Thoughts, words and people…

There’s a strange dichotomy to being a writer. I’m writing about people all the time, yet I can’t seem to interact with them. I observe them from the edge of things like a scientist doing some strange experiment.

I don’t know if that is the way that all writers work or if it’s just me.

I don’t want to sound self-pitying; but it does.

I’m an introvert, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like being with people. I enjoy being part of a group and it makes me feel like part of the human race, even if I don’t’ say much.
I have a partner on the ASD spectrum. My son and older daughter are on the ASD spectrum. I have a younger brother and at least one nephew on the spectrum. I don’t know if my youngest has it yet – time will tell, but genetic probability suggests that I have it in mild form and when I think about the way I was described as being as a child, it backs that probability up.

So I sit on the edge of groups, not quite part of them because I can’t seem to interact with people properly, no matter how hard I try.

Is it me?
Is it them?

I think I have friends. They’re all on the net though – I’ve met one or two of them in real life and I cringe to think what they thought of me; I’m not exactly the best at first meetings…
Ask me to write something and I’ll give you a thousand word on the subject. Ask me to talk and I dry up… until I force it out.

I babble. I’ll tell everyone my life story. I go from silent to a thousand words a second due to pure nerves. I probably scare the people I am trying to get to know, purely because I can’t stop that torrent of words from pouring out of me.

So I avoid face to face situations.
But that makes me feel worse…

So I push the feelings into my work. The hurt and the rage come out in the words I type. I create monsters to rip the characters to bits with them, both verbally and physically. It scares me. So I delete the stories it happens in because I don’t want people to see that side of me.
I stopped writing horror because I can’t write down the things that scare me – I won’t sleep if I bring those shadows out into the light. And if I can’t sleep then my family will suffer… I get rather grumpy and nasty when I haven’t had enough sleep!

There are people who try to include me in things… but having been stabbed in the back socially a few times when I was much younger, I shy away from it and they give up on me.

Where do I go from here?
Where I usually go… to the keyboard.