, or improper movements that I can assume only adds to the discomfort of others.
I can now, so many years later, keep track of body language, but I have to do it consciously. This is one of the reasons I got into art. I could pretend to be normal, and under that pretense, I could learn "code words" to assign to different modes of the body's expression. I didn't get much art-wise out of it (I'm still struggling with art after all these years), but I did learn through books on anatomy and position how to decode the mysteries of human posture and body language. However, I can't keep track of more than maybe four people at a time. Any more than that and I freeze up, my mask drops, and I start acting like an emotionless robot. That isn't to say I'm devoid of emotion, far from it, in fact, that my emotions are wired to completely different stressors and stimuli from a neurotypical is another point against me. If someone close to me dies, I simply shrug and assume that means I won't be able to talk to them again, but heaven help me if I have to go to a gas station I've never been to before, or if the phone rings and I'm not expecting a call, or if my printer runs out of ink and I don't have a replacement cartridge. Can you imagine being around someone who doesn't bat an eye at a car accident but throws a tantrum if the soda machine doesn't work the way it's supposed to? I know that's disturbing to some people, but on my side, I can't imagine why anyone not involved in the accident itself would be interested in its outcome. I have to force myself to react the way everyone else does.
When I was a child, this made it difficult to make friends; I can still count the amount of friends I have on one hand, and the ones I have now outnumber the ones I've had in my entire childhood.
I feel like that kid from A.I., capable of emotion but incapable of knowing how to process that emotion, and so thrown to the wayside and forgotten by the world. It's hard to be the one who really is on the outside, absolutely confused as to normal, everyday interaction, so much so that going to the grocery store is like facing every childhood fear every single time you go.
I just wish I could make people understand that I'm not crazy or a robot or an alien or something.
Are you happy?
Are you being malicious and sneaky?
Did you just hear a joke?
Are you having a good day?
If I ask these questions, I'm avoided, I assume because I'm seen as a freak, or that I'm somehow in the same league as the man screaming "no" on the street corner. The fact, however, remains that I can not read a smile. I am literally incapable of telling where a smile originates, why people do it, and when I should also do this. As a result, if a situation occurs where I should smile, I often do not, since I simply don't recognize when I'm supposed to.
The same can be applied to almost any situation; the neurotypical mind automatically checks for body language on a subconscious level, and when someone doesn't display those all-important indicators, they are "creepy" on some fundamental, perhaps even unknown level. I've been told I'm a disturbing individual, that I bother people, and in a few cases, have been asked to leave because I don't have those same responses (in fact, an occurrence earlier today has prompted me to write this). The same however, happens when I look at other people. As much as I don't have properly discernible body language, everyone else's body language is equally mysterious and disturbing to me. My attempts to emulate it result in inorganic, jerky, spastic, or improper movements that I can assume only adds to the discomfort of others.
I can now, so many years later, keep track of body language, but I have to do it consciously. This is one of the reasons I got into art. I could pretend to be normal, and under that pretense, I could learn "code words" to assign to different modes of the body's expression. I didn't get much art-wise out of it (I'm still struggling with art after all these years), but I did learn through books on anatomy and position how to decode the mysteries of human posture and body language. However, I can't keep track of more than maybe four people at a time. Any more than that and I freeze up, my mask drops, and I start acting like an emotionless robot. That isn't to say I'm devoid of emotion, far from it, in fact, that my emotions are wired to completely different stressors and stimuli from a neurotypical is another point against me. If someone close to me dies, I simply shrug and assume that means I won't be able to talk to them again, but heaven help me if I have to go to a gas station I've never been to before, or if the phone rings and I'm not expecting a call, or if my printer runs out of ink and I don't have a replacement cartridge. Can you imagine being around someone who doesn't bat an eye at a car accident but throws a tantrum if the soda machine doesn't work the way it's supposed to? I know that's disturbing to some people, but on my side, I can't imagine why anyone not involved in the accident itself would be interested in its outcome. I have to force myself to react the way everyone else does.
When I was a child, this made it difficult to make friends; I can still count the amount of friends I have on one hand, and the ones I have now outnumber the ones I've had in my entire childhood.
I feel like that kid from A.I., capable of emotion but incapable of knowing how to process that emotion, and so thrown to the wayside and forgotten by the world. It's hard to be the one who really is on the outside, absolutely confused as to normal, everyday interaction, so much so that going to the grocery store is like facing every childhood fear every single time you go.
I just wish I could make people understand that I'm not crazy or a robot or an alien or something.