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A text post by callmemanatee. "The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation " is not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily. In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the kinds of figurative language there are in poetry and literature. But paperwork and questionnaires are hard because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave enough room for nuance. "List all the jobs you've had with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month. Is the year enough? "Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take my glasses off the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking. Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently the library for Work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection? It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.

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A text post by callmemanatee. "The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation " is not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily. In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the kinds of figurative language there are in poetry and literature. But paperwork and questionnaires are hard because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave enough room for nuance. "List all the jobs you've had with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month. Is the year enough? "Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take my glasses off the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking. Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently the library for Work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection? It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.
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Shantell Powell (shanmonster@c.im)'s status on Saturday, 17-Aug-2024 06:39:48 JST Shantell Powell

This has been a problem for me all my life. When I ask for clarification on ambiguous questions/assignments, I've been called a smartass or a dumbass and am chided for not understanding the obvious. I've been called a disturber or told to use my brain. It's left me paranoid and wondering if subconsciously I am doing this on purpose. A lifetime of gaslighting.
The same thing goes when people use synecdoche and I think they're being literal. As an example, years ago, my in-laws, a military family, were talking about war and said "when we were in the Middle East." Confused, I said, "oh, I hadn't realized you lived there too."
This made them blow up at me because apparently I was supposed to know the "we" meant the Canadian military in general, and not my in-laws.
#ActuallyAutistic #literal #synecdoche

In conversation about 3 months ago from c.im permalink