"Why don't people say what they mean?"
that's a very common thing with frustrated autistic people struggling to navigate allistic socializing and it's one that always actually kind of confused me, but critically not because I was doing any better at navigating allistic social situations. I'm so bad at that I think most humans are inherently threatening because they might try to have a conversation with me and I know that usually goes so, so bad.
so why am I not as frustrated as the autistic person with allistic ability to say what they mean?
cuz I can't fucking do it either?!?
like that's the WEIRD part to me because you make use of the words you have. the ones you can get to come out, the ones you can cobble together from having heard people say this or that phrase 100 times, because translation is hard especially fast and I DON'T THINK IN WORDS. so when you ask me a question I'm already trying to turn those words into a concept thought and then SUMMON an answer from my memory of words people use for that.
which of course is a bridge into my frustration with the idea that if an autistic person usually can make mouth words they have no communication problems. because AHHHHHHH.
like as a kid I spend SO much time in my head not knowing how to express things because I didn't have access to the correct tools yet. And sometimes I really tried to make use of words I did have but mostly I just had to hang around and only say things I'd heard other people say a lot. You can actually get by with that very well. especially as far as other people are concerned, and if you assume that's what it's like for everyone...then it's hard to be mad about other people not being clear and literal.
but it also means that my struggles with taking things literally rarely came out in the 'I have misunderstood a metaphor as literal' since it's all an elaborate code ALL THE TIME anyway and I assumed no one was any better than I was at having access to the words required to say exactly what they meant. Metaphors as a concept made so much sense because then you can take what words you have and use them to say something you don't have words for, the effect won't be perfect but WHEN IS IT?
anyway all that to say that I don't vibe with the 'why can't people just say what they mean?' thing because that takes way more access to language than I actually have as an autistic person.
and Medium Autism is a thing.
