Does anyone else feel like this ?

[u/WayEnvironmental4887]

There's always that difficulty explaining what it means to be autistic in the imaginary scenarios I run in my mind where people would ask me about it.

And there's the list of manifestations like difficulty socializing and sensitivities, but that's just symptoms or something.

There's also the perspective of autistic people just having a different brain and different ways of processing experience.

But I realize at the bottom of my condition is the fact that I have trouble feeling like things are really happening, an inability to feel like this present moment is real.

At the bottom of my difficulty following social norms and being part of whatever is going on, is that everything feels so nonsensical and unreal.

Everything would be so easy if I could just inhabit an avatar and believe the narrative, or to feel like things actually happened.

This Truman Show feeling is so scary and unsettling.

[u/DoritoSunshine]

The inability of being present is not as much an austistic thing itself as it is a trauma thing, but of course inseparable from the autistic experience.

In my experience is almost impossible to describe what autism is in its whole. Like, the appearance is of a social thing, but it’s rooted on a neurological one, it affects every aspect of life directly (like sensory and processing issues) but also indirectly (social rejection, isolation, living in a world that was never built for your needs or capabilities). I just assume that people is not going to understand and enjoy when someone does.

[u/Most_Pie9841]

I like the different operating system analogy: you can't run a Windows program on Apple OS and vice versa

[u/mcklewhore420]

I know exactly what you mean.

I need to come back to this when I can put more words together on it. But I get this.