So, basically I used to worry that the longer I blog, the less I will have to share. It seems, however, like the opposite happens: the more I write about autism, the more I notice about myself and the more it is to report, I need to prioritise some stuff over other and therefore the explanation why I needed to see testing nipple before being able to speak about it with my gas supplier will never get a separate post. As I don’t want to leave you wondering though, I’ll quickly mention that it’s due to the fact that I imagine new situations as jigsaw puzzles, so I needed to know how to visualise the nipple (I mean the testing nipple on the gas meter – if you think I’m visualising nipples because I’m autistic you are a real twat!).

So, this post (can someone suggests to me how can I start talking about a new concept without the use of word ‘so’ or the expression ‘so, basically’? This is not due to a language barrier, believe me, that must be an autistic thing)… this post is about… oh well, this is not going very well at all. Let me start over, but I won’t be deleting this paragraph as I used the word autistic in it (that is twice now) and I want Google search engine to pick up on that.

I did mention here multiple times about my struggles to communicate with Professor Baron-Cohen. I found it very difficult to move on from this situation, I possibly got a bit obsessed, which is totally an autistic thing unfortunately and I tried to convince Professor that he needed to make more effort to improve his communication with us to ensure the quality of his research. It did seem at some point he took my suggestions in his stride, that was very short-lived though. I was trying to make a complaint about Professor but the problem with that is, there’s no one who is a better autism specialist (or at least that’s what they say) so no one can investigate it.

After, finally I asked Professor about his understanding of a certain autistic behaviour and he got it totally wrong, I got a little bit upset, oh well… I think I even used the f***k word, and I normally don’t swear. There was no answer to this email and I do understand it, I mean, up to a point. Ideally, a real researcher shouldn’t be hiding when he’s told he got something wrong, he should look at it like an opportunity to find out something more, but I do admit, I was impolite and neurotypicals sometimes use someone’s conduct as an excuse to ignore their concerns.

What I did a bit later was, I emailed both Professor and the junior researcher who is responsible for managing complains: I told them the truth about their shortcomings in a slightly challenging yet polite and caring way and what I know about neurotypicals so far is, when I do that, they suddenly get like ‘no no, it wasn’t like that, it’s just a misunderstanding, but I’m sorry you got it this way, let me rectify that for you’. In that situation both sides know that it wasn’t a misunderstanding, but they agree to pretend they believe it, as long as it gets fixed. And the reaction is always very quick.

This time, however, that did not happen and it’s been several hours since I sent that email. So the only other option that comes to my mind is, Professor asked the IT department to block my incoming emails. Can this be done? I’m not entirely sure but also I can’t see why not.

Unless, there is another explanation? I did say that’s how neurotypicals behave, however during my work in Home Group I noticed that the lady who was bulling me, who must have had narcissistic personality disorder, when challenged, didn’t behave the same way other neurotypicals do. I don’t know much about this though and it would be rude, I suppose, to suggest here that Professor Simon Baron-Cohen has narcissistic personality disorder, however it did come to my mind for a bit. Either this or I have been blocked.

Moving on. I came up with how to tell people I’m autistic. It did take me like three weeks to do that, although obviously I was also trying to deal with normal life at the same time, let me assure you. So basically (omg, again!) when asked what I do for a living I’ll tell them and then I’ll add ‘I’m also autism blogger’. Autism, not autistic, as anyone who knows about autism can blog about it, even if they’re not autistic themselves. And then, if they ask, for example ‘why is that? Do you have an autistic kid or someone in the family?’ I will say ‘No, I blog about my own experience’ and then I’ll leave them to work out what that means.

When they’ll finally realise, they will know that I was smart enough to come up with a way to say something indirectly, so hopefully that will make them realise that my communication skills are not as impaired as some sources would suggest about all autistic individuals. Hopefully, I mean as I didn’t try that out yet and I do admit I have problems with predicting neurotypicals behaviour, unless the situation is similar to something that I’ve already experienced more than once (like with the previous two examples) and this is something totally new to me. I will, however let you know how it went, after I did it, so watch this space (I mean, not this specifically as it will be in a new post, definitely).